L.A. Case aux Folles:”The Birdcage,” starring Robin...

L.A. Case aux Folles:

“The Birdcage,” starring Robin Williams, is an American remake of the 1978 comedy “La Cage aux Folles,” but some of the dialogue has been updated. At least, we don’t remember this description of a character in the French version: “My God! He’s put on so much weight since the Simpson trial.”

THAT COUNTRY WISDOM: In Avenues, the Auto Club magazine, Willma Gore writes of exploring some desert dirt roads several miles from the California-Nevada border with her husband, George. Darkness fell before they could find a road leading back to a highway. But they did notice, “set against a brown hill . . . a makeshift abode. We thought it was abandoned, but then we saw a dog lying near the doorway.”

A grizzled miner appeared and, when asked the quickest way back to the freeway, he spat out some tobacco juice and asked, “Ya come from there today?”

“Yes, left early this morning,” Gore’s husband responded.

“Then I reckon ya git back the same way’s ya come,” the miner advised.

Next time they head out that way, Gore writes, she’ll remember to “drop crumbs” for the trip back.

LIST OF THE DAY: Some well-known Americans who were born after George Burns (1896-1996):

* George Gershwin (born 1898)

* Humphrey Bogart (b. 1899)

* Al Capone (b. 1899)

* Ernest Hemingway (b. 1899)

* Louis Armstrong (b. 1900)

* Clark Gable (b. 1901)

* Charles Lindbergh (b. 1902)

* Lou Gehrig (b. 1903)

* Howard Hughes (b. 1905)

* Jean Harlow (b. 1911)

Eight of the nation’s 42 Presidents were also born after the cigar-chomping comic. So, by the way, was 1996 Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole.

THE COUNCIL NEEDED SOME COUNSEL: We got to thinking after we wrote about the promotion in which the L.A. Ice Dogs hockey team gave a free admission to each fan who brought a necktie. Most of the garments were pretty ghastly, but we figured we must have some as outstandingly bad. Sure enough, we unearthed one in a file cabinet.

It was smuggled to us in 1982 by a City Council aide to expose a disastrous $10,000 publicity campaign by the council. The idea had been to send the ties to L.A.-area legislators in Washington as a goodwill gesture. Just the kind of thing a congressman would proudly wear, right? Not one of the ties was ever seen in public. One congressman said at the time: “I remember getting something stupid like that and throwing it away.”

miscelLAny:

To mark the opening of the carpool lanes of the Ventura Freeway, the MTA is holding a contest to find “your funniest, most romantic, most outrageous carpool or vanpool story.” First prize is $1,000, as well as a plane trip for two from Continental Airlines to any one of its destinations in the United States, Mexico or the Caribbean. For information, phone (800) COMMUTE. Remember, the MTA wants carpool or vanpool stories--not your funniest bus or Metro Rail trip. But, come to think of it, Only in L.A. will award one used City Council tie for the wittiest MTA bus or Metro Rail yarn sent here.

The L.A. City Council’s tie.