Fiery-breath alert:Atlanta is hosting the Olympics, while...

Fiery-breath alert:

Atlanta is hosting the Olympics, while Chicago and San Diego have landed the two national political conventions, but L.A. hasn’t been left out of the summer excitement.

The City of Angels is the site of next month’s Godzilla Film Festival, featuring a rare public appearance by the 77-pound rubber Godzilla suit, star of several movies.

The big lizard’s boss, Toho Co. Ltd., “rarely lets the suit out of its hands,” and insisted that it be insured for $30,000 for this gig, said festival spokeswoman Gayle Anderson.

“The suit is arriving by plane and will be whisked away to a secret location until it’s time to make an appearance,” Anderson added.

The Godzilla festival will show “Destroy All Monsters,” “Godzilla vs. Hedorah” and “Terror of Mechagodzilla” on Aug. 3 at the Japan America Theater in Little Tokyo.

Alas, there will be no presentation of another movie that would seem to hold more meaning for Southern Californians--”Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster.”

However, the authoritative tome, “The Fifty Worst Movies Ever Made,” says the film ran for only two days in L.A. after its 1972 opening. Angelenos apparently had a problem with the plot--the smog monster is eliminated.

BODY PARTS: For today’s anatomy lesson, we bring you two exhibits. One’s a photo by Byron Myhre of Westwood, which seems to point up the amazing advances in transplantation techniques.

The other exhibit, spotted by Jeff Bliss of Newbury Park, is an ad placed by a sculptor who came up with the unique idea of mounting models of feet and hands on an oak plaque.

STUPID CRIMINAL TRICKS:

The city of Paramount’s City Talk newsletter reports that a juvenile armed with a gun was looking into parked cars when he was confronted by a resident.

The suspect “shot the resident in the arm,” the newsletter said. The victim, who weighed over 250 pounds, “fell on top of the suspect, pinning him to the ground. The suspect was unable to get out from under the victim and was taken into custody when officers arrived.”

miscelLAny:

Kent Bridwell of West L.A. alerted us to a newspaper article about an L.A. attorney who sued his office-mate over a practical joke. The L.A. Daily Journal reported that the attorney, a Grateful Dead fan, alleged that he suffered “humiliation, mental anguish and emotional and physical distress” when his office-mate hung a handmade cardboard tombstone in the office after Jerry Garcia’s death. The tombstone read, “R.I.P./Jerry Garcia (a few too many parties perhaps?)”