Hold the mustard:The gift shop at the...

Hold the mustard:

The gift shop at the Museum of Contemporary Art offers a Claes Oldenburg sculpture of a (salted) cardboard pretzel that measures about 6 inches across.

Cost: just $85. We still prefer the $1.50 type. For one thing, you can eat it.

THE NOT-SO-BLESSED EVENT: San Marino is a very refined city, as illustrated by a notice sent out to residents (and relayed to us by Barbara Day). The notice used oblique language to discuss a certain problem. It said:

“Ordinance 973, adopted Feb. 20, 1990, requires that you pick up after your dog within 5 minutes of the event in the park, on sidewalks, streets and parkways.”

The ordinance apparently means that you better pick up after your dog if he rips off that nice sweater you gave him last winter.

STAY OUT OF SAN MARINO: Mary Snodgrass of Whittier took one look at this ad in a local newspaper and asked: “Do you suppose this comes with a mop?”.

EL LAY ROCK: John Wilcock of Topanga, who is working on a book in Ireland, wrote us from Dundalk, home of the famous L.A. Rock diner.

Well, not quite famous.

“Lisa, the owner, tells me she’s been open for seven months and I’m her first visitor from California,” Wilcock said, “although she’d be delighted to see others.”

The owner told Wilcock that the diner’s sign originally said LA Rock. But she put periods in the name because people were giving it a sort of French pronunciation, “La Rock.”

Wilcock sent along the menu, which includes “taco kebab” (isn’t that a contradiction in terms?)

HOLLYWOOD PREDICTS THE FUTURE: For such a noble deed--originating a new slogan for Las Vegas--L.A. publicist Chris Harris has stirred up a bit of controversy. Both Eric Williams and Paul Jackson wrote to say that Harris’ “Las Vegas Has Heart” creation is very close to one devised by the Albert Brooks character in the 1985 movie “Lost in America.”

Williams wrote: “Desperate to regain the nest egg dropped by his wife at the Desert Inn, former adman Brooks proposes that the casino return the couple’s money and that the generous act be used as the centerpiece of a warm-and-fuzzy promotion campaign with the jingle, ‘The Desert Inn Has Heart, the Desert Inn Has Heart, the Desert Inn Has Heart.’ ”

miscelLAny:

The day after our 8-year-old daughter Sarah signed up for the Young Writers Workshop at Cal State Long Beach, we asked her the name of her instructor. “It’s hard to pronounce,” she said. We checked and discovered that it’s a name that will become more familiar to Sarah later in her writing career. The instructor’s name tag said, “Mrs. Hemingway.”