Orange County, where (fill in the rest):The...

Orange County, where (fill in the rest):

The newly formed Orange County Tourism Council is trying to cook up a catchy slogan to lure visitors. “People have no idea where Orange County is or what it is,” lamented an Irvine ad man.

We should point out, however, that such a competition was held four years ago by a radio station in Anaheim (which is northwest of Irvine). We mention it because we still haven’t forgotten how some Orange Countyites took the opportunity to lambaste L.A. (which is northwest of Anaheim). Suggestions included:

* “Whisper or Shout, There’s No Doubt About It--Orange County Is Better Than L.A. and We’re Proud of It.”

* “Choose the Place L.A. Envies--Choose Orange County.”

* “Orange County--Not Nearly as Scary as L.A.!”

The winning entry came from a La Mirada woman, who submitted: “Orange County: A Great Place to Visit, a Wonderful Place to Call Home.”

L.A. got the last laugh, in a way--La Mirada is in L.A. County.

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SOMETHING SMELLS ABOUT THIS SPELLING: We recently listed some of the wacky versions of local names we’ve come across in ads, including Manhattan Ditch, Stupid (instead of Studio) City, Mailbu and the variation of Whittier we can’t say in a family paper. Well, in a local weekly, Jim Walker of Burbank noticed the renaming of a San Fernando Valley community.

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OUR MAN IN (JUST ABOUT EVERY PLACE): Charles Hillinger of Rancho Palos Verdes was a reporter for The Times for 45 years, surviving five plane crashes. “They were small planes,” he says. “No one was ever killed, except for some chickens in one crash.”

Hillinger was always on the go, whether it was investigating the derivation of Quicksand, Ky., interviewing members of a sod-house society in Nebraska, or visiting the early century movie capital of the nation--glamorous Fort Lee, N.J.

Now he’s recorded his travels in a book, “Charles Hillinger’s America.” There’s a foreword by another traveling man, author/broadcaster Charles Kuralt, who says: “If some historian of the future wants to know what we Americans were like in the second half of the 20th century, he’ll find us in this book.”

One of the few Hillinger failures that we can recall was his attempt to sail the length of the L.A. River with photographer Bruce Cox in 1958. The intrepid explorers made only a few miles before encountering disaster. The water was so shallow their boat wouldn’t move.

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HEY--WHERE DID THOSE LITTLE GREMLINS COME FROM? There it was, a beat-up surfer van plastered with surfer stickers and parked, naturally enough, at Surfrider Beach in Mailbu, or, rather, Malibu. On the dashboard, the van also displayed an item from the real world--a dogeared copy of Parenting Today.

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SKATING ON THIN ASPHALT: Len Ziraldo of West Hills says his wife could hardly believe what she saw on Topanga Canyon Boulevard the other afternoon. Traffic was reduced to a crawl near Topanga Plaza because of a slow-moving station wagon that was pulling something--two youths on in-line skates.

miscelLAny:

The retirement announcement by the Dodgers’ Tommy Lasorda prompted Paul Ecker of Diamond Bar to observe, “Many people feel Tommy is ending his managerial career the same way that Dodger fans leave a game--too early!”