Alien Attack or No, at Least We’re Not the Jealous Type
Now that “Independence Day” has finally found its way to the Pacific Northwest, where it is no doubt being screened on bedsheets to an audience seated on logs, readers of the Portland Oregonian have weighed in with answers to the newspaper’s question: Which city would you like to see space aliens attack--New York or Los Angeles?
Although New York was the preferred target by 59% to 41%, the remarks were as hostile and full of subconscious envy as one might expect.
“New York . . . because Los Angeles has enough weirdos and New York is full of businessmen.”
“New York . . . if they attacked Los Angeles, they would just be acquitted anyway.”
“Los Angeles . . . eradicate it from the face of the planet.”
“Los Angeles . . . I don’t think they’d really have a hard time doing it since they’d blend in so well.”
“Los Angeles . . . maybe it’s one of the only ways we can prevent Californians from moving up here--if aliens kill them first.”
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Tops in Tomatoes
California, far and away the nation’s leading producer of tomatoes processed for ketchup and tomato paste, is expecting a record harvest of 11.3 million tons this year. Ohio, the No. 2 state in processed tomatoes, had an output of only 269,670 tons last year. Here are California production figures for the last 10 years:
Tons in millions:
1986: 6.5
1987: 6.7
1988: 6.5
1989: 8.6
1990: 9.3
1991: 9.9
1992: 7.9
1993: 8.9
1994: 10.7
1995: 10.6
Source: California Agricultural Statistics Service, Sacramento
Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times
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Flabbergasted: The fat jokes in “The Nutty Professor,” the Eddie Murphy movie about the amazing elastic academic, get a thumbs-down from the National Assn. for Acceptance of Fat Americans in Sacramento, which says that good intentions do not balance cruel schtick.
NAAFA Executive Director Sally Smith hasn’t seen the film, but then again, she says, she doesn’t need to pay $7 for insults that fat people hear all the time. When her date’s car stalled and the couple walked to a phone booth, a carload of young men drove by hollering “Soo-eee, soo-ee!”
Back when “Nutty” was in production and NAAFA heard it would be fat-positive, the group was sent a Murphy-autographed movie poster to auction at its national convention last month.
It went for $50. Smith’s advice to bidders: “If you don’t want to hang it on your wall, you can always burn it.”
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State of mind: In the latest Controller’s Quarterly, the eponymous official, Kathleen Connell, is identified as “Controller, State of Controller.”
The State of Controller is where reporters and legislative staff go to find audits of state government and public information about politicians’ travel records, expense accounts and other uses of public dough.
Goodbye to all that. A memo now makes inquiring minds, press and legislative, jump through more hoops than a Ringling Bros. tiger. Their queries must be referred to an executive office staffer and the director of communications, with an alert to a branch chief. “Under no circumstance will information be released without a written request and authorization from a chief deputy controller.”
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One-offs: When Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) was asked about being called a dictator, a tyrant, a socialist and a left-wing blowhard, he answered, “I must be doing my job” . . . Ziggy the zoo chimp, whose watercolors appeared on Eureka’s Internet home page and who enjoyed mimicking TV aerobics instructors, has died at the great chimp age of 40 . . . A new law to stop the rustling of walnut burl, the knotty gnarled wood that is the dashboard material of choice for expensive cars and worth as much as $25,000 for a good-sized chunk, can require anyone transporting more than 200 pounds of it to prove ownership . . . The recently deceased Oakland writer Jessica Mitford, whose expose “The American Way of Death” scandalized the public and revolutionized the funeral industry, was cremated.
EXIT LINE
“I get sick of looking at tagging myself. But we just want him to stay with the colors we have.”
--Jim Ahrontes of Hayward’s facilities department, issuing a plea to the Aqua Avenger. The one-man, self-appointed cover-up crusader has been obliterating graffiti in Castro Valley and Hayward--but doing so in a paint color more suited to the bottom of a swimming pool.
