Shifting plates:While the selection of the jury...

Shifting plates:

While the selection of the jury continues for Simpson II in Santa Monica, some West Virginians have already cast votes of a sort. That state’s Department of Motor Vehicles says that 970 vehicle owners demanded new plates over the last year because the ones they were originally issued began with the letters “OJ.”

The DMV’s Mindy Ventura theorizes that when the first “OJ” plates were turned in, word got around the state, prompting others to take similar action. Then, she said, “the story hit the [local] newspapers” and the numbers really jumped.

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TRIAL MENU ITEM: One memorial to the first Simpson trial is a dish at Abiquiu restaurant in Santa Monica--the Rosa Lopez chicken tamale.

“It’s chicken because people had the feeling she wasn’t telling as much as she knew,” manager Daniel Huntoon said of the former Brentwood maid. “When we first put it on the menu [after she testified], people would say, ‘Oh, you guys. That’s naughty.’ But now a lot of people say, ‘Who was she again? A character on ‘Dallas’?’ It’s like she was just one more TV character.”

Lopez is the only Simpson trial personage so honored at Abiquiu.

“We don’t have a Mark Fuhrman turkey sandwich,” Huntoon said.

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OPERATOR, READ MY LIPS: Fred Halls of Lancaster, who took today’s photo in the library at Antelope Valley College, wonders: “Is there a new type of phone in which you use sign language only?”

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BROWN-BAGGING FOR A LIVING: Baggers from grocery stores across the state will compete for the title of top clerk in the state Saturday at the Long Beach Convention Center, the biggest event to hit town since Ross Perot’s Reform Party held its convention there.

The clerks, who will compete for a $1,000 first prize, will be judged on speed, efficiency and “proper bag-building technique.”

And, of course, whether they remember to ask that guilt-inducing question: “Paper or plastic?”

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A SERVING OF HALF-AND-HALF: A recent column on postal adventures prompted Anne Johnson of Long Beach to recall the time “I sent our monthly lease payment to Xerox in a normal business envelope, with their address in the lower right corner and our return address in the upper left.”

Alas, at some point in its journey, the letter was torn in half.

“But,” she continues, “our faithful post office still delivered--the half with Xerox’s address went to Xerox and the other half came back to us. Ours was stamped: ‘Returned for Better Address.’ I’ve always wondered if the person who stamped it was serious.”

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TOUGHEST KINDERGARTEN IN TOWN: Tim Bragg of L.A. writes that his 5-year-old, who just entered kindergarten, brought back a set of classroom instructions that included a glaring typo. The instructions said that Sharing Day was the only day that the children could bring objects to school and added that “toys of a violent nature are now allowed.”

If it’s not a typo, Bragg hopes there’s a 15-day waiting period for the purchase of slingshots.

miscelLAny:

A colleague who attended the Dodgers’ Fan Appreciation Day last Sunday reports that during the post-game drawing several holders of winning tickets lost their chances for prizes. Reason: They had left Dodger Stadium early. And why not? Is there a greater prize in Southern California than a clear lane out of a parking lot?