To live and roll in L.A.:While Los...
To live and roll in L.A.:
While Los Angeles’ cost-of-living index is 19.6% higher than the national average, research by the American Chamber of Commerce also shows that one sporting activity is cheaper here than in any major city in the nation: bowling.
DUELING SIGNS: Providing more evidence that it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether you’re coming or going in Southern California, Paula Van Gelder spotted a building with a non-entrance that is NOT an exit, as well as a business that can’t decide whether it’s open or closed. Luckily, neither was at a bowling alley.
UNHINGED: Our item that gave singer Tom Waits credit for rhyming orange with door hinge had some readers seeing red. Pat White of Pasadena and others said they had seen that poetic combination years earlier in the works of Ogden Nash, as well as Kurt Vonnegut.
To assuage the Nash fans, we present one of his classic ditties, which should be the official song of Van Nuys:
And poor Mr. Potter
T crosser, I dotter
He has to cross T’s
And he has to dot I’s
In an I and T factory
Out in Van Nuys
Very nice, you have to agree.
Still, we wonder whether even Nash could rhyme Sylmar?
PERHAPS HE COULD TAKE UP BOWLING, INSTEAD: The 1977 movie “Star Wars” is a box-office smash again, despite the fact that most everyone on earth over the age of 25 has seen it more than once. We’re reminded of a story we once read concerning actor Alec Guinness, who plays Obi-Wan Kenobi in the film.
Many years ago, Guinness was approached by a woman and her young son in public. The woman proudly told Guinness that her son had seen “Star Wars” more than 75 times. She asked the actor if there was anything he’d like to tell the boy. Guinness leaned down to the youngster and intoned, very slowly, “Never . . . see . . . it . . . again.” Then he moved on, leaving the stunned twosome behind.
EVERYTHING BUT BOWLING NOVELS: We’re sorry we missed the reading of Marc Norman’s “Bike Riding in Los Angeles” last month at the Creativity Bookstore in Santa Monica. A company called Blonde & Brunette Productions stages readings of L.A. fiction by professional actors at the bookstore each month. Next up, Feb. 23, is a work by Ben Mattlin that sounds like the story of a newcomer to L.A.’s freeways: “Learning to Crawl.”
NO BIRDIE: It was on Friday, you may recall, that plaintiffs’ attorney Daniel Petrocelli told the Simpson jury: “You must send him a message as loud as humanly possible, so he can hear it on whatever golf course he’s hiding out on now.” And that afternoon, a small plane crashed on the Rancho Hills golf course, where Simpson was indeed playing. That night a Fox TV newswoman, reporting on the incident, twice remarked, “Only in Los Angeles.”
We couldn’t have said it better.
miscelLAny
If you figured that A & E’s “Biography” show had profiled just about everyone who ever lived, you’re almost correct. The producers are apparently down to the last two personages. The title of tonight’s show: “Adam & Eve.”