This one would have stumped Columbo:A Paramount...

This one would have stumped Columbo:

A Paramount resident reported a ticking sound coming from a dumpster, occasioning a visit from the Sheriff’s Department bomb squad.

No explosive was found, Paramount’s City Talk publication reports.

Instead, the sound in the dumpster was determined to be the sound of cut grass fermenting in the hot sun.

DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPT.: A Lane lane in the Santa Monica Mountains, a City city on the Westside and a clubless club in Downey are featured in today’s photo spread. Sorry, nothing from the La Brea Tar Pits (which translates to the the Tar Tar Pits).

FURTHER PROOF THAT GETTING A TAN CAN BE DANGEROUS: A vehicle crashed into a tanning parlor in the San Gabriel Valley the other day, destroying three booths (and luckily causing just one minor injury).

THE GREETER: Hank Rosenfeld’s parents, visiting from Michigan, drove from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. intending to have dinner at a Bunker Hill restaurant and see a play at the Mark Taper Forum. They got lost.

“Around 5th and Grand, they were driving slowly, in circles no doubt, when they noticed a homeless man flagging them down,” Rosenfeld reports. “Uh, oh. Fright time. But he shouted at them, no, no, he didn’t want money. He was offering directions. And so they stopped and he helped them find the restaurant.

“He told them he does this every evening because nobody can find the Taper or the restaurant or, for that matter, anything else downtown. My parents thanked him and gave him a buck and he walked away happily.”

CIVIC LESSON: The most frequently stolen car models in L.A. last month:

1. 1980 Toyota Corolla

2. 1994 Honda Civic

3. 1981 Toyota Corolla

4. 1992 Honda Accord

5. 1988 Honda Accord

6. 1993 Honda Accord

7. 1990 Honda Accord

8. 1993 Honda Civic

9. 1995 Honda Civic

10. 1996 Acura Integra

Why are the Hondas and Toyotas so popular? “There are a lot of them out there and their parts [from similar models of different years] can be intermingled,” said Lt. Gary Hallden of the LAPD’s Burglary-Auto Theft Division. “You need a fender or a bumper or an engine, you just steal another car.”

Top American-made auto, by the way, was the 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass (No. 14). “Its parts can be interchanged with other GM cars,” Hallden pointed out. “Plus [the Olds] is popular with gangbangers.”

TALK ABOUT AN EGO BOOST: Ged Kenslea, who is coordinating an Academy Awards benefit for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, received a fax from a German television station that began:

“Dear God . . . “

FINE PRINT: Robert Havens of Marina del Rey sent along an order form he received for the Lawyers Weekly USA publication. “I thought you would be interested in the subscription terms,” he added.

The form says, “Enter my one-year subscription [26 issues] at only $125.”

There are just 26 weeks in a year? Maybe the editors have been sniffing fermented grass.

miscelLAny:

Thomas Edward Wall reports that a sign near the Roosevelt Memorial Park Cemetery on Vermont Avenue says, “Free Dirt.” Maybe business has been brisk lately.