We Have a (Used) Slogan for You!

After a hiring freeze was imposed at Los Angeles City Hall, employees of the Personnel Department were asked to suggest a snappy new slogan.

The slogan that was being replaced: “We Have a Job for You!”

FREEWAYS WE HATE AND THE DRIVERS WHO USE THEM: The San Diego Freeway, which has inspired such license plates as HATE 405 and GDDM 405, ranks up there as one of the most disliked roadways. But filmmaker Fax Bahr noticed a motorcyclist with an equally low opinion of the 91 Freeway (see photo).

TRANSLATION, PLEASE: Before it was corrected, a sign near LAX seemed to indicate that it was on 111st Street (see photo).

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LITERARY LANDMARK: An incident at the Short Stop, a Sunset Boulevard bar long known as a cop hangout, inspired this anecdote in a Joseph Wambaugh novel, “Fugitive Nights”:

A would-be robber enters the bar. He appears to be holding a gun under his coat. The intruder doesn’t realize that half the rumpled guys hunched over drinks are plainclothes cops, some in bad moods. As the robber attempts to exit with his loot, one of the cops shoots him to death.

Afterward, the dead man is discovered to be holding a comb, not a gun. Hence, the bar’s subsequent bumper sticker: “Use a Comb, Go to Heaven.”

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SECRET DRINKERS: After a $500,000 advertising campaign to persuade residents to drink water from their taps several years ago, the L.A. Department of Water and Power admitted that seven of its offices furnished bottled water to employees. The bottled water, whose presence was termed an “administrative error,” was removed after the episode was reported in the press.

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LIST OF THE DAY: An early 20th century code of conduct at the all-girl Marlborough School contained this advice:

* “Don’t talk about yourself or your family affairs. It is a sign of verdancy.”

* “Don’t be inquisitive with either tongue or fingers. Curiosity is wholly vulgar and common.”

* “Don’t take soup noisily.”

* “And don’t even once allow yourself to put celery, Saratoga potatoes, toast, biscuit or any other crisp eatable into your mouth without closing your lips upon it before you bite it and your teeth upon it before you chew it.”

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MIND IF THE GODS SMOKE? A worker for the county Natural History Museum stopped at a gas station to buy cigarettes, telling the attendant that the brand didn’t matter because no one was going to smoke them.

The attendant asked her what she was going to do with them.

“Would you believe an offering to the gods?” she replied.

She wasn’t joking. In return for the loan of some sacred Indonesian heirlooms, museum officials had agreed to make a show of respect for the objects twice a week, in keeping with that nation’s traditions. Approved offerings included the petals of five kinds of flowers mixed with tobacco.

miscelLAny:

The blinking red light atop the Capitol Records tower spells out “Hollywood” in Morse Code. It’s the truth. Your columnist is not full of Saratoga potatoes.