One Burglar Who Made a Clean Getaway

A burglar who filched a CD player from a Manhattan Beach home “took more than the usual goods,” the Easy Reader newspaper reported. “He also took a shower.” The intruder wasn’t obsessed with cleanliness though. After he bathed, the newspaper added, he left “the wet towel on the bathroom floor.”

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AERIAL ATTACK ADVISORY: A written threat to jurors in a courthouse--has it come to this?

In Long Beach, yes.

At the entrance to the courthouse’s balcony, there’s a drawing of a peregrine falcon, its wings outstretched, with a caption: “Stay off . . . or I’ll get you.” The notice is part of a stepped-up campaign to point out that falcons in the neighborhood have swooped down on jurors in that outdoor rest spot. Bald jurors, I’m distressed to hear.

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TALK ABOUT A MINOR ROLE . . .: The adult film industry has its own awards show, and the other day the nominations for best, uh, performances were announced by AVN Publications of Van Nuys. It’s heartening to see that the industry does not discriminate. One category is for “Best Non-Sex Performance.” On the other hand, there’s no costume-design award.

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I BEG YOUR PARDON! Mark Taper Forum subscribers might have momentarily felt that they were on an adult-film list if their eyes were drawn first to the boxed portion of a letter from the Taper folks (see accompanying). Actually, it refers to a decision to delay the showing of the play “Ambition Facing West” in favor of “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde,” which is not X-rated.

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NAILED-DOWN RUGS? The Airport edition of the Pacific Bell Not-So-Smart Pages inadvertently listed a hair-replacement business in the hardware section (see excerpt).

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LIST OF THE DAY: Ten notables you might not associate with L.A. who died in the Southland:

* Naturalist John Muir, 1914.

* Former First Lady Lucretia Garfield, 1918.

* Gunfighter Wyatt Earp, 1929.*

* Razor blade mogul King Gillette, 1932.

* Gunfighter Emmett Dalton, 1937.*

* Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1940.

* Olympic star Jim Thorpe, 1953.

* Author Aldous Huxley, 1963.

* Heavyweight champion Jess Willard, 1968.

* Columnist Walter Winchell, 1972.

* Natural death

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FREEWAY OBSTACLE DU JOUR: Traffic was jammed on the Pomona Freeway in the Hacienda Heights area Thursday morning because of a distraction off to the side of the road--some burning palm trees.

miscelLAny:

Let’s see--Robert Downey Jr. got an earful in court Monday and Christian Slater got some equally bad news in court Tuesday. But, hey, Hollywood’s on a streak now. In the last two days, not a single actor has been sentenced to jail in L.A.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.