From Bosnia to the Urban Combat Zone

Some non-Southern Californians are a bit nervous about visiting here, be it the thought of earthquakes, crime, traffic or whatever. Not attorney Peggy Hicks, though. A University of Michigan grad, she’s coming to see her Wolverines play Washington State in the Rose Bowl. And she shouldn’t have trouble adjusting to L.A.

She works for an international agency in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

WEIRDEST HOLIDAY DISPLAY OF THE YEAR: My vote goes to the envelope Rick Perry received. It bore a stamp showing Madonna and child--but superimposed over part of the religious scene was the Long Beach post office’s machine stamp, which said, “Classic Movie Monsters” (see accompanying).

The latter was a reference to a recent post office issue that honored such villains as Dracula, Wolf Man, and the Frankenstein monster. But as a holiday sentiment? The post office’s favorite Christmas carol must be “O Little Town of Transylvania.”

LIST OF THE DAY: The pet peeves of drivers in Southern California? The DMV’s list of vanity plate messages reveals a few:

* HATE405

* HATE55

* IHATE55

* IHATESC

* NUKESC

* HATENY

* HATECA

* NUKE818

* IHATELA

The 405 is obviously the San Diego Freeway, perhaps the most despised in the L.A. area. The 55? Who knows whether the plate refers to the Costa Mesa Freeway, the speed limit or that age.

SC needs no introduction (I could find no hateful messages directed against UCLA).

The HATENY sentiment is perfectly understandable, of course, though it might be disputed by the HATECA plateholder.

I suspect the NUKE818 message belongs to someone who wouldn’t mind if the San Fernando Valley seceded from L.A.

And the IHATELA holder? Perhaps it’s someone who lives in 818.

DON’T BLAME THE 405 FOR THIS ONE! It was the 1998 Zagat Survey of local restaurants that mistakenly listed several eateries in the San Gabriel Valley as being “West of #405 Freeway” (see accompanying). I think the guidebook meant the 605, which is a bit less hateful than the 405.

L.A. SAFARI: Norm Sklarewitz of West Hollywood was chatting with an acquaintance who had purchased a $40,000-plus Range Rover “equipped to cross the Sahara Desert--roll bars, those huge cleated mud tires, the works.” Sklarewitz asked if he’d had a chance to give it a real workout yet. The Rover owner said yup--he’d taken it to “one of the parks.” Sklarewitz asked him which one, figuring he meant Death Valley or the Mojave Desert or maybe Yosemite. “Griffith Park,” the Rover owner said proudly. In retrospect, Sklarewitz wrote, “I bet he saddled up on the pony rides there, too.”

miscelLAny

After a day of Christmas shopping, 15-year-old Elise Hart of Palmdale said, “Leave it to Mom to bring home a CD by someone no one’s ever heard of.” The obscure performer? Someone named Paul McCartney.