I’ll Be Your Server, Here’s My Diploma

Marilyn Stein noticed that a member of her beach volleyball team showed up for a match but wasn’t playing. “She told me she had to study--she had a big test coming up,” Stein related. “I thought she meant for school. But she said no--it was for a job as a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory. To get a job there you have to pass a four-hour written test.”

The job economy being what it is, the prospective server wasn’t taking the test lightly. “She had to learn the ingredients of everything on the menu,” Stein continued. “So her boyfriend would show her flash cards. He’d say, ‘Chinese chicken salad,’ and she’d say, ‘Chicken, walnuts . . .’ and so on.”

Stein’s friend, by the way, recently took an entrance exam to attend a local university, as well. The exam for the school was shorter. Oh, yes--she was accepted by both institutions.

END OF ROUND ONE: Evelyn Torres-Rangel of San Gabriel spotted one class in Cal State L.A.’s summer schedule--”Physical and Psychological Violence/Aggression”--that has a mandatory half-hour “break.”

Or truce.

LAUNDRY TAG LIT: Keleigh Hardie adds to our growing collection of interesting washing directions, with this stern warning from a T-shirt:

“Machine wash and tumble dry your silk screen T-shirt, clean your room and don’t stay out past 11 without calling . . . “

A CORNER LITTERED WITH CARS? Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills found a set of street signs where, if you can’t figure out the arrows, you have another option (see photo).

THIS URBAN FOLK TALE FLIES: “For the past three weekends I’ve heard the same story at every barbecue I’ve attended in the Bay Area,” writes Luiz Fernando Correa. “The story goes like this: A guy attached four weather balloons to a rocking chair, goes up 14,000 feet and is spotted by a jet pilot on his approach to LAX. . . . At the end [the balloonist] is always saved by the downdraft of a helicopter. . . .”

No way, Luiz.

It wasn’t a rocking chair. It was a lawn chair. And he landed by shooting out his weather balloons one by one.

His name was Larry Walters. A truck driver from North Hollywood with no pilot or ballooning experience, he lifted off with the aid of 42 balloons from San Pedro on July 2, 1982, and stayed up two hours. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet and startled at least two airline pilots, one of whom notified the Federal Aviation Administration.

Upon reentry, his balloons became tangled in some Long Beach power lines, blacking out a neighborhood for 20 minutes.

He was fined $1,500 by the FAA but later appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman.” The balloon stunt was apparently his high point. He committed suicide in 1993 at the age of 44.

FOWL JUXTAPOSITION: The other morning, Frank Murphy heard a local radio newscaster do a “tease” for a story about a “bionic” rooster that had received artificial legs but had died after a fight with another animal--the full story to follow a commercial. And what was the commercial for? A well-known brand of frozen chicken, with original legs.

miscelLAny:

In English-speaking countries, Michael Connelly’s novel about some robbers who tunnel underneath a bank on Wilshire Boulevard is titled “The Black Echo.” But in France, it carries the romantic title “The Sewers of Los Angeles.”

Steve Harvey can serve you 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.