A Gremlin in the City Phone System

Someone has been having a bit of fun with the city’s abandoned vehicle/building hotline, Bob Richardson of Venice discovered. Following Richardson’s tip, I phoned the (800) ABANDON number, pressed “3” for the Spanish translation and immediately pressed “3” again.

What followed was this somewhat ungrammatical message from a man: “Hi! If you want to call the city and have nothing done, just call me and I will take your message and file it away like the rest of the city employees does. So please feel free to leave a message and not have anything done. Bye now.”

WAY TO GO: Jim Stott of Westlake Village came across an arrow in a parking lot that tells drivers the way wrong to go--we mean, the way right, that is. Well--see photo.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE HEAT WAVE: Lloyd Peyton of Silver Lake passes along these instructions, which he found attached to an air conditioner in a hotel in Asia: “Cooles and heates. If you want just condition of warm in your room, please control yourself.”

HAZY POLICY: Todd Franklin of Glendale noticed that a life insurance form appears to offer separate rates to marijuana smokers (see accompanying item). Their rates are higher, but what do they care?

LIST OF THE DAY: The contretemps between the Rev. Robert Schuller and a flight attendant on an L.A.-New York flight brings to mind some other off-beat scenes on airliners:

* A youngster who had just settled into his seat casually asked a stewardess: “May I please have some water for my snake? He just ate and he needs water.” The Burbank-bound plane’s takeoff was delayed so the ticket-less critter could be removed.

* Bob Dornan, then a Garden Grove congressman, was booted off a plane at LAX for refusing to bring his seat into an upright position for the takeoff. Dornan righteously insisted he had a sore hip.

* An L.A. lawyer was arrested and handcuffed for bringing aboard his own earphones to listen to a movie. Charges against the alleged audio thief were later dropped. The movie, by the way, was “Presumed Innocent.”

* A passenger, who couldn’t please control himself, was arrested at LAX for allegedly pounding and kicking an occupied restroom and threatening the person inside. The occupant turned out to be the wrong guy--the pilot.

BELIEVE IT OR FILE IT AWAY: Then there was the yarn that made the rounds a few years ago about an airline employee with the last name of Gay. He supposedly boarded a flight at LAX as a nonpaying passenger, only to find that his assigned seat was occupied. So he moved. The plane, in fact, was overbooked and some nonpaying passengers had to surrender their seats.

An attendant stopped at the seat originally assigned to Gay and asked the occupant, “Are you Gay?” When the startled man nodded, the agent said, “Then you’ll have to get off the plane.”

Seeing what was happening, Gay arose and said, no, he was Gay and should therefore exit. At which point a young man seated nearby jumped to his feet and angrily declared, “I’m gay too! They can’t kick us all off!”

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Elyse Verse of West L.A. read about Harvey Washbangers, the planned restaurant/bar-coin laundry in Manhattan Beach and asked: “Isn’t there a law on the books against drinking and drying?”

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, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.