Got Crate? Stay Out of This City

In the mean-streets-of-Beverly-Hills file, Paula Van Gelder sent along an item from the police log of the Beverly Hills Courier, which listed the arrest of a man “for unauthorized possession of a milk crate.”

OR COULD IT BE A HOT CEILING? No sooner had this column published a for-sale notice offering a “ceiling for light fixture” than Janet Mauk of La Crescenta wrote:

“Think we’ve found a buyer.”

She enclosed a story that appeared in The Times a few days later about a Silver Lake resident whose living room ceiling had vanished (see accompanying clip).

PRESIDENTS WHO ARE OUT OF BOUNDS: Bill Clinton’s weekend golf date here at the Hillcrest Country Club (no score revealed) coincides with the appearance of “Presidential Lies,” a book exploring the love of that, uh, sport by White House occupants.

Once, when Richard Nixon suggested a round at the 19th hole at the Lakeside Country Club in Toluca Lake, comic George Gobel feared that his wife Alice “would never believe he was late because he was having a drink with the president of the United States,” authors Shepherd Campbell and Peter Landau write. (Nixon phoned her on his behalf.)

Gerald Ford, actually rated the No. 2 all-time White House duffer in the book (after John Kennedy), has been the target of numerous jokes by Bob Hope, including: “The Russians used to say that if we were really serious about disarmament we’d dismantle his golf clubs.”

The authors ranked Clinton a poor No. 8 (the worst player since Lyndon Johnson). At the 1995 Hope Desert Classic in Palm Springs, Clinton was given a handicap of 11, meaning he would shoot around 83.

When tour member Curtis Strange, who had played with Clinton, heard the figure 11, he “rolled his eyes.” Clinton shot a 95 to win a place in “Presidential Lies.”

SPEAKING OF BIRDIES: During the Long Beach Open, that city’s Press-Telegram reports, a blue heron dropped “a baby gopher at the feet of a player ready to swing his club.” Which might prompt some golfers to advance directly to the 19th hole.

DON’T MEAN TO VAN GOGH YOU, BUT . . . : The recent UCLA slang books published by linguistics professor Pamela Munro and her students note how some names have become figures of speech:

* A Baldwin is a handsome male, as in “That football player is a Baldwin” (a reference to the acting brothers).

* A Fred is a jerk (from Fred Flinstone).

* And a Monet is someone who looks better from a distance.

More such examples have been popping up in the movies this year.

* When Robin Williams (mistakenly) thinks he’s receiving a car as a gift from Billy Crystal in “Father’s Day,” Williams emotionally remarks that it’s so “Elvis of you.”

* A woman in “When the Cat’s Away” talks of an acquaintance who “Van Goghed me” (talked her ear off).

* And when Julia Roberts suffers romantically in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” a friend describes the feeling in terms of an actress known for tear-jerker roles: “The exquisite misery--the Susan Hayward of it all.”

miscelLAny:

Radio station KFWB-AM (980) broadcast a warning over the weekend that motorists were slowing down on the Riverside Freeway because of a low-flying kite near the Magnolia Avenue exit in Riverside. Oh, the Ben Franklin of it all.

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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, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.