Scout’s Honor, Knowing When to Zip It Up

A friend of mine was at a Cub Scout pack meeting where one young Scout was honored for outshining all his comrades when it came to being in perfect uniform. Even his scarf was tied with the required twist. Luckily, just before receiving the award, he remembered to make one adjustment. He pulled up his zipper.

*

THE ULTIMATE FIXER-UPPER: Leafing though a real estate magazine at a Westside deli, Stan Bochniak came upon one of the wonders of Beverly Hills--an uninhabitable earthquake-damaged house with “fabulous potential” selling for $599,000 (see accompanying).

*

SPEAKING ORLEANESE: The story of the Santa Paula man who registered at a hotel in New Orleans and had his hometown spelled “Center Parlor” brought a letter from Bouch Nakri of South Pasadena.

“I speak with a Moroccan accent, a side effect of being born and raised in Morocco,” Nakri said. “I walked into a bar in New Orleans. After I got my drink, I asked the waitress which way to the French Quarter. She walked away and brought me a glass of water. I called her over again and asked her which way to the French Quarter. She pointed to the glass of water and said, “THAT IS FRESH WATER!”

*

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Robert Hudson of Perris noticed that one cruise line’s ad offered such amenities as “confined dining” (see accompanying). Confined in what way? Confined to one’s cabin? Or to a very small area in the dining room?

*

AND THE ANSWER IS . . . : Actually, Hudson points out, the ad should say “confirmed dining.”

*

THE NAME FITS: A professor at USC’s Accident Institute, which studies motorcycle crashes, is named Hugh Hurt.

*

A SIDE BUSINESS FOR MR. ONLY IN L.A.? “In your quest for ‘hand signals’ that might defuse confrontations on our highways and byways,” writes Robert Slater of Studio City, “I think your column photo says it about as well as anything I’ve seen.”

*

INTERNATIONAL L.A.: This column has mentioned the Genghis Cohen restaurant on Fairfax Avenue, but I wasn’t aware of the name of the club that it owns next door. The club is the Genghis Cohen Cantina, but you probably guessed that.

*

OUT L.A. MANCHA WAY: “I was sitting with a friend on his sailboat in a slip at San Pedro on a pleasant Saturday morning,” writes Arlo Dundas.

“Painted on the stern in fancy script was the name of the vessel, Rosinante, as well as the port-of-call, La Mancha. To the literary benighted, Rosinante was the name of Don Quixote’s horse and, of course, La Mancha was Don Quixote’s home.

“A very large sailboat approached. The people aboard appeared to have jump-started the day with a few Bloody Marys. Staring with bleary eyes at the stern of our boat was an attractive woman who turned to her male companion and asked, ‘Where the hell is La Mancha?’

“He looked at her disparagingly and said, ‘What’s the matter with you? It’s a little city out in the Valley next to Encino.”

miscelLAny:

With Halloween approaching, my 9-year-old daughter, Sarah, told her mom that we wouldn’t have to decorate our house with fake spider webs. “We have plenty of real spider webs,” she explained. Mom wasn’t comforted by the observation.

*

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.