Little Southern Comfort When It Comes to Accents

Recent anecdotes here about Southern accents prompted a call from Tony W., who remembered his search for a restaurant with an exotic-sounding name in Charleston, S.C.

“When we arrived at the airport there I asked someone for a good place to go to dinner,” he said. “A woman recommended, ‘Cilia Della Pajas.’ When we got to the hotel we asked the desk clerk and a couple of other people and no one had ever heard of it. On the second day I decided to look it up in the phone book. All of a sudden I realized that what she’d said was, ‘See the Yellow Pages.’ ”

YOUR COLUMN FOR OFFICIAL EL NINO ITEMS: All-news radio station KFWB-AM (980) has adopted the slogan, “Your Station for Official Updates on El Nino.” Which raises some questions. First, does El Nino have an agent? And, did KFWB have to outbid rival KNX-AM (1070) to sponsor El Nino?

Of course, KFWB’s coup may be only the start. Soon we should be hearing about such products as “Your Store for Official El Nino Galoshes” and “Your Company for Official El Nino Roof Repairs.” No one really knows whether El Nino will bring heavy storms here. But we seem certain to be flooded with El Nino ads.

NO PLACE TO BE AT NIGHT: Peter St. Clair of Pacific Palisades points out that a brochure for a coming seminar in L.A. seems to be warning visitors about the perils of visiting Beverly Hills. The brochure says the city is known for its “shady neighborhoods.”

AND HERE’S ONE OF THE SHADIEST! Fran Russell of Burbank found an ad for Beverly Hills--a sex club of that name--in a foreign publication called “Copenhagen This Week” (see accompanying).

IT WOULD GO GREAT WITH A FAT BURGER: Jay Berman of Manhattan Beach wonders if one title company has given any thought to diversifying into the cola business (see accompanying). The high-calorie cola business.

ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY: Thirty-five years ago today, so-called “sick comic” Lenny Bruce was arrested by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies in the dressing room of the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Reason: He had just finished giving a performance laden with allegedly obscene phrases. One of the vice officers who made the pinch: Sgt. (now Sheriff) Sherman Block.

TILTING AT STRIP MALLS: Regarding the man who was quoted in this column as saying that La Mancha was a city near Encino, Harvey Bornstein phoned to say: “As funny as that sounds, there is a company called La Mancha Development that builds a lot of strip malls. They have their name on all of them. And most are in the Valley. It might be reasonable for some people to assume a city out there was named La Mancha.”

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“The Cat’s Meow,” a play at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood, concerns the mysterious 1924 death of silent screen pioneer Thomas Ince during a yachting excursion with Charlie Chaplin, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. For the Halloween night performance of the play, the producers will give a $5 discount off the regular ticket price ($18) to theatergoers who come dressed as their favorite deceased movie stars.

While Steve Harvey’s phone number is not in the Cilia Della Pajas, he can be reached 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.