He’s One Laker Who Arrived on Q

Writer and Lakers fan Mike Powell, whose license plate says LAQERS, was driving in Westwood when another motorist pulled alongside him, waved and said, “Hey, I got it! I got it. Thanks, man!”

The grateful motorist was Shaquille O’Neal.

SLIMED: Connie Vance of Van Nuys, who works in an income tax and bookkeeping office, came across a W2 for an individual who seems to work in a strange hospital (see excerpt). She added: “The employee that was issued this W2 is such a neat, clean fellow--I don’t know how he stands to work in goo all day long!” I think I’ve also heard it called Good Samaritan Hospital.

SINGING LIKE CANARIES: Some utterances of local mobsters and molls in “Criminal Quotes,” edited by Andrew Chesler and H. Amanda Robb:

* Boyle Heights’ Mickey Cohen, asked in the 1950s if he’d ever killed anyone: “I have killed no man that in the first place didn’t deserve killing by the standards of our way of life.”

* Bugsy Siegel, sometime Beverly Hills resident, putting it a different way a decade earlier: “We only killed our own.”

* Underworld financial wizard Meyer Lansky on his friend Bugsy’s penchant for violence: “He liked guns.”

* Virginia Hill, discussing boyfriend Bugsy after the latter’s 1947 killing: “His name was not Bugsy Siegel, it was Ben, Ben Siegel! And he was no gangster--what do you know? Why, that man loved poetry! There was a poem both of us kept . . . aw, you jerks wouldn’t understand.”

* Cohen, asked at a Senate hearing if he was “surrounded by violence”: “Whaddya mean ‘surrounded by violence’? People are shooting at me!”

BUGS, PART II: We all know people who have, as the expression goes, “ants in their pants”? Well, Cyndi Gould found an ad for a brand that evidently knows how to handle that problem (see ad). I like the line, “Watch ‘em swallow Ben.” I mean “bugs.”

COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY? After a recent collection of typographical errors appeared here, Paul Young wrote that the most memorable gaffe produced by his print shop was “in a church bulletin we printed: ‘Today we celebrate Holy Communism.’ ”

Moving into my Mike Wallace mode, I asked if he was responsible for the gaffe. “It was a guy who worked here before I did,” he responded.

GEN. CONFUSION: Dave Grudt was watching a newscast about Omar Bradley, the Compton mayor who allegedly shouted obscenities in a dispute at a fire station, when Grudt noticed something strange. The graphic included a picture of Gen. Omar Bradley, the late war hero.

AN ADDRESS IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS: Have you noticed the $3.9-million house for sale in Fred Sands’ illustrated newspaper ad? No poetic descriptions (i.e. “Charming, Stylish, Traditional”), no square footage given, no listing of the number of bedrooms and baths. Nor is there a photo. Just a dark square with the address: 360 N. Rockingham.

As a matter of fact, it does sound familiar.

miscelLAny

On an NBC football broadcast over the weekend, Volkswagen advertised a Jetta “made for Californians” because its stereo is allegedly so good. The announcer then says: “What a great way to drown out the sound of earthquakes.” Better watch out, VW. Or your Jetta will be swallowed by the competition the way your Bug was.

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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, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.