Don’t Forget Hugh Grant’s Contribution

So, an entertainment industry trade group says that Hollywood is pouring more than $25 billion per year into L.A. County’s economy. Impressive--especially since that figure doesn’t include all the money that actors have to spend for lawyers’ fees and court fines after their arrests.

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L.A.’S NO. 1 SPECTATOR SPORT: Real-life car chases have become such a daytime TV hit it’s only a matter of time before soap operas start working them into their plots to survive. As Steve Fazzio’s snapshot indicates, a Hermosa Beach bar called Critters continues to make an unusual offer (see photo).

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SPEAKING OF CRITTERS: Mary Lou Steward of Pasadena spotted some language on a sign in Cabrillo Harbor that obviously appealed to one seal (see photo).

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A WING AND A PRAYER FOR DUCT TAPE: Writer Hugh Ryono was flying from Minnesota to L.A. when the mid-fuselage of the plane was apparently hit by lightning. “There was a very noticeable ‘womp’ and then a definite whistling noise from the cabin afterward,” he said.

After a stopover and minor plane repairs, he reboarded and noticed just one change--a lonely strip of duct tape on the ceiling area where lightning had struck.

“To no one in particular I said, ‘I know that they say duct tape can fix anything, but this is a bit ridiculous!’ ” Ryono related.

He added: “Turns out that the whistling noise was caused by a crack in the air conditioning ducts--thus the duct tape--and that there was no actual damage to the aircraft’s pressurized cabin.”

Ryono’s now a duct lover.

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A STATUE’S SHIFTING FORTUNES: Arlene Cartozian’s marble statue, “Sustenance,” has had an exciting 13-year run in the city of Paramount. The public art work was once covered with gang monikers by a young vandal who escaped detection--until he entered a city poster contest and used the same symbols.

The other day a drunk driver knocked down Cartozian’s statue, which depicts two factory workers--a man and a woman. A local company generously volunteered its forklift to right the statue but, in the process, turned it around, so that the female worker now stands closer to the street.

No problem, said Cartozian, an art instructor at Cal State Long Beach. She said: “Women who work in the area tell me they like it better with the woman in front.”

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SHE HAD DONE HER HOMEWORK: On the spur of the moment, Rania Chamoun, a 23-year-old law student at UCLA, took in a speech by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on campus. As she was exiting, an aide asked if she would like to meet Annan and his wife. Next thing Chamoun knew, she was conducting a tour of the campus for the group, along with UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale.

Chamoun has been at UCLA five years and Carnesale just one, but it would be undiplomatic to say that the law student probably knew her way around better than the chancellor.

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MORE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST LEFT-HANDERS: Scottie Dake of Inglewood notes that UCLA is looking for irritable-bowel-syndrome victims who are right-handed and between the ages of 25 and 55 to take part in an experiment using brain scans. Participants will receive up to $600 as well as something that Dake figures they’ll cherish--a free color glossy of their brain.

miscelLAny:

J. Aaron Stinde of Torrance found it curious when he came upon a flier for Grinder Restaurant that listed, as one of the eatery’s “quality suppliers,” the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn.

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.