No Butts About It Now in Restaurants
With the new 1998 law, the philosophical question “smoking or nonsmoking section?” has disappeared from the language in California. For nostalgia’s sake, let’s hear one of the last times it was posed.
While eating breakfast at a restaurant, Joseph Wojcik of Claremont overheard a hostess ask some arriving patrons their breathing preference. When they requested a nonsmoking section, the hostess replied, “I only have smoking available--but you don’t have to smoke.”
REWRITING “GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS”: You know how annoying holiday visitors can be. A woman smashed a bathroom window to enter a Redondo Beach house, then allegedly opened Christmas presents, cooked herself a meal, bathed and crawled into a bed and went to sleep. Alas, the Easy Reader newspaper reports, the legal resident of the house returned to ask, “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” Police were summoned and the intruder was taken to a sleeping area with bars on the windows.
MISSTEP: He has played everything from Moses to an NFL quarterback. But actor Charlton Heston’s name was mangled in such a way in one weekly newspaper that he seemed to be a 1920s dancer, observes Marion DeFore of Beverly Hills (see accompanying).
DULLSVILLE? “When my boyfriend received his car insurance quote,” wrote Wendy Mollett, “I was surprised to see our new mailing address (see accompanying). I know that Brentwood is not as exciting since the O.J. trial, but . . . “
WELL, IT BEATS “HEY, TEACH!” Mention was made here of an auto dealership that forgot to substitute its name and phone number in the generic ad it received from its corporate office (hence, its flier read, “Anytown Motors”).
By coincidence I heard from Yvette Lerner of Culver City, who recalled a somewhat similar situation at the college where she taught. “The class schedule for the following semester was sent to the printer, by necessity, before some of the classes had teachers assigned,” she said. “Under the listing for instructor’s name, the word ‘Staff’ was printed. As a part-time instructor, I was sometimes assigned a class after the schedule had gone to press. I wish I had a dollar for every time I was addressed by a student as, ‘Mrs. Staff.’ ”
SAN FERNANDO OR SAN GABRIEL? Chris Majeska of Alta Loma said that when he was studying in Greece, he read an English-language newspaper published in Athens. “Evidently, this would be translated from various Greek newspapers,” Majeska said. One indication: The most popular TV show of the time, “Little House on the Prairie,” was identified as “Little Hut in the Valley.”
BON JOUR, PILGRIM: As for American movies playing on foreign screens, retired colleague Roy Ringer phoned to give a couple of examples of some comical subtitles he saw in Paris. In one Western, he recalled, Gregory Peck slapped a horse on the flanks and yelled, “Git!” The subtitle for French audiences said: En route.
In another movie, John Wayne sauntered into a frontier saloon and said, “Howdy.” The subtitle that appeared: Enchante.
The Duke would have decked the subtitle writer. Or danced the Charleston Heston on his neck.
miscelLAny:
Brian Brahms of Van Nuys swears it happened at the Rose Parade--as the “Shady Ladies of the Mother Lode” equestrian group passed near him, he spotted a blimp overhead that said, “Fly Virgin.” Brahms yelled for the “Shady Ladies” to look up and one member said, “We’re trying to repent.”