Generating Their Own Kind of Heat

A phone call warning of a possible rape sent officers from the West Valley LAPD Community Relations headquarters rushing into the blazing Reseda sun to a nearby parked car. The officers determined that no crime was being committed although the man and woman inside were generating a lot of heat (as if Mother Nature wasn’t supplying enough).

The man hesitantly explained that he and his companion were, well, giving each other a massage. Sgt. Cindy Brounsten suggested that they go somewhere else inasmuch as the car was, after all, parked next to a police station--and against a red curb.

While officers occasionally find amorous couples in cars, Brounsten said she had never heard of such a case “when it was 115 degrees.”

A DIFFERENT KIND OF STRIP: Terms describing the real estate between a sidewalk and the street are still being sent in by readers (whom punster Bill Robbins calls “grassy-know-it-alls”).

Gloria Stone and Skip Kain, among others, recalled hearing the phrase “devil’s strip” in the Midwest but didn’t know the origin.

Could it refer to weed-like “devil’s grass”? Or to what a devil of a job it is to keep that strip green? Noting its attraction to canine passers-by, Dennis Drissi termed it the “Pit Stop” while Gary Gross preferred “Dog Patch.”

And, of course, the strip is also the host of trash-day ceremonies. “At our house, six days a week, it is a Weedwalk,” said Joan Martin. “On Thursday (garbage pick-up) it is a Wasteland.”

BACK-SEAT DIVER: Surfer Jocko Miladinovich of Lomita was sitting on his board in Malibu when a seal appeared on his right. The creature studied him for a moment, then dived under. Twice more the seal surfaced to look him over. Then apparently satisfied that Miladinovich was a reliable driver, the seal clambered aboard in the back. The critter stayed around long enough for a fellow surfer to race ashore, grab a camera and take a snapshot (see photo).

Then, the seal, seeing its water taxi was going nowhere fast, jumped back into the sea and took an underwater route.

WHAT NEXT--A CRYING GAMEBOY? Carl Reisman came upon an ad for a 17-inch computer monitor that can be returned if it drives the owner to tears--which would apply to every monitor I’ve ever purchased (see accompanying).

GETTING A READ ON L.A.: You have to hand it to L.A. For decades it has been dismissed by snooty Easterners as a shallow-minded playground. H. L. Mencken called it “Moronia.” In the play “Tru,” Truman Capote says, “It’s redundant to die in L.A.” Then there’s the old line, “What’s the difference between L.A. and yogurt? Yogurt has an active culture.”

But does L.A. act offended? No, L.A. plays along with the joke (anything to keep New Yorkers from moving out here).

The new billboards campaigning for people to patronize the public library carry the caption: “Sign of Intelligent Life in L.A.”

miscelLAny

A rep of TV’s “Jeopardy” phoned and left a message saying I should tape that night’s show as a memento. I missed it (that was my night to wash my beard). But reader Rod Doty e-mailed to say that the program indeed, had a category called “Only in L.A.”

Doty added: “Unfortunately, the category had nothing to do with you (or Los Angeles, for that matter). All the answers were two-word phrases with the initials L and A, such as Loni Anderson and Lhasa Apso.”

And I am . . . Left . . . Aghast.

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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.