A Driver With Low-Wattage Light in His Dome

The latest book in a series celebrating the true adventures of mental midgets--”More Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest”--recalls a car with some unusual accessories. When it was pulled over on Pacific Coast Highway, it had “half of a traffic light pole on its hood” with “the signal lights still attached.”

The driver, when asked about the pole by Redondo Beach Police Officer Joseph Fonteno, replied: “It came with the car when I bought it.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: This week’s Only in L.A. Weekend Dining Guide offers such exotic dishes as semi-split pea soup, spotted by Celia Trucks; a tuna steak that seems to be No. 1 on the taste charts, forwarded by Melinda Peterson; and a meal for someone who could eat a horse, not necessarily recommended by Ed Rea Jr. (see accompanying).

SEEING RED: Gov. Pete Wilson recently extended a program allowing cameras in select California cities, including Beverly Hills, to snap pictures of motorists barreling through red lights.

The cameras automatically click away if a car is in the intersection a certain number of seconds after the light turns red. The cameras photograph the car, its license and the driver’s face, after which the city sends a ticket to the registered owner.

Running red lights is a problem here, but it could be worse. Scott Wilson of Long Beach points out that the book “China Wakes” relates that after that nation’s Cultural Revolution was launched in the 1960s, drivers were instructed for a time “to go forward at red lights and to stop at green, because red was a revolutionary color signifying action.”

Authors Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl Wudunn added: “That plan was dropped when not enough drivers got the message and pileups occurred at major intersections.”

BUT BACK TO SOUTHLAND DUNCES: Authors John Kohut and Roland Sweet of “More Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest” also salute:

* A San Diego man who was mauled by two brown bears after entering their enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. The man “explained to police that he went in after the animals motioned for him to join them.”

* The individuals who set out “64 tiny piles of white powder along a 2.2-mile stretch of streets between San Marino and Pasadena.” A hazardous materials team was summoned and residents were warned of a possible plot to poison pets. “After spending six hours cleaning up the still-unidentified substance,” the book said, “officials were informed the powder was ordinary baking flour marking a trail” for a running event.

* Actor Charlie Sheen paid $5,000 one night to buy all the seats in a section behind the left-field fence at then-Anaheim Stadium so he could catch a home run without any interference. “I didn’t want to crawl over the paying public,” he said. “I wanted to avoid the violence.” Alas, Charlie struck out, with no home runs coming his way.

TRUCKER TALES: After my latest on-the-road yarn, Bill Keene, the longtime L.A. newsman, wrote “of a supposed happening years ago on the Golden State Freeway. A trucker was seen frantically banging his baseball bat against a semitrailer rig loaded with chickens, all highly disturbed and flying about.

“When asked by a California Highway Patrol officer why he was clubbing the truck, the driver was nothing if not honest. Noting that the weigh station was only half a mile ahead, the driver admitted to having eight tons of birds on a four-ton truck and was trying to keep half of them in the air, to lighten the load.”

miscelLAny

In the “Massage” ads of his local paper, Art Heinrich of Santa Barbara noticed an item that began, “MEN KNEADED--Call Frank. . . “ Added Heinrich: “It would appear that Frank is the type of boss who is accustomed to making employees knuckle under.”