Is Specialty of House Mud Pie?

One of the most ironic signs of this El Nino season was spotted by Randy Scott Wong of L.A. during a sojourn into Orange County a while back. Wong came across a notice posted at a Mission Viejo restaurant that said, “Closed Due to Flood.”

The name of the restaurant:

El Nino.

*

WHICH REMINDS ME: Construction of that new attraction at Raging Waters in San Dimas was held up several months ago because of a series of downpours. Its name: El Nino--The Ride. (I’ll take a rain check.)

*

INDOMITABLE: Val Rodriguez--schoolteacher, soccer coach, writer--has long been Only in L.A.’s Signal Hill Bureau Chief. Recently, Rodriguez suffered a slight stroke. I’m happy to say he’s on the mend. And what did he do while staying in Kaiser Hospital in Harbor City? Why, he snapped a picture of a humorous notice for this column, of course (see photo). The least I can do is promote him to Long Beach Bureau Chief.

*

WEIGHTY STUFF: John Sherwood of Topanga observed a marquee for a store that seems to offer Stone Age computers (see photo).

*

HONESTY IN ADVERTISING: Dakota June Elliott--whose name alone is worth an item--was fascinated by an ad in an L.A. weekly for a car that sounds delightful, if you can just get the heap moving (see accompanying) . . .

*

LIST OF THE DAY: Some trivia from Gayot’s guidebook, “The Best of Los Angeles and Southern California”:

* Pom D’Api of Beverly Hills has a line of kids’ shoes called Smellies (they are fruit-scented).

* The Fletcher Jones Mercedes dealership in Newport Beach has a putting green for customers (personally, I think a punching bag would be a more suitable outlet for car buyers).

* One of the oldest structures in L.A. is the 600-year-old pagoda at Yamashiro, the landmark restaurant above Hollywood.

* The Tam O’Shanter Inn on Los Feliz Boulevard opened in 1922 as one of the first drive-ins in the nation. You have to park your chariot and go inside to eat now.

* Ghost Expeditions, a business housed in the old Vogue Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, offers such excursions as “The Overnight,” where you can sack out “at a property thought to be active with paranormal phenomena.” The editors say that the old Vogue itself is currently haunted by nine guests, one less than the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

* The Ackermansion, the Hollywood Hills estate owned by science fiction author Forrest Ackerman, has a collection of 300,000 pieces of Hollywood memorabilia, including Bela Lugosi’s Dracula cape and one of the Martian machines that leveled L.A. in “War of the Worlds.” It’s open free to the public by appointment (213) MOON-FAN.

*

GRAVE EXPLANATION: By the way, the “Best of Los Angeles” guide says that “there’s a cemetery in the basement” of the Ackermansion. That isn’t literally true, Ackerman hastened to say when I phoned him. Of course, items in the basement do include a gravestone and a coffin used in the movies.

But nothing really grisly, like a pair of old Smellies.

MiscelLAny:

A bumper sticker on a truck cruising down the Santa Ana Freeway said: “Am I a safe and courteous driver? If so please call. . . . “ Naturally, it didn’t say what to do if the driver was not courteous.

*

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.