Package Mix-Up Gives More Giddyap

Expecting a battery pack for some audiovisual equipment, a Paramount city worker opened a package and found instead bundles of thin metal sticks.

The accompanying instructions indicated that “instead of our battery, we got 3-foot-long horse swabs for taking cultures from broodmares,” according to the city’s newsletter. “God knows where our battery ended up! Poor Trigger!”

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COUNTDOWN: Here’s the rest of the list of the top 10 movie lines of all time, as determined recently by a group of critics:

4. “I’ll be back.” (Arnold Schwarzenegger, “The Terminator”)

3. “It’s not the men in your life that counts. It’s the life in your men.” (Mae West, “I’m No Angel”)

2. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” (Humphrey Bogart, “Casablanca”)

And the winner:

1. “Bond--James Bond.” (Sean Connery, “Dr. No”)

Schwarzenegger’s line, to me, seems eminently forgettable, and several other famous snippets of dialogue inexplicably were overlooked for the list.

I can’t think of any others but I’m sure that you readers can.

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GO AHEAD--MAKE MY DAY: Thanks to the retired journalist who wrote to say he liked this column but added, “in my day, newspapermen had to go out and get their own stories. Guess times have changed.”

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WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE: As part of Only in L.A.’s exclusive election day coverage, I’m publishing some file art, including a photo of a sign that urged people to vote “hear,” another that seemed to confirm what you always suspected about Congress and one on a controversial bridge issue (see photos).

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I COULDA BEEN A CONTENDAH: Tryouts for the exalted position of Doo Dah Queen will be held Wednesday in Pasadena--and it’s always heartening to see applicants who have respect for the parade’s tradition. Last year, for instance, the winning entry--a mother and daughter who came as Siamese twins--were wrapped in pink garbage bags while their ladies in waiting wore the blue garbage variety. “Hey, they were scented,” someone in the royal court--I forget who--told the Pasadena Weekly.

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FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS--IT’S GOING TO BE A BUMPY NIGHT: Pat Mooney says the most appropriately located automotive garage is the one on Lemon Street in Orange.

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MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU: L.A.’s Downtown News put out a call for Halloween-themed haikus and received hundreds of the three-line, 17-syllable poems.

Here are three of my favorites:

* Walt Disney Hall’s ghost/is dancing on parking lot/waiting for building (Kathleen Sorci)

* The Raiders want back/to me that’s scarier than/when I heard they left (Wikon Quon)

* Haunted train station/blue line, red line, or is it/the end of the line (Debbie Mercado)

miscelLAny:

The voice mail for the Las Virgenes Unified School District advises callers to dial 0 or 444 “to speak to a human being during business hours.” E.T., phone home!

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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. Here’s looking at you, kid. . . .