For Visiting Actor, That’s the Ticket

Actor J. Marvin Campbell of L.A. sent along a copy of a speeding ticket he received on a trip to his home state of Arkansas. After finding out what Campbell did for a living, the officer mentioned that he was a cousin of TV producer Harry Thomason (“Designing Women,” etc.), better known as President Bill Clinton’s good friend. As an Arkansan, Campbell found it ironic that he can be ticketed by a producer’s cousin in Arkansas, while in Los Angeles he has “yet to get to read for a single one of [Thomason’s] projects. . . . I can’t seem to get arrested in this town.”

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DOES THE MTA KNOW ABOUT THIS? Gary Glasser of Burbank observed that a visitor might think that Glendale had quietly constructed its own subway system (see photo). Actually, the sign on Glendale Boulevard refers to a pedestrian underpass.

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PESTS CAN BE SUCH A PROBLEM: Marvin Haas noticed a warning intended to keep away two types of intruders at a country club in Banning (see photo). The question is, would either type obey?

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WHERE’S BARNEY FIFE WHEN YOU NEED HIM?: Gary Noyes of West L.A. saw a report in the El Segundo Herald’s police blotter about a burglary of an auto in which the only thing taken was “a ceramic bobbing head dog . . . valued at $20.”

Noyes noted that El Segundo has compared itself in billboard ads to the peaceful town of Mayberry in TV’s “Andy Griffith Show.” But, he added, “things have to get REAL boring to steal a bobbing head dog. And have the owner report it to the police.”

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DOES POMONA KNOW ABOUT THIS? “I can understand that, as a journalist, you would be more concerned with the incongruities of language that can be seen and/or read,” wrote Gary Heilsberg of Montclair. “But I’m a speech teacher and love the vagaries of oral communication. For instance, I received a call urging me to support a candidate who wanted to represent the people of the Inland ‘Embryo’ and who had served on the ‘Panama’ City Council.”

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ROTTEN MOVIE LINES: In asking for submissions of the worst that Hollywood has to offer, I realized that bad dialogue is usually forgotten, unlike, say, the witty exchanges in “Casablanca.” Nevertheless, a few clunkers have arrived on this columnist’s desk:

Robert Sauter of Claremont nominates a line by Tony Curtis as a Bronx-accented Cossack in medieval times who boasts in “Taras Bulba,” “Yondah lies da castle of my faddah.”

Another reader recalls John Wayne as Genghis Khan--really--telling a beautiful young woman in his inimitable accent, “Yore beu-tee-ful in yore wrath.” (At least, he didn’t address her as “Pilgrim.”)

And I might add Keanu Reeves’ reaction when he confronts the Grim Reaper in “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”: “How’s it hanging, Death?”

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On the subject of motorist excuses to police, Ken Hyams of Cathedral City recalls when he was working as a reservist and “the officer I was riding with stopped a speeding vehicle. The driver said she was a doctor on an emergency call. It was 10 p.m. He asked to see some I.D. and then asked what kind of a doctor she was. A chiropodist, she said.” That cop-out didn’t work.

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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.