Statehood Push Next for Valley?

If you dial the Acapulco restaurant chain’s 800 number for the “location nearest you,” you will be given options for San Diego County, for Orange County and, oh, yes, you can press 3 “for San Fernando County.”

San Fernando County? Cityhood wasn’t enough? I guess Valleyites wanted the whole enchilada.

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L.A. VERSE: The Valley’s pro-secession group has even taken over this column’s contest in which readers were invited to write a poem mentioning the streets from Main to Figueroa in order.

Anthony Combs of North Hollywood sent this clever argument:

“Valley Vote’s Main beefs Spring from the Broad way they’re ignored by the folks from over the Hill; and wouldn’t it be nice if a new charter offered an Olive branch in the Grand Hope that peace will again Flower from San Fernando to Figueroa.”

Combs admitted the possibility that his poem might “lead to the confusing relocation of San Fernando Road to downtown.”

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WHEN YOU CAN’T TERMINATE . . . “My wife and I just received these bizarre escrow instructions,” writes Ramon Brown of Ojai (see accompanying). “Apparently the escrow file does not self-destruct a la ‘Mission Impossible.’ Rather, we have to termite (eat?) them.”

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SPEAKING OF LITTLE VISITORS: Lee Martin noticed an apartment in Beaumont that carries a name that looks better than it sounds (see photo).

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EASY FOR HER TO SAY: Iver Shube of L.A. received a letter from an agent who stated the name of her firm, then detailed her fine qualities this way:

“Unlike the other professional members of the company, as a tyro, I’d like to introduce myself to be the honest and tenacious agent whom you’ve been looking for all the time, instead of telling you that I’ve got little knowledge and experience. . . . As a [sic] enthusiastic and preoccupied characterized person, I’d like to offer you my commitment and service. . . .”

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ECCENTRIC SHRINES: Locals mentioned in Saul Rubin’s new book, “Offbeat Museums,” include the International Banana Museum (Altadena), the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Culver City) and the Mini-Cake Museum (Pasadena).

There’s also the Museum of Death, housed in a former mortuary in San Diego, with exhibits that include an electric chair, a guillotine and a coffin theater showing “actual footage of executions and deaths” on a coffin lining that acts as the screen.

Considering L.A.’s reputation for the unusual, it borders on disgraceful that this city can lay claim to just three of the 50 shrines in the book. But it didn’t have to be that way.

The Liberace Museum (Las Vegas) was originally in the entertainer’s Hollywood Hills mansion but “neighborhood complaints forced [its] closure.”

The Exotic World Burlesque Hall of Fame, immortalizing such artists as Brandy Boom Boom, Rita Atlanta and Sheri Champagne in Helendale, Calif., was originally in San Pedro. Perhaps if founder Jennie Lee had received more community support. Ditto for the UFO and Bigfoot Museum of Venice, which vanished.

Can it be any wonder that L.A. was overlooked when it came time to establish the Barney Smith Toilet Seat Art Museum (San Antonio), the American Sanitary Plumbing Museum (Worcester, Mass.) and the Cockroach Hall of Fame (Plano, Texas)?

Of course, there’s still no Termite Hall of Fame.

miscelLAny:

Bill Jolly sent along an excerpt from a veterinarian’s newsletter, which told how a pet owner had saved a dog “from choking to death on a bone he had dug up by performing the Heimlich maneuver.” You have to admire a pet owner who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.