Imagine Webster With a Spell Checker

The California League of Conservation Voters is an environmentalist group, so it was amused at the way the name of spokesman Randy Jurado Ertll was misspelled in one local newspaper.

It came out as Randy “Guard Earth.”

(Yes, apparently someone ran Jurado Ertll through a spell-check system, which gave “Guard Earth” as the correct spelling.)

*

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Harry Salit of Pasadena found a couple of adjoining businesses that are ideally located in case you have taxes or tacos, or both, on your mind. (see photo).

*

LETTER IMPERFECT: Cindy Yan of El Monte points out that a spell-check system obviously was not used for the “landscaping” portion of a sign on the San Bernardino Freeway (see photo).

*

WHAT THE NEIGHBORS ARE SAYING: San Diego can feel like enemy country to visiting Angelenos--especially since the Dodgers lured away star Padres pitcher Kevin Brown with a $105-million contract.

On our family vacation there, I heard one sportscaster on the local TV news say of the Dodgers, “I hate their guts.”

Another station accompanied tape of Brown pitching with the song “Devil With the Blue Dress.” Then, because Brown performed miserably in his debut in L.A., the station mocked the Dodgers’ deal in a segment titled, “What Were They Thinking?” Added a sportscaster, “What are they ever thinking in Los Angeles?”

Well, probably not about San Diego. . . .

*

LEGO LAW: Nor can the L.A. area seem to buy a break in nearby Carlsbad.

I mentioned earlier that California Legoland depicts a cop chasing a suspect across the roof of a Beverly Hills mansion in its miniature model of Southern California. Two police cars are parked outside.

Upon visiting Legoland, I noticed that one block away from the rooftop pursuit, a sports car is pulled over while a cop confronts the driver. The L.A. area seems to be the only scene of police activity occurring in Legoland’s re-creation of the nation’s major cities.

*

L.A.’S CULTURAL INFLUENCE: One San Diego attraction my family did not visit was the Museum of Death, which proudly advertised its collection of “life-size execution devices, extremely graphic photos & videos, artwork by notorious killers, mortician tools and coffin & body bag collection. . . .”

The San Diego newspaper that carried the ad pointed out that the museum was started by two artists from L.A.

*

EAT YOUR HEART OUT, SAN DIEGO: Is Southern California becoming Arkansas West, or what? First, Clinton litigant Paula Jones moved to Long Beach. Then First Brother Roger Clinton and juror favorite Susan McDougal took up residence (separately) in Redondo Beach. And, of course, there have long been rumors of Hollywood types chipping in to buy a post-presidential house in Pacific Palisades for Bill Clinton (and his wife, of course).

miscelLAny:

Florida has long seemed like a copy of Southern California, with its versions of Disneyland, Universal Studios, etc. But now Palm Beach Post reporter Eliot Kleinberg has gone too far. Ruth Santiago-Yelland sent along a clipping in which Kleinberg, the author of “Weird Florida,” says, “Florida is the home of more nuttiness per square mile than any place on earth--and we dare the world to prove us wrong.” Florida, you can’t even allow L.A. to be the king of nuttiness?

*

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.