Poet Who’d Put the Heat on City Hall
Some readers have suggested that the late poet-novelist Charles Bukowski, the Bard of San Pedro, should be installed by the City Council as L.A.’s poet laureate, ending this column’s effort to fill that position.
In “Betting on the Muse,” Bukowski wrote:
the pleasures of the damned
are limited to brief moments
of happiness:
like the eyes in the look of a dog,
like a square of wax,
like a fire taking the city hall. . . .
Hmmm. Not sure the City Council would see the humor in that.
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NEXT UP: OK, let’s try this 17-line submission from Dianne Bates of Venice:
I miss L.A. like I miss
That man last night. . . .
Whoa! We’d better cut that one off right here.
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BATHROOM HUMOR: In West L.A., Richard Harer of Woodland Hills observed what appeared to be a strange offer to passersby (see photo).
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HOME IMPROVEMENT: This column recently published a “for sale” notice of “Chip and Dale” furniture. I don’t know much about home decor and was wondering if there were any other similar designer names. Sure enough, Ann Luke of Sierra Madre saw an ad mentioning some “Chester Drawers” items (see accompanying).
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L.A. TRIVIATA: To get you in the mood for baseball season, here’s a little quiz:
Can you tell me what the Redondo Beach Wharf Rats, Long Beach Sand Crabs, Pasadena Silk Sox, Santa Ana Yellow Sox and L.A. Maiers had in common?
They were members of the Southern California Trolley League in 1910, says writer Jay Berman. This was minor league ball, there being no major league teams out here then.
For the Wharf Rats’ home opener against the Maiers, Berman writes, a Redondo Beach paper promised a big celebration, including the promise “that one civic leader would bring his goat, apparently an added inducement.”
Alas, the league folded soon afterward due to lack of interest. Perhaps the goat’s agent prevented it from attending.
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LOW CRIMES: It sounds like it was another wild week in Cypress. The Los Alamitos News-Enterprise carried this police log item from that city:
“Lincoln Avenue, 5600 block, 3:11 p.m.--Several people were reportedly writing their names in the freshly poured concrete.”
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GOT WATER? Sparkletts, the official bottled water provider of the L.A. Marathon, is donating 53,000 gallons of the stuff to quench the thirsts of the 20,000 runners in Sunday’s race. Don’t know how local runners who use Perrier and Evian will manage.
miscelLAny:
L.A. Cacophony, a group of jokesters who like to stage performance art spectacles, will station members on the marathon route in Silver Lake, holding signs that say, “Why Try?” “Just Stop” and “Free Doughnuts.”
A Cacophony spokesman said: “Some people just don’t get it, and we may be the ones.”
Wonder if any of them will receive Sparkletts showers.
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 L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.