This Urban Folk Tale Is Parked Far From Reality

An urban folk tale making the e-mail rounds concerns an elderly shopper who returns to her car in a Southland parking lot and finds four men inside. She draws a handgun from her purse, screaming that she “knows how to use it” and “will if required” and that they better “get the hell out of the car.” The men flee.

The men don’t stop running until they reach a police station, where they report they’ve been carjacked by a crazed grandmother.

Back at the parking lot, the lady has discovered that her key won’t fit into the ignition. Then she notices that a nearly identical model--her car, in fact--is parked a few spaces away.

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OR MAYBE IT’S A DISH AT HIS HOG’S BREATH INN: The makers of the new Clint Eastwood movie, “True Crime,” include in their newspaper ads a blurb from a critic who calls it “a true pot-boiler.” Didn’t that description used to be an insult (when standards were a bit higher)?

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POETRY FANS IN MOTION: San Francisco poet laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti spoke in the annex of the L.A. County Museum of Art the other night. Writer Hank Rosenfeld, who attended, said Ferlinghetti was marvelous, but that there were several protests over the meager seating capacity. Many spectators had to be ushered into a second room of the annex (the old May Co. building) to watch the poet via television.

Afterward, Rosenfeld dashed off this poem:

LACMA held a night

to hear L. Ferlinghetti

Only VIPS fit their room

though we all love his poetry

Dig, a simple solution:

Hold Ferli at the Getty!

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OR HE COULD TELECOMMUTE: Was Ferlinghetti’s visit here a response to my search for a poet laureate for L.A.? Hmmm. Maybe he could hold the L.A. post on weekends.

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COLD PROPERTIES: For this column’s special real estate section (see accompanying), Raul Soza photographed a suite deal, Leo Campbell found a $595,000 home that doesn’t even have a whole bedroom, and Jim Moore came upon a listing with a somewhat loose translation of cul-de-sac.

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ANCIENT VS. MODERN RUINS: One of the local factions trying to land a pro football franchise in L.A. calls itself the New Coliseum Group. Shouldn’t that be New, New Coliseum? Last time I checked, Rome had one that had been around slightly longer than L.A.’s 75-year-old stadium.

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TRAVELER’S ADVISORY: Marc Zeidler was driving on the Santa Monica Freeway when he noticed a gas station sign whose first letter was burned out, so that it read HELL, which often as not is an accurate description of driving on the Santa Monica Freeway.

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SPACEY: Bill Noble received a corrected version of a membership card to a professional society along with a letter that contained an ironic typo. The note said: “Please replace this card with the incorrect one.” OK, anybody can make a mistake. But Noble points out this is a professional aerospace society, you know, the kind that is full of rocket scientists.

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TEN YEARS AGO: It wasn’t quite the Lincoln-Douglas debate. But what do you expect at an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting?

Member Pete Schabarum charged that colleague Deane Dana had switched positions and voted against him on one issue after “some guy calls you up this morning and says, ‘Holy Cow, dabba dabba dabba doo.’ ”

Retorted Dana: “Some people call you up and dabba dabba doo.”

Speaking of poet laureates. . . .

miscelLAny:

In “Oscar to Oscar,” his one-man comedy, actor Tom Dugan relates how he twice sneaked into Academy Awards shows. Dugan performs at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Hollywood on Mondays only (leaving him time to test Oscar security Sunday). The pinnacle of his career? He says it was eating Paul Newman’s dinner at the 1995 post-Oscars Governors’ Ball.

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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 L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.