L.A.: The Place to Be if You Have to Be Stuck Someplace

At an airport in a small Scottish town, Joseph Hernandez noticed a couple who had just made the last call for the day’s final flight to London. Hernandez heard the man say, “Imagine getting stuck in this place all night until the next flight. There’s nothing to do here.” His partner, speaking in an English accent, added, “Indeed--it’s not like this is Los Angeles.”

She pronounced it Los “Angeleeze,” but we’ll accept the compliment anyway.

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MEANWHILE, IN ENGLAND . . . : Julie Mazur, visiting London, saw a business called “California Hand Car Wash & Valeting Centre.” I knew that some L.A. valets parked diners’ cars far from the restaurant, but I guess I had no idea how far away.

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BACK IN THE STATES: Paula Van Gelder of L.A. spotted a sign citing a rare section of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, under which only individuals named Phil or Bill may park (see photo).

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DROP-DEAD BARGAINS: Arlene Bernholtz of Calabasas came upon a mini-mall in Van Nuys that, she notes, “gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘Shop until you drop’ ” (see photo).

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BREAKING THE VALLEY’S HEART: Did you see where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were given a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame? Good thing the shrine is not located on a certain boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. Petty, you may recall, wrote these lyrics in “Free Falling”:

It’s a long day living in Reseda.

There’s a freeway running through the yard.

All the vampires walking through the Valley

Move west down Ventura Boulevard.

(I wonder if the vampires are heading for that casket shop in Van Nuys.)

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ME CHEETAH, YOU TARZAN: Tidbits about Hollywood’s treatment of the “Tarzan” novels, as told in John Taliaferro’s biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the ape-man’s creator:

* For the 1918 premiere of “Tarzan of the Apes,” the movie’s publicist had a man dressed as an ape attempt to register at New York’s Knickerbocker Hotel.

* Burroughs considered suing Universal over the 1920s serial “Tarzan the Mighty” because the studio had Tarzan break up with Jane.

* It’s a myth that the loinclothed one said, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” In “Tarzan the Ape Man” (1932), star Johnny Weissmuller said, “Jane . . . Tarzan. Jane . . . Tarzan. Jane . . . Tarzan.” (I guess that’s the speech he used to convince her to make up with him.)

* During the filming of a string of Tarzan movies, Cheetah, a female chimpanzee with sharp teeth, was jealous of Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane) as a rival for Tarzan’s attentions. “I always had the same average,” the actress later recalled. “One fresh bite, one about half-healed and one scar.”

* Weissmuller’s eerie Tarzan yell was his own. But, as a publicity gimmick, the studio said that it was a blend of his voice, “a hyena’s howl played backward, a camel’s bleat, the plucking of a violin and a soprano’s high C.”

* When Weissmuller died in 1984, a tape of his Tarzan yell was played at his funeral.

miscelLAny:

The Hotel Bel-Air garnered good reviews from a Wall Street Journal reporter who sampled $500-per-night accommodations around the nation. Most important, it passed the “hair in the bathtub” test. (There was none.) Nor was any found in the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, the only other California hotel visited. But the reporter noticed telltale strands at others, including the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. Hope that hotel doesn’t have to call on the White House plumbers.

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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.