Every Teacher Has Her Day
Teacher Appreciation Day in Long Beach is Wednesday and I’m guessing that few instructors will receive a more tender tribute than the one that a kindergartner wrote for Irl Noble.
The 5-year-old said: “I love Mrs. Noble more than I love dogs.”
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BACKGROUND CHECK: Noble, a teacher at Fremont Elementary School, talked to the girl’s mother afterward, by the way. “She told me that her daughter really, really does like dogs,” Noble said with a laugh.
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BY COMPARISON, “DEAR OCCUPANT” IS A COMPLIMENT: Among the odd addresses on junk mail received by Only in L.A. readers (see accompanying) were:
* “Live Sample--Do Not Mail” (fortunately, nothing dangerous was inside).
* “Mrs. Unknown Offenbacker” (contributed by her daughter, Valerie Deverman of Lakewood).
And, finally,
* “Dr. S. Thompson,” along with a seemingly uncomplimentary adjective. (Sent by Susan Tellem, who said that while Thompson is her married name, “I am not a doctor--and I’m not dumb.”)
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IN L.A., EVERY STORY HAS A DRIVING ANGLE . . . even basketball playoff games. After a collision between the Lakers’ Rick Fox and the Houston Rockets’ Antoine Carr during a game Sunday at the Forum, NBC broadcaster Bob Costas quipped that usually, “when a fox is hit by a car, it’s road kill.”
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MOVING DOWN THE FREEWAY: You may recall that when he was trying to land an NFL franchise in Carson, entertainment mogul Michael Ovitz declared that one of the selling points of the city was that it was 10 minutes from downtown.
Maybe when the Harbor Freeway adds a bullet train.
Now, a New York Times article says that Ovitz “wanted to build a stadium in Carson, a two-hour drive from West Los Angeles.”
Sure, the 405 can be horribly slow but. . . .
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THEN, AGAIN. . . . In Elmore Leonard’s crime novel “Be Cool,” a character says:”Sheryl Crow left Missouri in a beat-up car, bound for L.A. to make it as a singer. She got there, found herself on the 405 during the peak of rush hour and freaked. ‘What am I doing here?’ ”
If so, she knows how every other commuter feels.
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EASY FOR THEM TO SAY: Marty Rauch of West L.A. bought some “body smoothing oil” and noticed this warning on the package:
“CAUTION: Use common sense. Avoid eye contact; if eye contact occurs, rinse well with water. If skin irritation occurs, discontinue use.”
Then came this paragraph:
“YOU SHOULD KNOW: Cypress Oil is known to help with absent-mindedness and lack of concentration.”
Luckily, Rauch isn’t absent-minded or suffering from a lack of concentration, or she might have made eye contact with the oil.
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A COMPELLING REASON: A colleague overheard two women talking in a Santa Monica restaurant.
No. 1: “I heard you were going to be a nun.”
No. 2: “Yes, I was.”
No. 1: “Were you really?”
No. 2: “Yes, I was serious.”
No. 1: “What stopped you?”
No. 2: “Sex.”
miscelLAny:
The city of Paramount’s newsletter says a sheriff’s deputy responded to a call about a naked man playing cards in a doughnut shop. The deputy later reported that he had taken into custody an individual “who was not playing with a full deck.”