City Hall Posts a Compost Boast
“L.A.’s Own Compost Used Here,” brags a sign in a flower garden at City Hall. We’ve all known that City Hall manufactured an abundance of waste. Now it looks like the folks there have found a way to recycle it.
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UNUSUAL GOLF ACCESSORY: An ad in a local weekly listed some equipment, as well as fuel, for hackers (see accompanying). Die-hard fans may recall that Al Geiberger used to carry a sandwich (as well as a sand wedge) around the course on the PGA Tour. But I don’t believe he bought his cold cuts through classified ads.
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FLOWER POWER: “Another Life,” Michael Korda’s memoir about the publishing biz, reveals that before actress Joan Crawford began one book tour she wrote Simon & Schuster that in each hotel she stayed she would require “flowers in each room, in pastel colors (no white flowers!).”
Why the hang-up about white? Korda’s aunt, actress Merle Oberon, told him, “In Hollywood, white flowers are for funerals.”
Which explains the phone call Korda received in the middle of night from Crawford, in which she uttered the classic line: “I’m in Cleveland. And there are white flowers in my room!”
Korda says Crawford’s voice that night contained “the same level of anger and barely controlled hysteria that I was to hear many years later when I took a call from an unhappy Faye Dunaway, who actually played an angry Joan Crawford in ‘Mommie Dearest.’ ”
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ANGELENOS ON THE ROAD: While visiting the Barker Dam area of Joshua Tree National Park, Steve Johnson of L.A. noticed a sign warning visitors not to swim through the sand (see photo).
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AS IF THE DODGERS’ SLOW START ISN’T BAD ENOUGH . . . : Steven Dorfman sent along a London newspaper’s article that delivered this insult to a Dodger great in the course of an article about Hollywood Boulevard:
“Bronze stars commemorate many of the enduringly great: Errol Flynn, Ingrid Bergman, Danny Kaye, and some of the enduringly obscure . . . Vin Scully, Ferlin Husky, Tichi Wilkerson-Kassel, the Four Step brothers.”
Not that Vin needs defending, but don’t forget that it was the English who thought Benny Hill and Mr. Bean were great entertainers.
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EARTHLY MENACE: After the opening of the new “Star Wars” movie (I don’t have room to mention its full title), Lisa MacEwan took a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard. Gone were the fans who had waited in line on the street for days. Their legacy? “Never have I seen such littering--pizza boxes, Big Mac wrappers, beer bottles, trash everywhere,” MacEwan said. “Don’t these people realize they’re still in this galaxy?”
I just hope they didn’t litter Ferlin Husky’s star.
miscelLAny:
L.A. Police Chief Bernard Parks is nowhere to be found on People Magazine’s 1999 list of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World.” You’ll recall that the chief made the 1998 rankings (after the LAPD checked to make sure that the honor wasn’t a joke). Parks, by the way, isn’t the only notable who failed to repeat on this year’s list. Also dropped: Leonardo DiCaprio.
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.
