When All Else Fails, Head for the Valley

The Wall Street Journal recently warned its readers to “avoid Los Angeles” during the Democratic convention “unless you’re prepared to stay in the boonies or spend serious cash.” The newspaper added there were rooms available “if you don’t mind spending nights in ‘The Valley.’ ”

More of that Eastern snobbery. Who wouldn’t want to spend nights in “The Valley”? (I’ve never done so myself, but I understand it can be quite enjoyable.)

THE VIEW FROM THE SOUTH: San Diego, meanwhile, is trying to woo Angelenos with freeway billboards that say “Support Plastic Surgery. Deepen Your Laugh Lines.” No, I don’t quite get the message either, San Diego never having struck me as a barrel of laughs. But the pitch is still preferable to that city’s last billboard campaign, which littered Southern California freeways with the theme, “Don’t Hate Us Because We’re Beautiful.”

BUGGED: No one was deepening their laugh lines at one table in a Palm Springs-area restaurant recently. Rich Molony, of San Pedro, sent along a copy of the bill, which was reduced because of some unexpected dinner companions (see accompanying).

HOPEFULLY, IT HAS SINCE BEEN IRONED: Arline Miller, of Thousand Oaks, noticed a wedding dress ad containing some intimate details that I really didn’t need to know (see accompanying).

LETTER IMPERFECT: Carla King, of L.A., wondered about the “standards” of one group of teachers (see accompanying).

OOH L.A. L.A.: While on vacation I discovered the Internet Movie Base (www.us.imdb.com), where I found some lines of film dialogue confirming what a helluva town L.A. is:

* “Hell does not always look like hell. On a good day, it can look a lot like L.A.” (“Playing God”)

* “Nope, it isn’t hell either. Actually, there is no hell. Although I hear Los Angeles is getting pretty close.” (“Defending Your Life”)

* “Making a left turn in L.A. is one of the harder things you’ll learn in life.” (“Grand Canyon”)

* “ ‘I’ll think about it’ means nothing in L.A.” (“Get Shorty”)

* “Oh, please! This is Pasadena. We do not arrest the wrong person. That’s L.A.!” (“The Player”)

The prescient “Player” opened way back in 1992, by the way.

SPACEY FAN: The death of actor Alec Guinness reminded me of a story about the time he was supposedly approached by a woman and her son in public. The woman told Guinness that her boy had sat through something like 75 showings of “Star Wars” (in which Guinness played Obi-Wan Kenobi). She asked the actor if he had any advice for the boy. The no-nonsense Guinness leaned down to the youngster and intoned, very slowly, ‘Never . . . see . . . it . . . again,’ ” then moved on.

miscelLAny:

In the everyone’s-a-critic department, my colleague Lori Pike reports the following from the Catholic Worker’s Hospitality Kitchen for the homeless in downtown L.A.: A man in the lunch line shouted, “Has anyone seen ‘The Patriot’? Bunch of us saw it last night. FINALLY, Mel Gibson’s got himself another good movie.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.