Forget the Fraud, Call the Fashion Police

Lest you doubt for one moment that Southern California is a colorful place, the Seal Beach Sun’s police blotter carried this item:

“Bank employees called in to report that a man with blue fingernails driving a red Toyota had tried to take money out of an account that had fraudulent activity on it.”

LETTER IMPERFECT: Briana McCall of Van Nuys found a typo on a sign that created an insightful pun about the “cost” of public works projects (see photo).

A POLL WITH MANY UNDECIDEDS: On a California desert road, Randy Ruger of North Hollywood came upon an impromptu “trust” ballot that had run out of nominees (see photo). Ruger took the shot before the recent national conventions, not that that means anything.

ONLY IN THE VALLEY: In a bloopers section on the MediaNews Web site www.Poynter.org, Stephen Lawton recalled a humorous linkage of headlines when he was on the staff of L.A. Valley College’s newspaper a quarter-century ago.

Lawton (now editor-in-chief of MicroTimes) had written an article “about a new mannequin that was acquired by the nursing department. It was designed to be either gender, based on the parts the student chose to use.”

Another reporter had written an article about cafeteria food.

The stories ran side by side. The headlines appeared to run together to make this startling statement:

Students’ Appetites Satisfied Bisexual Mannequin Comes to Valley.

BUT NOBODY’S PERFECT: Especially not me. The item here about the theft of a papier-mache monster from a porch should have been credited to the Westsider, which is owned by the L.A. Independent Newspaper Group.

BUMMED OUT: Retired Times staffer Charles Hillinger, who specialized in profiling eccentrics with such nicknames as Seldom Seen Slim, Walking George and Shopping Cart Dougherty, has collected his engaging stories in the book “California Characters: An Array of Amazing People.”

One of his favorite wanderers was Clint Wescott, a bearded, floppy-hatted, self-described bum who lived under a 4th Street overpass in downtown L.A.

“I just can’t stand sleeping indoors under blankets,” Wescott said. “I feel penned in like an animal.’

After Hillinger wrote about him, the bum was threatened with prosperity--it was revealed he had $20,000 in a forgotten bank account back East. Though the rest of his funds amounted to precisely 44 cents, he refused the windfall, explaining, “I’m not ready for the responsibility.”

Wescott, then 51, was deluged with marriage proposals as well as outright pleas for the money from inventors, ministers and a man who offered to send him cigarettes every month.

He died 25 years later in 1992, still refusing the money. His relatives, Hillinger wrote, are still involved in a lawsuit over who should get it.

miscelLAny:

The discussion here of a certain utility’s new advertising campaign prompted Lee Larssen to write: “How can you possibly say that the DWP supplies the power to Dodger Stadium? Aside from Sheffield and Karros, there IS no power in Dodger Stadium.”

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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.