If the Shoe Fits, You’re Busted

In its year-end wrap-up of unusual crimes, the city of Paramount’s newsletter recounted the time a resident caught a man breaking into his car. They tussled and the would-be thief ran off. Officers corralled a one-shoed suspect running through a neighborhood and took him back to the scene. Not only did the suspect fit the description, but the one shoe he was wearing matched the one the victim was holding.

UNREAL ESTATE: I’ll let you look over today’s properties first (see accompanying).

OK. Just when you think you’ve heard every gambit, along comes a new one. Jack Nelson Soll of West L.A. saw a “For Sale” sign in which the buyer also gains possession of the seller.

Larry and Judy Johnson of Cherry Valley spotted a listing that’s apparently intended for those hoping to strike it rich.

Moving into commercial real estate, Dave Bedell spotted a dueling-signs situation at a Kmart.

And Shirley Serna of Covina identified an Unidentified Flying Object Center as a prop in the TV series “Roswell.”

HONORS OF A SORT: The 2000 political campaign sparked a discussion of President Nixon’s “enemies list” at a recent gathering of retired local newspaper types. Jerry Clark, who edits the group’s publication, said that “when former Times political writer Richard Bergholz remembered he was No. 190, former Times national editor Ed Guthman said from the other side of the room, “He [Nixon] must have really liked you, Bergholz. I was No. 3.”

YOU THINK RAIDERS FANS ARE UNRULY . . . An article titled “Say What?” in Pomona College’s alumni magazine discusses colorful terms the students have used over the years--from “tangle” (a school dance) and “bloogling” (necking) to “stacking” (emptying a student’s room of its furniture and replacing it with stacks of newspapers).

Then there’ “chirping,” a spectator gesture at athletic events that consists of “lifting two fingers of the right hand, as if making the ‘quotations’ sign, and swinging the fingers down to simulate a bird’s pecking at something.”

The publication said this movement is meant to “intimidate” opposing teams.

I don’t know. I don’t think it’s nearly as intimidating as this chant of Caltech students:

Secant, cosine, tangent, sine,

Logarithm, logarithm,

hyperbolic sine.

3-point-1-4-1-5-9,

Slipstick, slide rule,

TECH! TECH! TECH!

miscelLAny:

Dec. 31 may be last call for the Short Stop, a Sunset Boulevard bar. But its denizens know the cop hangout will live on in the novels of Joseph Wambaugh, though under an alias.

In “Delta Star” (1983), the Short Stop is referred to as “the House of Misery . . . dark, as every cops’ bar must be (they don’t want to see too much when they’re off duty),” with a dance floor “exactly the size of three coffins.”

In one vivid scene, an inebriated character named Ludwig, who has “goat-like eyes” of amber yellow, jumps atop a pool table and refuses to surrender it.

Ludwig is a police dog.