Tips for Foiling the Repo Man: Lie Down or Keep Driving

In the Culver City News, Jack Nelson spotted a police log item about a resident who saw a repo man attempting to drive his car out of his driveway. The resident lay “in the driveway in front of the vehicle from 4:30 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. to block the repo man.” Then the cops arrived to postpone the repo.

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TRANSITIONS R US: That’s one of the strangest repo stories I’ve heard since 1992, when KCBS Channel 2 news reported a dispute between a woman and American Honda Finance over the seizure of her car by repo men . . . while she was driving on the Ventura Freeway. (She was persuaded to move to the side of the roadway.)

The station then aired a commercial that asked the question, “What would it take to get you out of a Honda Accord?”

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SKIING IN YORBA LINDA: My colleague Deniene Husted passed along the “Winter 2000” program from Yorba Linda’s Parks and Recreation Department, which has a striking shot of that city’s snowcapped Mount . . . Mount . . . Well, to be honest, I can’t find it on any of the city’s maps (see photo). Could be a snow job.

A GENERAL ORDER: “During the time I was with KFWB, one executive editor issued a memo saying the word ‘major’ was never to be used on the air because it was trite,” newsman Don Herbert recalled on the Web site of colleague Ron Fineman.

“Therefore, no major fires, no major battles, no major injuries, etc. We had an anchor at the station at the time, Jeff Riggenbach, who did book reviews and he immediately launched into a review of the book, ‘Catch 22’ in which a major character is . . . Major Major. Now that was a major event at the station.”

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WHAT WAS THAT NAME AGAIN? Adding to our list of misnamed entities, Jay Goldberg of La Palma notes that the new Long Beach Towne Center Mall “is on the eastern border of Long Beach, actually abutting Hawaiian Gardens. That’s the center of town(e)?”

Steve Harvey can be reached at steve.harvey@latimes.com.