Already Serving a Wife Sentence

Charles Sevilla’s “Great Moments in Courtroom History” column in L.A.-based CACJ/Forum magazine offers this exchange, among others:

Attorney: Were you involved in a romantic relationship with her?

Witness: I ain’t involved in no romantic relationship with her. I’m married to her.

NOW JUST A MINUTE: Lauralea Thompson of Whittier received a note from the IRS office in Fresno that gave her a 60-second window of opportunity to talk to Customer Service (see accompanying).

SPEAKING OF COMEDY: Bob Patterson snapped the sign for Santa Monica’s Comedy Underground club (see photo), which has a Wilshire Boulevard address but whose entrance is in an alley, which is pretty funny in itself. Break a leg!

BRITISH WIT? In London, Tom Peckinpaugh noticed a merchant who invited customers to have eye exams while they waited, prompting wife Barbara to wonder what the alternative would be (see photo).

DROP THE CHIHUAHUA!: So, Taco Bell has fired its pitch dog. Could it be because the pooch was moonlighting at a business spotted by Carel Veenhuyzen across the street from a Taco Bell in the Valley? Name of the business: The Chihuahua Bakery.

NOW FOR SOME INEPT WRITING: No wisecracks, please. San Jose State’s English department, which holds the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction competition, also posts contributions from the public on its “Sticks and Stones” Web page (www.sjsu.edu/depts/english).

One reader sent along this excerpt from a magazine profile of an actor:

“Three little wrinkles like a stack of tiny pancakes sit just at the top of Nicolas Cage’s nose, held in place by his bushy, Italian-guy eyebrows, which extend out and down like two hairy arms around his for-the-moment strangely vacant blue eyes.”

I’m surprised he doesn’t wear dark glasses more often.

MOVING ON TO INEPT SLOGANEERING: The other day, I saw a billboard promoting Valencia with the line, “The Place to Be.” A billboard that boring is a safety hazard to drivers such as myself, who have long commutes and have trouble enough staying awake.

Equally guilty is the San Gabriel Valley, which chose as a motto, “We Have It All.”

It got me to thinking about the trend toward community slogans that are glittering generalities and tell you nothing about the area.

I loved Bellflower’s “21 Churches, No Jails.” Now it’s “The Friendly City.”

I’d even prefer something snooty such as Hermosa Beach’s discarded “Aristocrat of the Beaches” or Irvine’s unofficial “Another Day in Paradise.” Annoying, but at least they didn’t put you to sleep.

What a pity that “Tan Your Hide in Oceanside” has given way to “Take Pride in Oceanside.”

My all-time favorite, a common bumper sticker of a couple of decades ago, was: “Where the Hell is Norco?”

Even Los Angeles, supposedly the capital of hipness, has settled on something as dreary as: “Together We’re the Best. L.A.”

Better the City of Angels had adopted comic David Letterman’s suggestion:

“L.A.: Floods, Fire and Fun.”

miscelLAny:

Bill and Shari Hill saw a vanity license plate that said HLNBACK in San Pedro, but they’re confident the driver didn’t mean that that community was HL. “We think San Pedro is a little bit of heaven,” Hill said. Perhaps the motorist commutes to downtown L.A. Or to Norco.

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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.