A Shakespeare That Hits the Spot

Julius Caesar was murdered on the steps of City Hall several nights running last summer, as you may recall. The Shakespeare Festival/LA returns July 6--but this time to Pershing Square. Actually, the title of this year’s production would have been more appropriate for the rhetoric that issues from City Hall:

“Much Ado About Nothing.”

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MYSTERIOUS SIGNS (CONT.): I’m declaring an intermission in the debate over the meaning of the Parisian sign that shows a slash mark through an image of an adult holding a child’s hand.

Instead, let’s consider a puzzler from Jay Berman of Manhattan Beach, shot in Canada (see photo). Berman wonders if the sign means it is permitted to float in the sky above one’s bicycle.

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LESS THAN GLAMOROUS: Nine Garcie of Glendale found a salon that either sought a Gen-X look or had seen its last painted nail (see photo).

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STUPID DRIVER TRICKS: Jean Ratajczak of Huntington Beach was behind a car that “was weaving back and forth. When I pulled up in back of him, I realized what had caused his problem: He was washing his windows. As he attacked the right side of the windshield, the car would drift to the right. And it would drift to the left when he did the left part of the windshield. He was sure polishing up a storm.”

Luckily, he didn’t feel he had to do the back windows.

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DON’T SQUEEZE THE DURACELL! Patricia Bales of San Pedro saw an ad that might cause one to wonder if the batteries were supposed to be gentler to the touch (see accompanying).

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WHAT’S IN A NAME: Some companies and organizations whose names don’t necessarily mean what they say:

* One Day Paint and Body: Commercials say the average job takes three days.

* Dollar Rent A Car: Offered a Volkswagen bug for $1 a day when it opened in L.A. in 1956. The cheapest current rate I could find was $30.99.

* Ant Painting Co.: I couldn’t get an explanation for the name, though I learned the Garden Grove company paints buildings, not insects. Too bad. As writer Cathy Franklin pointed out, it might have been the solution “to ridding Orange County of red imported fire ants (just paint ‘em blue!).”

* Motel 6 chain: Founded in Santa Barbara in 1962, it derived its name from its $6-per-night charge. The rate is now more than $40 in the Southland.

* American Assn. of Retired Persons: To join you must be 50 or older, but you don’t have to be retired--as I was relieved to read the first time I received its mail. I wondered at the time, what does AARP know that I don’t?

miscelLAny:

Ol’ Blue Eyes might have seen red over this: I read in the Wall Street Journal that Saddam Hussein chose, for the theme of his 54th birthday celebration, the Frank Sinatra recording of “I Did It My Way.”

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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.