High-Wind Alert: Politico Nearby

Considering all the blowhards speechifying in the last mad days of the campaign, I wasn’t surprised to hear numerous wind advisories on election day.

A REMINDER OF WHY WE SHOULD APPRECIATE WINDY DAYS: A trophy shop is trumpeting a holiday gift “that brings tears to your eyes. . . . Your own jar of L.A. smog.”

Owner Jacques Hay says the contents were “captured on one of Los Angeles’ smoggiest days” on the grounds of his business, Award Winners, in Northridge.

The bad Valley air is priced at $5.99 (with an extra $3.50 for the always delightful postage and handling).

Hay said he sold the same product during the 1984 Olympics, then discontinued it because--”well, it didn’t blend in well in our trophy shop.”

“But,” he added with a laugh, “now that I’ve got three kids going into college, I’ll sell it. Desperate times.”

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SUCH A DEAL: For our not-so-discriminating shoppers (see accompanying), we offer a dryer spotted by Mary Jane Linder of La Canada Flintridge. Someone wake up the Maytag repairman! Frances Kreiling of Palm Springs noticed an edible golf club. Who needs a sand wedge anyway?

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SPEAKING OF BEING WEDGED: Gail Cowling sent a photo of a UCLA underpass that she titled: “What Part of ‘No Trucks’ Do You Not Understand?” (See photo.)

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SCHOOL DAZE: Among the scholarly courses offered by Barnes & Noble’s online “university” are “Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead,” taught by Hope Munro Smith, a rock historian and disc jockey. It’s a six-lesson course that “tracks the musical, cultural, historical and social evolution of the band’s music and their notorious fan base.”

Note to Deadheads: The thing that’s so convenient about an online course is you can, uh, smoke while you take the course in the comfort of your living room--or your van.

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THE SOUTHLAND CAN BE INSPIRING: No sooner did I mention the coming movie “Orange County” than word came that Diane Keaton will produce a soap opera titled “Pasadena.” Entertainment Weekly magazine described Pasadena as a city “known till now as the relatively unglamorous home of the Rose Bowl.”

Now wait just a minute.

Doesn’t the magazine know that Pasadena is also the relatively unglamorous home of the Doo Dah Parade?

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WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING SOAP OPERA: The city also has been immortalized in the movies, as these bits of dialogue illustrate:

* “Oh, please! This is Pasadena. We do not arrest the wrong person.” (A detective in “The Player,” 1992.)

* “Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast! Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.” (Judge Doom hailing the advent of freeways in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” 1988.)

* “She’s Pasadena.” (A maitre d’ telling a tipsy actor not to make a pass at a socialite because she’s too elegant for him, in “A Star Is Born,” 1954.)

miscelLAny:

Jim Thornton, who describes conditions on the shimmering cement for KNX radio, said Tuesday that he found a message on his answering machine from a listener who wondered “if there are any SigAlerts, and could I call her back?”

Perhaps the listener had heard about personalized navigational systems in some new cars--and wanted Thornton to be hers.

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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.