When It Comes to USC-UCLA Rivalry, the Sky’s the Limit

Did you read about the disappearance of the UCLA band’s instruments while they were playing flag football against USC’s musicians? Something like this always seems to happen the week before the real USC-UCLA football game.

Over the years, the cross-city rivalry has inspired bogus versions of each other’s newspapers, fake fliers announcing the cancellation of pregame rallies, the kidnapping of mascots (such as USC’s late canine, George Tirebiter) and the splashing of paint on campus symbols.

One of the most daring operations, staged in 1958, involved an attempt by UCLA partisans to drop fertilizer from a helicopter onto the statue of Tommy Trojan. Alas, they misjudged the wind and the stuff blew back in their faces.

LOS ALAMITOS CONFIDENTIAL: Ruth Freedman’s students at Weaver Elementary School raised the specter of a balloting snafu before the election--though in a different context.

When Elmo Kreitenberg, 8, spotted a misspelled street sign (see photo) a few weeks ago, Freedman turned the resolution of the problem into a class project.

The students wrote to Los Alamitos City Councilman Ron Bates and asked: “How would you feel if on the ballot it said Ron Bats instead of Ron Bates?”

Bates batted the problem over to Los Alamitos City Manager Robert Dominguez, who found the sign was actually in county territory. It was removed, and the county has promised to get it right this time.

P.S. I didn’t hear of any ballot problems in Los Alamitos, and Bates was reelected.

BUMMER: Surfer, the Dana Point-based magazine, warns in its Letters to the Editor section: “Letters may be edited for any reason. Those with more than 30 misspellings or grammar mistakes will be hung on the office refrigerator for all to ridicule.”

THE NAKED TRUTH? Surfer, by the way, gives a surfboard to the author of the most entertaining letter each month. Its latest award went to a reader who confessed to a fashion mistake. While riding some waves at a Canadian beach, he said, he was informed by a lifeguard that he was at a nude beach. The lifeguard “pointed out that everyone had to be naked at that beach, so we stripped down for some of the best nude surfing we’ll probably ever have.”

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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.