This Travel Expert Has Been Around

I recently reported the sad news that Hilton Hotels Inc. of Beverly Hills had indefinitely postponed a meeting of scientists, travel agents, caterers, etc., to discuss the possibility of starting a hotel in outer space.

But former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is not reluctant to talk about such a venture. Asked what a space hotel would be like, Aldrin told the L.A. Business Journal:

“It isn’t going to be a bunch of people lolling around in a cocktail lounge on board the new airliner. Space is not going to be like that. Space is going to be very austere, at a premium. We have to construct small, private, adequate sleeping areas. If there are going to be large windows, those will be shared, as will areas in which to do somersaults and enjoy the weightlessness.”

I wonder if the space hotels will provide valet docking.

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GOT AN ANGEL ON MY FREEWAY SHOULDER: You may have heard about Community of Angels, the art project of 400 6-foot-tall fiberglass angels that will be displayed in public places next year.

But they’ll be guarded, unlike the 4,687 seraphs clandestinely set out around L.A. by artist Jill d’Agnenica after the 1992 riots. The idea was for people to take the 8-inch-tall magenta figurines as a sort of healing ritual. Most of them disappeared, including one that was propped up on a broken stretch of Balboa Boulevard after the 1994 Northridge quake (see photo).

Alas, she learned that some had been thrown into dumpsters by suspicious janitors and security guards. She saw boys on a bridge in Marina del Rey delightedly kick some into the water.

But some of the winged creatures reappear every now and then. A friend of hers met a man who had bought five from a bag lady for $5.

And D’Agnenica recently walked “into a coffee shop on Larchmont [Boulevard] and saw one--next to an old cappuccino machine. I was very happy because I’m a real caffeine freak.”

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BURNING LOVE: I can tell you where another of the 4,687 angels is. It’s on a mantel in my front room. And I believe it saved the house from going up in flames when my then-2-year-old son conducted a science experiment by dropping a plastic toy in our furnace. A quick visit from the Long Beach Fire Department helped, too.

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COMFORT, INDEED: On a visit to Morocco, Mary Wayman of Laguna Woods was amused to see that her hotel seemed to offer a bit of companionship (see accompanying). “No, I didn’t take advantage of it,” she added.

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THAT BUD WAS FOR HIM: Maybe I’m unqualified to debate whether Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens should have thrown a piece of a broken bat in the direction of Met catcher Mike Piazza in the World Series.

However, I did witness the throwing of a foreign object in a slow-pitch softball game years ago.

A friend of mine, who was playing third base, was sipping a beer when a ball was hit to him. He gloved the spheroid neatly but threw the beer can to first base.

When the fielder caught the can, it sprayed the stunned batsman with beer and no doubt left him with some sort of delayed-stress syndrome.

Unlike major league baseball in the Clemens case, we slow-pitch players took immediate disciplinary action. We decreed that the thrower could not get a new beer until the inning was over.

miscelLAny:

I’m not sure I agree with the theory that sports cars are sex symbols. Then, again, Hal Lancaster of Rossmoor did see a Jaguar with the license plate VIJAGRA. A man was driving it.

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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.