Lesson in Manners for Moviegoers

The Nuart movie theater in West L.A. has its own rating system: NS, as in “no saliva” (see photo).

“Some people put their tickets in their mouths while they’re putting away their change,” said one worker, adding that ticket-takers don’t like handling the soggy things.

Perhaps some theatergoers munch on the tickets because with the $8.50 admission price, they can’t afford popcorn.

WHEN OFFICE SPACE IS AT A PREMIUM: Steve Burke of Irvine found a surprising spot for a real estate sign in Carlsbad (see photo).

CANDLE POWER: “I didn’t order any of the return address stickers that flooded my mailbox over Christmas,” writes Mickey Regal of Palm Springs, “but it’s nice having this one when I send my checks to Southern California Edison.” (See accompanying.)

LIKE PULLING TEETH: Talk about specialized research. Lois Hirt, a columnist for the L.A. Dental Hygienists Society newsletter, searches for novels that refer to hygienists and asks the authors why they created the tooth-cleaning characters.

Some examples:

* Author David Wong Louie said he had a chef marry a hygienist in “The Barbarians Are Coming” so they would be “bound by mouths”: One pleasures people with food, the other enables them to keep their teeth.

* K.K. Beck (“We Interrupt This Broadcast”) created a hygienist to have an affair with her low-life boss, dentist Ken Jordan.

* Alan Winter threw a hygienist into the mystery “Snowflakes in the Sahara” because he wanted a murder to take place in a large dental office.

* Sue Grafton told Hirt that she mentioned hygienists admiringly in “K Is for Killer” because she has spent many hours in real-life dental chairs; she confided that she takes her teddy bear, Bobo, with her on such visits. (I can’t imagine Grafton’s scrappy heroine, Kinsey Millhone, having a teddy bear.)

* And, finally, Leslie O’Kane (“Play Dead”) had a somewhat prosaic reason for featuring a hygienist: She wanted a recognizable profession four to five syllables long.

I’VE HEARD OF “SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMING DOWN” BUT . . . H. Thomas of Huntington Beach noticed that a police blotter in a local paper reported this traffic accident:

“A dark gray Saturday and a dark green Mazda pickup truck collided.”

Mondays can be troublesome too.

miscelLAny:

A nationwide survey of 30,000 people by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam found that:

* 21% of Angelenos confide in zero to one person (compared to 15% in U.S. as a whole).

* 19% of Angelenos confide in two people (17% in U.S.).

* 61% of Angelenos confide in three or more people (67% in U.S.). You can keep this to yourself if you want.

*

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.