The Kid Was Put Up to It by Cookie Monster, Who Wanted the Dough
Talk of telephone transactions brought a note from Addy Tatto of Pacoima, who heard from the world’s most persistent donor during one KCET pledge drive.
Tatto was at the TV station late one afternoon “when ‘Sesame Street’ was on the air. My telephone rang, and I gave the usual pitch: ‘Thank you for calling KCET. How much do you wish to pledge?’
“The caller was obviously a child who said she wanted ‘to give lots of money.’
“I said, ‘Thank you. Now may I speak to your mother?’
“After a brief pause, the child came back on the line and said, ‘This is my mother.’ ”
Dueling signs extravaganza! Welcome to the exhibition today (see photos). We have a sampling of indecisive intersections snapped by Bill Anderson and Bob Xiques as well as areas that offer conflicting signals about parking a car (David LaBohn) or a dog (Diane McClure).
Incidentally, the dog sign, snapped in Vancouver, was also photographed by Clement Lumley. Small world in Only in L.A.-land!
Say it ain’t so, Tech: I am shocked to report that the chant of Caltech sports fans published here closely resembled that uttered by Jim Glass at MIT in the early 1970s.
The opening words--”Secant, cosine, tangent, sine/Three point one four one five nine!”--were all too familiar to Glass.
“We did not have the [other lyrics] ‘logarithm, logarithm’ or the ‘Tech! Tech! Tech!’ parts,” Glass said. “Perhaps they were patched on when the yell reached the West Coast.”
I hate to accuse Mr. Glass of East Coast bias, but I am unwilling to take his word on this serious pilfering charge. Rather I await the judgment of a joint academic investigation, which will undoubtedly be launched by the two schools.
Cheer-lifting is a serious offense.
There wasn’t a dry throat in the place: Glass adds, by the way, that another chant back East went, “We are, we are, we are the engineers/We can, we can, we can, demolish 40 beers.”
Wonder if any engineers got pi-eyed?
Singular theories: A Wall Street Journal story about the shrinking pool of single women in the 30-to-44 age range mentioned that some desperate single men have resorted to “dating consultants.”
One Marina del Rey guy, the article said, paid $600 to a consultant who “advised him to wear a Rolex watch, buy black shoes and not talk about his divorce.”
I was reminded of the 1965 movie, “What’s New, Pussycat?” in which a psychiatrist (Peter Sellers) gives a frustrated bachelor (Woody Allen) more simple advice: Buy a red sports car.
Sellers looks at Allen again and adds, “Maybe you should buy two.”
miscelLAny:
“It’s a good policy to buy building materials from your boss,” wrote Dr. Paul Neagle of Camarillo after noticing that the framing for a construction job at Camarillo Community Church was being supplied by Trinity Steel.
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.
