Might Want to Check Out Back for the Reel Stinkers at Blockbuster Video
Don’t know if you’ve heard, but some Blockbuster Video outlets are going to try to lure customers with scented videotapes. Action movies will be bathed in a gunpowder fragrance, love stories will smell like roses, and comedies will carry the aroma of bananas.
For the sake of shoppers, I hope Blockbuster uses a Dumpster behind the store to display all the stinkers that Hollywood turns out.
On Dasher! On Dancer! On Realtor? The police log of the Huntington Beach Independent reported that “a male jumped from the second floor of a real estate office into a Christmas tree lot at 9:42 p.m.”
The intruder raced across the lot for reasons unknown, jumped a fence and disappeared--without pausing to wish all a good night.
Guide to Adventurous Dining: Today’s specials (see accompanying) include:
* Two unusual advertising approaches--one for a discounted dinner (snapped by Norm Sechrest of San Marino), the other directed toward hunters in an Arkansas town (John Newman of Huntington Beach).
* Some especially chewy onions (which were not sampled by Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills).
* And, finally, a chicken doing what a chicken does best (David Chan of L.A.).
Fighting words: As I attempt to determine who deserves credit for originating Caltech’s chant of “Secant, cosine, tangent, sine . . .” I’m hearing from alumni of other schools with their own war cries.
Jaci Cuddy, an alumnus of Reed College in Oregon thinks these two originated at her school:
“Lenin, Stalin, Marx, Trotsky / We got a team that’s really hotsky!”
And:
“Hegel, Kant, Marx, Spinoza / Come on Reed, hit ‘em in the nosa.”
I don’t think anyone else will claim authorship for those.
More inspirational verse: Joan Yankowitz wrote that Stuyvesant High School in New York, known for its math and science scholars, came up with this somewhat intellectual football cheer:
“Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant / Make them relinquish the ball!”
Credit where credit’s due: In my display of puzzling signs last week, I neglected to say that Derek Lovett of Torrance snapped the notice that said: “Moving Sale Last Week Next Door.”
Jury drama: Al Kaelin of L.A. sat for two days in an Alhambra courtroom watching attorneys in their endless quizzing of juror candidates.
Kaelin was then dismissed and told he had fulfilled his duty, only to receive a phone call an hour later saying--whoops!--he should report again the next morning.
An hour after that, Kaelin received another call, saying there had been a mistake and his jury duty was indeed over.
I forgot to ask Kaelin if he then took his phone off the hook.
One more call and he would have felt like punching someone in the nosa.
miscelLAny:
Columnist Diane Bell of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes that a young clerk in a drugstore was asked if he had any Madonna stamps. “No, I just have Christmas stamps,” he replied.
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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., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.