Sorry, Methuselah Doesn’t Live Here

It sounded like a routine from Mel Brooks’ “2,000-Year-Old Man.”

Greg Horbachevsky of Glendale was phoned by the rep of a vitamin company conducting a survey. After quizzing him about several products, the caller, evidently a young woman, asked Horbachevsky what year he was born.

“Forty-five,” he said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Which ‘45?” she asked.

She gave no indication that she was joking.

Horbachevsky, exhibiting good 19th century manners, refrained from snarling at her.

WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T CONTACT ANYONE AT CITY HALL? Joe Shea of Hollywood was on a downtown elevator when the phone inside rang. The other passenger answered it and said, “City Hall elevator, City Councilwoman Laura Chick.” It was really Chick. And it was a wrong number.

THE RADAR GUN MUST BE PRETTY SENSITIVE: Tom Allison of Fullerton saw a speed limit sign at a market that he suspects may be difficult to enforce (see photo).

TO LIVE AND DRIVE IN L.A.: I mentioned a sighting of a driver who was reading a book on the Santa Ana Freeway, and I asked readers for other bizarre road scenes.

They were fast in coming.

Alan Frisbie of L.A. saw a leg sticking out of a driver’s window on the Harbor Freeway and assumed it was one of those fake appendages that people display as jokes. Then he noticed it was real.

“A young lady was painting her toenails,” he said.

Barbara Barnard was also on the 110 when she saw a man in the car next to her who was “holding a bowl with cereal and milk and eating away with spoon in hand. I couldn’t tell if he had bananas on it or not.”

As for the book-reading driver who inspired this item, Bob Law of Walnut thinks he saw the same guy--”book nicely propped in the center of his steering wheel. I figured it was the instruction manual for his cell phone.”

EVERYONE HAS SOME DISTINCTION: Carol Carlson of Palos Verdes Estates saw an ad from a jewelry shop bragging about what it was not (see accompanying).

THANK GOODNESS IT’S IN PLASTIC: An ad with a couple of spelling errors caught the eye of Virginia Harford of Grand Terrace (see accompanying), as how could it not?

BUT NO ONE’S PERFECT: Least of all me. Writing about a short-lived air service between Ontario, Canada, and Ontario, Calif., I misquoted humor columnist David Allen of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. I, not he, was the knucklehead who called the Canadian province of Ontario a city. I want to get this apology in the paper in hopes he won’t bash me too hard in his column.

THIS MIGHT CONSTITUTE A CRIME WAVE IN THAT CITY: A police log item in an Irvine newspaper said: “Incident report. Rabbits found outside their locked cage on patio.”

miscelLAny:

Don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Dodgers have a new minor team in Las Vegas, which will call itself the 51s. It’s a reference to Area 51, the top-secret Air Force base. But Cindy Santistevan thinks the decision by officials to use the 51s nickname indicates something else. “They’re not playing with a full deck,” she opined.

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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.