If Chairs Can Fly, Can Little Green Men From Outer Space Be Far Behind?

Let’s begin with this police log entry from the L.A. Independent: “An assailant who believes in aliens threw a chair at the victim because he didn’t want the victim to go to church.” While you’re mulling that one over, Bob Carr told me he had a separate item about people following “a green man.” And I wondered if this, too, referred to someone from outer space. But it was only a street sign in England (see photo). I’m sure there’s a green man there that will even lead you to church.

More spacey stuff: On the Web site of UCLA’s Daily Bruin, David Chan found a list of unusual police log items of the last couple of years in Westwood, including these:

* “Police warned and advised a man against battery after he reportedly threw gum at another person.” The site: The Center for Health Sciences, no less.

* A man at the UCLA emergency room was stopped “for walking around with a marijuana-laced brownie.” Police “warned him against possession of such items and took the brownie away.”

* “People received a call that someone had fallen off a treadmill at 300 Medical Plaza.”

* “Police received a report that a man had been in a restroom stall for 24 hours.”

* “Two men were reportedly smoking marijuana out of a green apple between Kerckhoff and Moore Halls. . . .”

* “Several people were hitting beer cans with a golf club off the roof of a building on the 400 block of Gayley Avenue.”

I believe I had heard that UCLA’s golf team was having funding problems.

Turning away from crime: At least, we were trying to turn away from crime until David Ackerly sent us an ad for a villainous set of gloves (see accompanying).

Nothing suspicious here: I’m sure there’s an explanation for the Costa Mesa pastry company that seems to have a dire method of dealing with dads and grads (see accompanying).

Scary driver tricks: Stan Arvig of Hacienda Heights wrote that “on a recent trip north on I-5, we were descending the Grapevine section when we observed an SUV pulled off to the side while a man changed a tire and the other passengers milled around the vehicle.”

Added Arvig: “Their stopping spot was right in the approach to the ‘Runaway Truck Escape’ ramp.”

Further proof that some SUV drivers really do think they’re indestructible.

miscelLAny: “Bedspread King” Al Greenwood, who died the other day at 93, was a feisty guy. Greenwood, known at first for wearing a crown and robe in his late-night TV commercials, later developed a following on radio and cable TV.

He phoned me once after he had sold several of his products to the set decorators of Aaron Spelling’s “Pacific Palisades.” This was the usual Spelling TV show about decadent folks with shapely bodies, though in a new area code.

“I thought we were going to get national exposure,” Greenwood fumed. “And then I watch the show and all I see are unmade beds.”

“Pacific Palisades” flopped after a couple of episodes. Better that Spelling had written a TV show about Greenwood.

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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.