A Brush With Dental Danger

For the “Stupid Dental Tricks” file: Holly Fincher of Westminster was northbound on the 73 toll road when she came upon a car whose driver was moving his hand back and forth in rapid succession near his face. “So I took a closer look and saw that he was brushing his teeth. Thinking this odd, I wondered if he would spit too, so I followed at a safe distance.”

I didn’t ask Fincher at this point if it was windy that day but, whatever, she is the sort of thorough field investigator that this column really appreciates. Back to the story:

“He never stopped brushing!” she continued. “I timed him for six full minutes before I had to stop and pay the toll while he drove on through FasTrack [charge-account lane], still brushing.”

Amazing. And who knows how long he had spent flossing?

DRIVES OF OUR LIVES: Lisa Jehle saw a THRDWFE license plate on the Hollywood Freeway--on a Honda. “I wonder what the first two are driving,” she said.

ENGLISH LESSON: “Like most Americans traveling to Great Britain, we experienced the ‘great divide’ of our common language,” writes Cindy Lokitz of Oak Park. “But, it seems that many Brits do not understand their own colloquialisms.

“While walking through the subway, we came upon a sign that stated, ‘No Busking.’ We asked the concierge at our hotel what this term meant, for we certainly did not want to get caught busking in the subway. He had no idea, but consulted a few others and they decided that the sign was a warning that it is illegal to play music for money.”

TODAY’S PUZZLER: Mark Schneider of Seal Beach came upon a London sign that might lead some Americans to think they were approaching a self-help class (see photo). “I believe it is for a change in one-way street designations,” he added.

AND HERE’S A BONUS QUESTION: A clothing company sent Carol Carlson an especially mysterious piece of e-mail (see accompanying).

BUT WAS THE METER RUNNING? The Seal Beach Sun’s police log carried a 6:48 a.m. report of a taxi driver “passed out in his car with money spread out all over the seat. The man had fallen asleep while he was counting his money.”

STEPPING INTO THE PAST: The item here about the removal of the huge, white erector-set sculpture from the old Metromedia building off the Hollywood Freeway brought a note from Ren Colantoni of Burbank.

“I worked for IBM and was servicing the computers for Metromedia when that building was overhauled, expanded, and the sculpture was installed,” he said of the 133-foot-long, 40,000-pound thingy. (Its official title was “Starsteps.”)

” We were told that the sculpture represented a set of lightning strikes,” he said. “It was supposed to stand vertically from the roof. However, they were not able to install it that way for mechanical reasons. So they laid it down and it became the stairway to Hollywood.”

So it was down, and now it’s out--a typical Hollywood story.

miscelLAny:

Driving to work on the rain-soaked Santa Monica Freeway, Mike Miller wrote that he “saw what might be the most appropriate license plate of the day on a Chevy SUV.” It said MDRNARK. Miller couldn’t tell if this ark had a sun roof for the giraffes.

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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.