Accidental Tourist Gets Lost in L.A.

A Canadian resident who recently visited here later called the city of Paramount for a copy of a traffic accident report. But the location of the incident she gave was more than 20 miles from the city--on Melrose Avenue, in fact. The woman explained she had been “near our studios when the crash occurred,” the city’s newsletter said. All the world may be a stage, but the city of Paramount is not affiliated with Paramount Studios.

DISASTER! Today’s artwork theme, obviously intended to raise our ratings, includes:

* An airship that landed in Covina (Shirley Serna). And you were worried about the Mir craft dropping here? The “Crashdown Cafe” is actually a prop for the TV show “Roswell.”

* A badge worn by Orange County worker Burl Estes, which contains a disastrous misspelling. “I never noticed it until a former co-worker pointed it our during his retirement party,” Estes said. “And I’ve been with the county for over 24 years.”

* A Beverly Hills facility where garbage trucks empty their loads so that they may be taken to a landfill. However, Barry Weiss points out that the sign, which is supposed to say “accepted,” could be interpreted as meaning: “Bring it all on! Nuclear waste . . . etc.”

* And, finally, Irene Kennedy found a company that should do big business around Halloween.

NOSED OUT: First, UC Irvine was snubbed by the NCAA basketball tournament and now comes a bigger insult.

The school has been shunned by the Mascot Hall of Fame. UC Santa Cruz’ Banana Slug is listed on the shrine’s Web site. So is the Fighting Artichoke of Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College. And the Haybaler of San Benito High in Hollister, Calif.

But there’s no mention of Peter the Anteater, the inspiration of Irvine’s teams with his famed “Zot!” battle cry.

Why the omission? Prejudice against Southern California? I’m not sure. I couldn’t reach the Baylor University graduate student who founded the shrine. But his Web site https://(www.baylor.edu/~Larry_Frazier/mascot.htm) says he’s still taking nominations.

Do you smell opportunity here, Anteaters?

TOO MUCH HORSING AROUND: On the other hand, I’m afraid I understand why Traveler, USC’s equine mascot, has been denied admission to the Mascot Hall of Fame. I suspect that that group, like other halls of fame, considers the moral character of prospective members.

And, frankly, Traveler has a wild side. Just last year, the horse ran into a sideline observer. A few years earlier it bumped a Stanford song girl, after which the school instructed Traveler’s rider to “slow the gallops” and try to exert “greater control” at football games.

Then there was the time in 1990 that Traveler threw its rider and ran wild, seemingly making a charge at the startled Trojan football players on the sidelines. Of course, USC, which was losing at the time, seemed to wake up--and won the game.

PERHAPS ANCIENT ROME WAS MORE ADVANCED THAN WE KNEW: If you need to get in the mood for Sunday’s Oscars show, I direct your attention to the https://nitpickers.com Web site, which looks for inconsistencies and bloopers in films. The authors claim that during the showing of best-picture nominee “Gladiator,” they caught glimpses of headphones on an extra, what appeared to be a wristwatch worn by a Roman senator, an engine on a chariot, and some tractor tracks in a field.

miscelLAny:

Don’t know if you saw the article in The Times about the unsuccessful effort to auction some early photos of Marilyn Monroe. What caught my eye was the legal term for possession of the sexy shots of Monroe: “intellectual property rights.”

“Ooh,” as Marilyn might have said.