Acting Like Part of the Scenery
Now for the not-so-glamorous side of Hollywood. A member of Adrienne Omansky’s free acting class for seniors (information: [310] 559-9677) found a job as an extra in the movie “Ali.”
He reported to a warehouse in the San Fernando Valley that had been converted into a boxing arena. Designated a grade C extra, the lowest form, he sat in the back of the arena amid rows of seats that also contained cardboard cutouts of people.
He blended in so well that one day, when the cast broke for lunch, no one noticed that he was asleep among the cutouts--until he fell out of his chair.
He was unhurt, by the way. There was no need to summon the ringside physician.
ABOUT THAT NAME . . . “Here’s a picture from All Saints Church in Sin Valley,” wrote a mischievous Paul Rutan of Tujunga (see photo).
MORE NEWS FOR SINNERS: Bettina Hall of Capistrano Beach noticed an ad for bar glasses that would be ideal for people trying to give up drinking (see accompanying).
ATTENTION SHIRLEY MacLAINE: A Pasadena reader found an ad for some photo equipment that has a multi-lifetime guarantee (see accompanying).
HITTING THE WRONG NOTE: I called the late Harry Ruby a comic the other day, but he was actually a songwriter, as his granddaughter Susan Anthony reminded me. His many credits included material for the Marx Brothers in “Horse Feathers.” I can just imagine Groucho staring at me and quoting from that movie: “Why don’t you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?”
THIS WASN’T HORSE FEATHERS: One hundred years ago today, in that idyllic, pre-automobile age, The Times published an article branding the new 3rd Street tunnel downtown “a stench and a bugaboo.”
The unlighted tunnel’s problems included falling plaster and concrete as well as “manure-tainted waters” in large pools whose “noisome odors . . . [are] perceptible as far as Hill Street,” the 1901 article said. “Frequently women are seen to enter the tunnel and turn back in fear.”
And you thought smog was a bugaboo.
ZAPPED! I mentioned the battle cry of Peter the Anteater, the UC Irvine mascot, as “Zot!” but KPCC talk show host Kitty Felde writes:
“As an alumnus of UC Irvine, I should correct your version of our fight song. In my day, we sang/shouted” this rousing cheer:
Anteaters,
Anteaters,
Phludludludluh!
Felde said the latter sound was their “imitation of the tongue action of an anteater slurping up a bug.”
She added: “Now that I think of it, maybe the fight song isn’t rousing enough for national television, which may be the REAL reason UCI wasn’t invited to the March Madness party [NCAA basketball tournament].”
And I’m left to wonder how I could have misspelled “Phludludludluh” as “Zot.”
miscelLAny:
In a neighborhood newspaper’s police log, Kevin Hentzen of Laguna Niguel found this heart-warming ending to a missing-car saga: “A woman found her car in a parking stall where she had originally parked it.”
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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.