Motorcyclist’s Unusual Zipper Problem Leads to Police Report in Seal Beach

Talk about getting a bad connection: The Seal Beach Sun’s police log reported that “a man drove on the wrong side of the street when he got his zipper stuck in the throttle.”

Unraveling the story: I phoned Seal Beach police for more details and learned that the zipper victim was riding a motorcycle.

And the zipper was on his jacket, thank goodness.

Look, Ma! I previously mentioned another incident in which a reader spotted a motorcyclist steering with his feet on the Riverside Freeway.

Well, David Bondelevitch, who teaches in the cinema program at USC, wrote that this daredevil “was clearly reenacting a stunt from Buster Keaton’s brilliant film ‘Sherlock Jr.’ Buster really is driving with his feet in some of the shots, and he mentioned that he fell off numerous times while shooting it . . .”

I bet Keaton never dared the stuck-zipper maneuver, though.

A resume that would be hard to top: When UCLA grad Virginia Boyko wrote to say that her school apparently considered her “its most distinguished graduate,” I was, well, a tad skeptical. Then I looked at the titles following her name on a card from the UCLA Alumni Assn. (see accompanying).

Setting the record straight, Boyko admitted: “I am not the president, nor a member of the House of Representatives, nor am I a professor emeritus.”

She quipped: “I must assume that UCLA has included the firm of Cassady & Klein (who, I would guess, are lawyers somewhere), to defend me when I am charged with fraudulent misrepresentation.”

Credit card scrutiny: Gene Samson of L.A. sent along a note from the Bank One Visa folks, who had obviously thoroughly researched the background of the recipient of their credit card offer (see accompanying). An offer of a Platinum Visa card yet. No telling how much more they’d be offering if they actually knew the person’s name.

Name game: The No. 1-ranked player on Beverly Hills High’s tennis team is Bryan Swatt.

miscelLAny: In the-face-is-familiar-but . . . category, Tom Miller of Glendale reprised the story told years ago at his church by a Pastor Heinke. The latter was approached after a service by a little girl who couldn’t remember his last name. But she came up with the next best thing to Heinke. She addressed him as “Pastor Kleenex.”

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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.