Sofa-Surfing Seal Beach Youngsters Show They’re No Idle Couch Potatoes

The Seal Beach Sun reported that police went to Sea Breeze Drive but “were unable to locate approximately eight juveniles who were pushing a sofa up the hill and riding it down.” Maybe they had already caught a wave and breezed out to sea.

Unreal property: Eileen Roe of the Antelope Valley community of Littlerock says she found a house that would be ideal for her (see accompanying). She explained: “I have two teenagers.” She added: “I hope it’s padded.”

Not even a free 1,000-mile checkup? “How solid is our country’s renewed sense of patriotism?” asked Eric Carlson. “Here’s one merchant who isn’t taking any chances” (see photo).

Unclear on the concept: Walter Heuman of Mission Hills wrote of one ad he saw: “I, too, would insist on a higher rate of return on my Certificate of Deposit if the period to maturity were measured in days that are 75% longer than normal days” (see accompanying).

Mystery solved: I asked for a translation of a Welsh phrase--”Dim o gwbl”--that was coupled with an English phrase (“At any time”). And I learned that the Welsh phrase means . . .

“At any time.”

At first I thought maybe this was an Abbott and Costello routine. But several readers set me straight, including Paul Downing, a psychology teacher at the University of Bangor in Wales. Downing said the sign was bilingual and probably stood near another sign that said “No Parking” in both languages.

Taming telemarketers (cont.): T.C. Cirillo of Seal Beach and Emil Schafer of Riverside both handle telephone solicitors the way Jerry Seinfeld did in one episode of his TV show. Seinfeld tells a phone company solicitor that he is busy but asks for the caller’s home number, promising to call back when he’s finished.

The startled caller responds that solicitors don’t give out their numbers. Whereupon Seinfeld says something along the lines of “Oh, so you don’t like being bothered at home either?”

Squirrel tales: The accounts here of my mother’s battles with some daring backyard critters prompted Jim Mentzer of L.A. to write: “When my sister and I were kids, she used to feed the squirrels in a grove of trees near our house. One time she gave a squirrel a peanut that turned out to be rotten. The squirrel came back and bit her on the finger.”

Mentzer, I guess, is the forgiving type, for he continued:

“More recently, a squirrel used to come to our back door, sit up and beg like a dog until someone came out with a plate of sunflower seeds. She once buried a sunflower seed in the backyard, and the next spring, a sunflower grew on the spot.”

Maybe my mother should put up a sign telling the squirrels “No Parking Dim o gwbl.”

miscelLAny:

After reading here about an actress named Jenny Lynn-Suckling playing a vampire in a La Jolla Playhouse production, Eddie Cress of Sylmar was reminded of Bela Lugosi, the star of the 1930 “Dracula” movie. Noted Cress: “Lugosi is buried in his cape at a spot in Culver City with an unlikely name for a vampire: Holy Cross Cemetery.”

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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.