University of Oregon Uses Its Own Kind of Decoy to Enter Enemy Territory

Did you read where the University of Oregon has erected a 12-story mural ballyhooing its football team on the side of L.A.’s Hotel Figueroa, just a couple of miles north of USC? In warfare, such an enemy incursion would be called a “Trojan horse.” But considering Oregon’s mascot, I guess it would be more accurate to term it a “Trojan duck.”

Let’s see Tiger Woods handle this: Just the other day I mentioned a sighting on the San Diego Freeway of a camper with a basketball hoop attached to the back. I didn’t get a shot of anyone playing 3-on-3 during a jam-up.

But, by coincidence, I did receive a shot of James Helms of Arcadia practicing another sport on the Pomona Freeway (see photo). It was more than the usual SigAlert: A toxic spill had stopped traffic. Helms was not wild about the putting green--or, pardon me, the putting gray.

“The grooves that cut into the pavement don’t help at all,” he said, and that’s better than most golfing alibis I’ve heard.

Golf postscript: The photo of Helms wasn’t a gag. He actually was practicing his putting stroke, he said, when another driver walked over and took the shot “for her son to use in a project at school.” An urban transportation class, perhaps?

Food for thought: Alan Simon of Van Nuys found a restaurant that really dresses its chicken (see accompanying).

Speaking of dressing: Kathryn Blackmun of Highland Park said she’s not sure about the meaning of a bicycle shop sign she saw in Tampa (see photo). And I must confess I’m not sure whether the shop was trying to corner a very small niche market or was using bicycle jargon I’m not familiar with. Just like I can’t figure those tight spandex uniforms pedalers wear.

For whom the dinner bell sounds: Congrats to Orange County editor and writer Kathryn Bold, who won this year’s Imitation Hemingway competition sponsored by Harry’s Bar. In one moving section of Bold’s entry, “The Old Man and the Flea,” Bold wrote of her drooling protagonist: “It was at times like this that he feared life had no meaning. What was life anyway, but lying around on one’s blankie, waiting for the next bowl of kibble. Life was nothing. Nada. Nada y nada y pues nada. Woof nada. Then she came along and gave him a treat and for a brief time life was good. Then he puked the treat on the rug and life was bad again.”

I was nearly moved to tears. Or to itch. I can’t remember which.

More honors: Tom O’Leary of Covina, meanwhile, achieved a “dishonorable mention” in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest staged by San Jose State University. This is a compliment, by the way, since that competition invites entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst possible novel.

The contest namesake wrote the line “It was a dark and stormy night,” later to be immortalized by Charles M. Schulz’s dog of an author, Snoopy.

Anyway, O’Leary wrote: “As she lay in the embrace of her lover’s arms following their ardent lovemaking, Sharon quietly hoped the moment could last forever, well, not really forever, since she had a pedicure in two hours, followed by lunch with her former college roommates, but at least for a long while or so.”

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Reach Steve Harvey 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 or e-mail steve.harvey@latimes.com.