The Real Bah-Humbug Spirit of Christmas -- It’s Better to Take Than to Give

Ready for a heart-warming Christmas story? Well, this isn’t quite it. The police log of the Coastline Pilot newspaper reported that Laguna Beach officers were “called to intervene when a Christmas tree delivery service accidentally made a delivery to the wrong address.... The homeowner refused to hand it over.”

The delivery company said it would bill the homeowner.

Christmas Story II: A college student in Illinois was allegedly cheated out of a computer by a bogus-check writer in an eBay transaction.

The victim made some inquiries on the Internet and found that a Los Angeles resident also claimed to have been swindled. So the student set up his own sting operation, offering another computer through his girlfriend’s eBay account.

The suspect answered the ad and was directed to an address where police were waiting. The suspect’s name:

Melvin Christmas.

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Not so fast, Gray Davis: A reader has sent me compelling evidence of what may have been an election snafu as big as the one that befell Florida in 2000. It’s a calendar that shows that Nov. 5, which was election day, fell on a Sunday, among other days (see accompanying).

Gee, wouldn’t it be fun to have the election nullified so all those political commercials could resume?

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Sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock plot: Mike Zepeto of L.A. received a life insurance flier and wondered if “it pays to murder your spouse” (see accompanying).

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Life’s a beach: I have a dry-skin problem, so I guess I wouldn’t have any trouble gaining entrance to one shop in Seal Beach (see photo).

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Dueling Harveys: Mention was made here of a visit to a drugstore by my sister, Marilyn Stein of Pacific Palisades, to pick up some medicine for her dog. Though the prescription was made out to Sammy Canine Stein, and she informed the busy pharmacist that Sammy was a dog, he warned her not to let Sammy drink any alcohol or operate heavy machinery.

Anyway, a few days later, a friend of Stein’s said that he had heard Paul Harvey tell the story. “No, Steve Harvey, my brother,” Stein said.

“No, it was Paul Harvey,” the friend insisted, explaining that he listens to the broadcaster’s syndicated news program every day. It was the latest of many items that the other Harvey has picked up from this column over the years without crediting the L.A. Times.

As a reader remarked awhile back, if I write a book, it should be titled, “As Retold by Paul Harvey.” By the way, Paul, feel free to use this item.

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miscelLAny: Steve Koenig takes me to task, a little bit, for my story about the street person who mistook me for a panhandler one morning and offered me some money.

(I was only trying to get change to buy a newspaper, though I wasn’t dressed very well.)

“I laughed at first,” Koenig said, “then thought about it, and found the incident kind of touching. That guy has more class than a lot of people I know.”

Good point. But I’m going to work on improving my wardrobe.

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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.