Possums, Peanut Butter and Prickly Police Chiefs in South Pasadena

Hot heads: The crime blotter of the Saddleback Valley News reported that a store manager “and a female customer were fighting over hair products.”

Moving on to food fights: An assault case against a Rancho Santa Margarita woman accused of whacking a friend with a peanut butter sandwich has been dismissed for lack of evidence, the Dana Point News said.

Joy DuBord of Dana Point alleged that she was struck on the side of the head during a dispute with Sandra Guba over the affections of a massage therapist last July. Guba denied the attack--termed a sticky-up by some--and said she did nothing more than sprinkle crumbs on DuBord.

Media outlets from here to Denmark covered the messy case. One television station had DuBord reenact the incident.

By the way, professional courtesy dictates that I mention that it was Ricky Young of the Orange County Register who revealed the brand of peanut butter involved was Jif.

Can’t we all get along? Then there’s this from the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise: “An opossum on a garage shelf kept hissing at the resident and would not leave.”

On the road: Who wouldn’t want to get on the road with all this local strife? On a visit to Washington, D.C., Alice Clifner of Mission Viejo caught a couple of workers who looked as though they were part of a “Paint by Number” display (see photo).

Speaking of numbers: Here are some figures that apparently were certified by Arthur Andersen (see accompanying):

* An ad for a cooling system that would prompt customers to wait until the sale was over (Daniel Giang, Yucaipa).

* An NFL toy for extremely old children (Sharon Ruiz of L.A.).

* And a notice of a fluctuating deadline from the city of Rancho Palos Verdes (resident Steve Katz).

Don’t even ask about Gomer: Photographer Henk Friezer attended a reception for Dan Watson, the new police chief of South Pasadena. Someone compared South Pasadena to TV’s sleepy “Mayberry,” prompting Watson to say: “I want you to know I’m no Andy Griffith and my officers are no Barney Fifes.”

miscelLAny: Writing about radio promotion slogans on his Laradio.com Web site, author Don Barrett points out that “KLAC has been using ‘Not just facts, but feelings.’ ”

But inasmuch as the station has both talk and infomercials, Barrett suggests this slogan: “‘I feel the infomercials are awful.”

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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.