Surfing Attorneys Are Just Asking for a Whole New Slew of Lawyer Jokes

I read in the L.A. Daily Journal that a new group called the Surfing Lawyers Assn. will gather next week in Santa Monica for its first official meeting.

The group plans to design a logo, Web site, bumper stickers and T-shirts and will even hold some meetings on the water.

I think we can all agree it’s nice to see lawyers chasing waves for a change.

I just hope that the coastal cities have erected adequate cautionary signs for the surfing barristers, i.e., “Warning: Waves are powerful forces that can hurt you.”

By the way, I know that someone out there will ask me if I’ve heard the joke that Danny DeVito utters in the 1989 movie “War of the Roses.”

So I might as well tell it. It’s the joke that begins: “What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”

The answer: “A good start.”

Maybe the group can put that on its T-shirts.

Funny furniture: To get you in the mood for a relaxing summer, this column spotlights the following buys (see accompanying):

Some covers for your sagging mattress (Mary Harris).

A water bed that must be X-rated (Hal Durion of Claremont).

And a loveseat that would be perfect for the leader of an oil kingdom (Leslie Ogden of San Luis Obispo).

Long on confusion: It’s been sort of a disorienting week in Long Beach.

On the recording for jurors phoning to check their status, the clerk mistakenly said “January” instead of “June” several times.

One juror group, for instance, was told not to report for duty on Monday but to “call again Tuesday, Jan. 4.”

Then, for Tuesday’s general election, the city’s sample ballot had the correct date but became confused over the name of the cartoon character (Phil? Fill?) it designed to help voters avoid election snafus (see accompanying).

While it’s January in Long Beach ...: It appears to be December in Huntington Beach. The police log of that city’s Wave reported: “Some time during the night, someone spread fake snow on several lawns.”

Valley alert: Radio station KCRW produced a tape of “The Zebra-Striped Hearse,” by Ross Macdonald, about an overprotective Bel-Air father who hires private detective Lew Archer after his 24-year-old daughter runs off with a mysterious painter.

Much of the action is set in and around Los Angeles, and this is one time the Valley won’t feel left out.

When the father (played by Ed Asner) fires Archer (Harris Yulin), he shouts, “Get out of my house! Get out, you hear?”

Responds Archer: “They can hear you in Tarzana.”

MiscelLAny: The Huntington Beach Wave’s crime report also included the sighting of a “suspicious person” described as an older man “wearing a baseball cap and a fatigue shirt walking down the street looking eccentric.”

It’s the last time I go for a walk in that city.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, and by mail at L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles 90012.