A Dumb Crook Grabs a Purse and Finds a Get-Into-Jail-Free Card Inside
For your stupid-criminal-tricks file, an Orange County reader suggests the recent theft of her daughter’s purse. The bad guy used one of her credit cards to purchase a TV system. And, of course, in order to enjoy his new luxury item, he had to give the installers his real address. Which the TV company turned over to the credit card company. Which turned it over to the cops.
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Speaking of asking for trouble: Marty Rauch of West L.A. was a bit surprised that a company would make cashiers’ jobs available only to folks with unsavory pasts (see accompanying).
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Such a deal: On the subject of employment, Dani Wawrzenski of Palos Verdes Estates came upon a pizza company’s flier, which consisted of various dinner specials as well as one “free” offer (see accompanying). What a concept! You go to work for a company and they pay you -- you don’t have to pay them!
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Playing chicken with the CHP: On the Web site of the California Highway Patrol, Vince Stickel came across a dramatic series of dispatches about an intruder at the CHP’s L.A. Communications Center (see accompanying).
Reading from bottom to top, Stickel provided this translation: “There is a live chicken in the north end of the communications center parking lot.”
“Would someone please take some chicken food out there?”
“Can we please get Animal Control started for the dangerous chicken?”
“Unable to locate on the chicken -- LACC parking lot is secure.”
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Such street sorrow: The day after Halloween, I believe, is now considered the start of the holiday shopping season (or is it the day after the Fourth of July?). Anyway, Rod Samonte of Burbank snapped a shot of a sign over a Pasadena parking garage that pretty much sums up what traffic is going to be like as Christmas approaches (see photo).
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Chew on this: The police log of the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise said that a woman took her boyfriend’s “$1,000 pair of dentures during an argument.”
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More food for thought: A customer who had just emerged from the bathroom of a pizza shop “said one of the stall dividers fell on him and [he] wanted a free pizza,” reported the Saddleback Valley News in Mission Viejo. The manager agreed to the deal. You know how mollifying mozzarella can be.
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miscelLAny: The “Free Job” photo reminded me of the scene in “What’s New Pussycat?” in which Woody Allen mentions to Peter O’Toole that he works in a striptease parlor in Paris. How much is the pay? O’Toole asks him. Allen mentions some small amount, $50 a week or so. Not much, O’Toole comments. Allen replies that it’s all he can afford.
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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.
