Laguna Beach Resident Flip-Flops on Sandals, Wants Cops to Get Them Back

I don’t want to imply that some residents of the affluent city of Laguna Beach are a tad spoiled, but I did notice this in the Coastline Pilot newspaper’s log of calls to police: “Forest Avenue: A resident threw his flip-flop sandals on top of an overhang in the 200 block at 2:09 a.m. He wanted the city to get them down and an officer to mail them back to him.”

Asking for trouble: A while back, I ran a photo of a bus displaying a message that said: “If you can’t keep up with this bus, better see us.” Problem was, the bus was sitting on the side of the road, having broken down. Anyway, a reader who works for a Southland transportation agency and collects humorous shots of buses passed along another that bore an equally ironic message (see photo).

Food for thought: I’ve heard of after-dinner speakers, but Craig Endler of Canyon Country found another variety (see accompanying).

Flipped out: Not all the state’s crazy drivers live here. Jeff Bliss, formerly of Newbury Park (and always a sensible driver), noticed traffic being held up on a street in San Luis Obispo by a woman in “a mini-van full of kids who was reading/asking questions from a study aid/flipbook. Here she is, flipping through the book. It’ll be a miracle if the children live long enough to study for their college entrance exams.”

Oh, Dancer! Oh, Prancer! The police log of the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise said a business owner complained that someone repositioned the reindeer in his outdoor display so that they appeared to be in amorous poses.

No need to send a postcard: “Seems like political figures are always in the news for untoward travel, tours and junkets,” wrote Jeff Haas, recalling such figures as Sam “Travelin’ Sam” Yorty, the late L.A. mayor.

And Haas points out that the Avalon City Council recently went on a jaunt that also smelled, though not for the usual reasons. It was described in a headline of the Catalina Islander: “City Council tours the Landfill.”

MiscelLAny: The Lakers may be playing miserably of late, but at least they’re behaving off the court. Three players on the Portland Trail Blazers, by contrast, have had run-ins with the law in recent days. KFWB-AM radio’s Bret Lewis passed along the joke about the Trail Blazers’ new uniforms: white at home, orange along the freeways.

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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.