Breakers Oust Artists in Laguna Beach; Are Poets and Banana Slugs Next?
The Artists nickname has been given the brushoff by students at Laguna Beach High. Gone, too, is the school’s symbol: a painter’s palette and brush (which none of the teams displayed, anyway). Now, the school’s athletes will be called the more formidable-sounding Breakers, the name that drew the most votes in a student ballot.
The city’s Coastline News reported that Bryce Loidolt, a member of the student senate, led the move to change the nickname. Oh, yes, Loidolt takes part in another activity--he’s a safety on the football team. Where will it all end? I hope the demise of the Artists doesn’t threaten the existence of such other refreshingly unmacho team nicknames as the Poets (Whittier College), the Anteaters (Irvine), the Banana Slugs (UC Santa Cruz) or, across the border, the Fighting Artichokes (Scottsdale [Ariz.] Community College).
A little privacy, please! This month’s City Talk, the always-exciting newsletter of the city of Paramount, tells of a man who was upset after being pulled over for driving a stolen car. Officers said the driver seemed less agitated about his impending arrest, however, than about having his possessions placed on the roof of the car--especially a bottle of Viagra.
Good thing Jake can’t read: Columnist colleague Will Rogers tells me that his Airedale, Jake, got into a scrap with another hound, underwent surgery and then was put on antibiotics.
Rogers is optimistic about Jake’s recovery, despite the directions imprinted on the prescription bottle: “Jake: One tab daily till goner” (see photo).
Unreal estate: Brian Bolling of Manhattan Beach sent along a listing for a property with one unspoiled feature that might catch the eye of an outdoorsman (see accompanying).
Memorial Day weekend gets longer every year: Kathleen Sheldon and Stephen Tarzynski of Santa Monica stayed at a hotel that was laboring under the wrong impression about the name of the latest holiday (see accompanying).
Beached: So why was that aging, somewhat shabby-looking 27-foot-long sloop sitting on concrete outside the Society of St. Vincent de Paul headquarters in L.A.? Someone had donated the craft to the charity’s gift shop. And, a few days later, someone else bought it for $500. The unusual sale represented a nice haul for the society’s outreach projects and, added spokesman Brian Pickering, “it freed up three parking spots in our lot.”
Getting even: I asked for readers who’ve come up with imaginative ways of dealing with those endless e-mails from mysterious individuals in Nigeria and other countries promising millions of dollars. Well, Dr. Sidney Kahn says he’s programmed his computer so that when he receives one of these offers, he can forward all the spam he has to the get-rich-quickster, as well as materials about spam investigations. I like the concept: Share the spam!
MiscelLAny: The city of Whittier (and, of course, its college) were named after 19th century poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Hence, the team nickname. Soon after the city’s founding, Whittier was offered a free lot if he would move to the Southern California city from Massachusetts. He never even visited.
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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.
