Las Vegas Proposal for a Mob Museum May Spell Trouble for the Careless

I read in the Wall Street Journal where Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has proposed a “mob museum” to honor some of the illustrious founders of the desert burg. Why should Tony Soprano get all the attention these days? Whatever, let’s hope no one disses Flamingo Hotel founder Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel this time around--I mean, as far as spelling his last name correctly.

A previous tribute to the mobster, a street in a Las Vegas development, was named Bugsy Siegal Circle. (And, no, it wasn’t a different Bugsy). This wasn’t the first such snub. After the mobster was shot to death in a Beverly Hills mansion in 1947, his toe tag in the morgue read “Seigel.”

Speaking of rest stops: Ken Johnson of Irwindale noticed that a group called Alive After Five chose an ironic spot for a get-together (see accompanying).

Wait until the Humane Society hears about this: Passing through Flagstaff, Ariz., Judy Post saw a sign that raises the question: How would you apply the Denver boot? (see photo).

Quite a burden for the mail carrier: Carol Lamar of Fairmont Elementary School in Yorba Linda was reading a brochure for a new third-grade weekly newspaper when she “came across this incentive to subscribe” (see accompanying).

While she’d love to have some help, the shipments are weekly, and she’s wondering if her tiny classroom would be able to hold the accumulation of human cargo.

Radio daze: Author Don Barrett shook up some of his readers the other day, writing on his popular laradio.com Web site that he was retiring his cyber column to collect $10 million from a mysterious Nigerian e-mailer.

It was a joke, of course, a reaction, he says, to the 300 or so spam e-mails he receives a day, including the never-ending offers from Nigeria. But another Web site picked up the report of his retirement. Some readers hated to see him go, while one less emotional fan asked about acquiring Barrett’s archives.

But talk-show host Hugh Hewitt of KRLA-AM scoffed at the announcement, informing Barrett that he had beaten him to the Nigerian money.

Taming of the shrill: A colleague was about to board a Metrolink train in Anaheim when he heard “two businessmen pacing back and forth in front of me, blabbing loudly on their cell phones, passing each other like royal sentries on patrol. Then they got on the train and sat next to me.

“I put on my headphones and tried to drown out their chatter while I read my book. But they were both trying to talk over the other and kept ratcheting up the volume.”

After several minutes of this audio assault, he decided “to begin reading aloud to them from ‘Taming of the Shrew.’ They looked stunned and asked what I was doing. I continued reading without acknowledging them. Then they told me they were very busy and tried to go about their business. So I ratcheted up the Bard.

“When the train pulled into the station, I shut the book and disembarked. I’m not sure they got the point, but it made my day.”

Good for him, even if a more appropriately titled Shakespeare play would have been “Measure for Measure.”

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miscelLAny: A classmate of my son says that when solicitors call his home, the family hands the phone to his 3-year-old sister to practice her singing.

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.