Get Kicked Out of Town and You’ll Miss All These Great Yard Sales

Don’t try to tell me sports talk-radio listeners aren’t knowledgeable. The McDonnell-Douglas show on ESPN radio (KSPN-AM [710]) asked its audience, “Who do you want to kick out of L.A.?” And one caller nominated “Dodgers manager Dick Tracy.” Uh, that’s Jim. I don’t think he even wears a two-way wrist radio, though perhaps such a device might enable him to find some decent players for his erratic team.

*

Hot air (cont.): The winners of the get-out-of-town competition, by the way, were Donald Sterling, the tight-fisted owner of the woebegone L.A. Clippers, and the radio show’s co-host, Joe “The Big Nasty” McDonnell.

*

What an attractive used toaster! Summer is the time for neighborhood sales, and Southern California seems to have numerous varieties, as you can see from my collection of signs (see accompanying). You can find everything from an event with a marine flavor -- or a sea mammal -- to a sale by a person with the same first name as a British comedic actor. The latter seems to have an excess of quotation marks available, too.

*

School daze: Some students’ comments in the 2004 edition of the Yale Daily News’ Insider’s Guide to the Colleges:

* “Ants really ruined my freshman year” -- on dorm conditions at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

* “I never expected so much skinny-dipping when I decided to come here” -- on one way to wash off the ants at Cal Arts.

* “Keep away from the pasta sauces” -- on dining at UC Irvine.

* “Riverside is a place where you can concentrate on studying because, well, there isn’t much else to do” -- on extracurricular possibilities at UC Riverside.

* “Who cares? Our varsity drinking team is undefeated” -- on the absence of a football team at UC Santa Barbara.

*

Catchy legal names: Mention was made here of the one-time law firm of Argue & Phibbs in Ireland. Here are a few other memorable combinations:

* Bull, Cohn & Assoc. (Santa Barbara)

* Lies & Bullis (Hankinson, N.D.)

* Dewey, Cheatham & Howe (Los Angeles)

OK, as Jennifer Divine points out, that last one was in “The Three Stooges.”

*

miscelLAny: And they’re off! No, they’re on. And they won’t be easy to take off. The Seal Beach Sun reports that race track fan Wayne Wilhelm sports a 9-inch tattoo on his left arm, depicting a full field of quarter horses leaving the gate at the Los Alamitos racecourse. The horse in Gate No. 2 appears to be off to the best start on Wilhelm’s arm.

*

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.