In a City Renowned for Roses, This MTA Driver Sees Silver and Black

Inasmuch as the unruly team departed L.A. for Oakland a decade ago, a friend of mine was surprised to see an MTA bus in Pasadena displaying the digital message, GO RAIDERS.

Don’t worry, Al Davis isn’t buying ad space preparatory to an invasion.

As an MTA spokesman told me a while back, some of the bus operators apparently remember the old code for punching out the name of the team.

Or have it tattooed on their arms.

Who says bus travel is dull? Can you imagine anything more spine-tingling than having a Raiders fan at the steering wheel?

Which reminds me: I was watching one of the best shows on TV, 25-year-old reruns of “Columbo,” when a suspicious character admitted to having driven to Pasadena. The rumpled detective pulled out his trusty note pad but hesitated before writing.

“Pasadena,” Columbo repeated. “Is that with two Ns?” There’s something about the city that has always inspired wisecracks from writers.

In the 1991 movie, “L.A. Story,” inept TV weatherman Steve Martin also had problems with the name, announcing, “We’re going to have a low coming in over Pa Sad Na -- sorry, that’s Pasadena.”

In “The Very Thought of You” (1944), on-leave soldier Dane Clark accidentally got whacked in the face by his girlfriend’s door and grumbled, “I had to come to Pasadena to get wounded.”

Even compliments sound funny now. In “A Star Is Born” (1954), a maitre d’ advised a tipsy James Mason against making a pass at one society woman, informing Mason that “she’s Pasadena.” I hate to think that the Raiders are Pasadena these days.

Ooh L.A. L.A.: Mary deVall of Santa Monica saw an ad that made it sound as though some wine buyers were, well, risque folks (see accompanying).

Legal tangles: One day in mid-April, at a law firm where he used to work, Michael Johnson wrote, a senior partner “gave his secretary a draft document to mail to the general counsel of a major corporate client, and later he gave the secretary his state and federal income tax returns for mailing.

“The secretary mixed up everything, and mailed his federal tax return to the corporate general counsel. Needless to say, it was tough to get a fee increase from that client for quite some time.”

Speaking of mix-ups: Make sure you don’t send your federal return to the IRS that Jay Berman of Manhattan Beach chanced upon -- in Canada (see photo). It’s a demolition firm. Come to think of it, that’s what some people say about the IRS in this country.

Mondegreen of the Day: “My 2 1/2-year-old daughter loves to sing,” said Denise Muro of Fontana. “We’ve started listening to a CD of children’s songs that includes ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ in song form. Listening to my daughter, I realized that, not knowing what a lamb was, she filled in a word that she did know and sang ‘Mary had a little man.’ This one simple change gives a whole new meaning to the song!”

miscelLAny: Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills spotted a company that sells balloons for almost every occasion (see photo).

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATimes, Ext. 77083, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.