Don’t Mess With a Laker Fan, Even in Court

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kelvin Filer was presiding over a preliminary hearing involving a robbery suspect who may have worn Shaquille O’Neal-brand shorts. One attorney moved to have the togs physically submitted as evidence, rather than mentioned in the record only.

Filer, a Laker fan who was painfully aware that O’Neal had made the move to the Miami Heat, replied: “No, no. The shorts had the Shaq logo on the bottom. And I’m not taking anything that has a Shaq logo on it.”

L.A. Laker Law (cont.): “Of course, I was kidding,” Filer later said of his reasoning. “I never receive items into evidence at a prelim.”

Someone needs a history lesson: A botched sign mentioning the 40th president caught the eye of Henk Friezer of Eagle Rock (see photo).

Bottoms up! Steve Kenney passed along a memo from an MTA official about a national bus-driving competition that sounded as though L.A. was entering some real partying types (see accompanying). I’m sure that the memo actually misspelled either “winning” or (in the case of a defeat) “whining.”

There are all types of leisure, I guess: Charlotte Fournier of Laguna Woods was surprised to find what appeared to be an article about ladies of the evening in the Leisure World News, of all publications (see accompanying).

Back to the Shaq: The announcement that Shaquille O’Neal and the Miami Heat will be coming to L.A. to play the Lakers on Dec. 25 inspired Dan Patrick’s show on ESPN radio to rewrite a holiday verse (at least I don’t think the original had any references to Kobe Bryant’s criminal case). It begins this way:

‘Twas the night before Christmas,/ And all through L.A./ Not a creature was stirring/ ‘Cept the Eagle D.A.

The banners were hung off the rafters with care/ With hopes that Jack Nicholson soon would be there./ The players were nestled all snug in their beds/ While visions of Laker girls danced in their heads ...

I’ll stop here before I start to choke up and get all sentimental.

Back to the MTA: In “Collateral,” hit man Tom Cruise tells taxi driver Jamie Foxx that every time he visits L.A., “I can’t wait to leave,” complaining that the City of Angels is “sprawled out ... nobody knows each other.” (Hey, hit men have feelings, too.) Cruise relates how one MTA passenger even died in L.A. and it was six hours before anyone noticed (hopefully not because of any “wining” by MTA folks).

Well, I checked with the Southern California Folklore Society and came upon no references to any such event in L.A. But there was an account of a dead New York subway rider who went unnoticed for several hours in 1999.

“He was found sitting up, his head slightly tilted down, eyes closed, looking like a typical rider taking a catnap before his stop,” the New York Daily News reported.

miscelLAny: I bring up the 1999 incident only because I hate to see New York robbed of credit for this phenomenon.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800)LATimes, 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.