Making a Clean Sweep of Fibbers Who Fizzle Under Pressure

For your stupid-criminal-tricks file, Sgt. Richard Longshore of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department recalled the time he went to the home of a suspect to arrest her. When he knocked, a female voice asked who was there. He identified himself and said he was looking for the suspect. The voice said she wasn’t home. Longshore, noticing that the suspect’s car was in the driveway, asked the speaker to identify herself. “I’m my maid,” the suspect responded.

Could that have been...nah! The final scenes of “Collateral,” a film about a hit man played by Tom Cruise, occur on a Metro Rail train. The filmmakers were given one train to use and outfitted it with all sorts of cameras and other gadgets, reports Star News, a Sheriff’s Department publication. Later, the filmmakers realized they needed an outside shot of a moving train but couldn’t use that one because their equipment inside might show. So, they decided to film the next inbound train, since no one was on it that evening. Or so they thought. Actually, there were two passengers. The scene was shot anyway. And who knows what the passengers thought when they saw Cruise running alongside them, peering inside, screaming and pounding on the door.

A-trashing we will go! Full of Christmas spirit, artist Joaquin Blanco created a “Garbage-Candy Cane” sculpture (see night and day shots) at the Westchester home of a friend. It’s an assemblage of 30 garbage canisters, adorned by faux-crystal lamps. Blanco was also going to create a grouping of lollipops made from the canister lids but decided against it. “I’m pooped,” he said.

Unclear on the concept: I noticed a wristwatch ad that associated Humphrey Bogart with a word defined in my dictionary as “polished fastidiousness or refined grace” (see photo). I could see Bogie described as sardonic or cynical or wise-cracking. But elegant? Call him that, and he’d have laughed in your face -- or maybe taken a swing at it.

Pulling teeth: An item about a Pomona dentist with a fitting name appeared here recently, and it rang a bell with columnist David Allen of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, who interviewed Larry Toothaker after his retirement (see photo).

Toothaker told Allen that the roster of students in his dental school class at Marquette University also included a Payne and a Gum. Shortly before Toothaker’s graduation, a member of the Marquette dentistry department took him aside and suggested he change his name for business reasons.

Toothaker also told Allen a story about an elderly patient who inquired whether she could ask him a personal question. He said yes, whereupon she put her hand on his arm and asked, “What was your real name?”

miscelLAny: The photo here of a sign that said, “Eyebrows for Lease,” reminded JoAnne Fink of Sherman Oaks of a sign she saw in Westwood: “Ears Pierced While You Wait.”

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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.