Watch Out! Being on This List Could Be Dangerous
Is San Diego Magazine’s annual January feature, “50 People to Watch,” aimed at general readers or a tip sheet for law enforcement? Last year, the publication’s list included two freshman San Diego City Council members: Michael Zucchet and Charles Lewis.
“We couldn’t have known,” Editor Tom Blair wrote in the current issue, “they’d wind up being indicted in the bizarre Strippergate case involving FBI wiretaps, influence-peddling, Las Vegas sleaze and naked table-dancers.”
Quipped Blair: “Do we know how to pick ‘em, or what?”
Incidentally, I don’t have time to list the “50 People to Watch” for 2004.
But I’m sure that the authorities have taken down the names.
Chew on this: Trader Joe’s has its own brand in several product lines, so I guess it’s not surprising that the chain would also have its own brand of tooth-puller, as this shot by Bobbie’dine (great name!) Rodda of Glendale shows (see photo). Wonder if Trader Joe’s dentists wear Hawaiian shirts?
A real eye-opener: Well, I’ve figured out the inspiration for Starbucks’ name as well as the lettering style of its signs: a coffee shop in Santiago, Chile, snapped by Stefan Dahlerbruch of Beverly Hills (see photo).
Imagine how long the airline security check would take: While in Boston, Elisabeth and Alan Shewmon encountered a sign advertising the largest handbags in America (see photo).
Driving out of bounds (cont.): “Your story about an SUV stuck in a sand trap is not so unusual,” Frank Chen wrote. “The parking lot at the Rose Bowl is the Pasadena golf course, and it is easy to drive into a sand trap when trying to avoid the bunker-to-bunker traffic.”
True, but the sand trap I mentioned was at a golf course in Seal Beach, where no college or pro football teams play. Then again, maybe the late-night SUV driver thought he was in Pasadena.
Postponing the death sentence: Bob Trounson of Sierra Madre was in the seafood section of a market where a woman was buying a live lobster.
“The clerk helped her put the beast in a plastic bag,” Trounson said, “and was about to wrap it up in butcher paper when the customer called out to him, ‘Please poke some holes in the bag!’
“ ‘Pardon me?’ replied the clerk. ‘I don’t want it to die,’ the woman explained, ‘so put some holes in the bag so it can breathe.’ ”
miscelLAny: Regarding the list here of weathercasters with fitting names, Kevin Modesti of the L.A. Daily News writes: “When I was in the Bay Area recently, I saw that the weatherwoman at San Francisco’s KTVU Channel 2 is Julia Sandstrom. I’d like to think it’s supposed to be Sandstorm.”
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.