At Home With Brevity, He Gets Right to the Point
We live in a rush-rush era of short attention spans. And advertisers know their billboards have to get the point across quickly. Maybe it was an ex-Madison Avenue exec whom Valerie Macaray spotted at Venice Beach -- a guy holding a sign that read, “Homeless, etc.”
Which reminds me: Motorists who’ve involuntarily had their windshields wiped while they waited at a stoplight in L.A.’s skid row area will recognize the point in one scene in “Shrek 2.” A horse-drawn carriage in the Middle Ages pulls up to a corner, whereupon a street person emerges and begins to brush off the horses, hoping for a handout.
The Tell-Us-Something-We- Didn’t-Know Department: Art Grofsky of Northridge found a food package that repeated the cliche about California being full of oddballs (see accompanying).
No age discrimination here: Dan Fink and several other readers noticed an ad for a job calling for extensive experience, to say the least (see accompanying). Of course, as Fink noted, Methuselah supposedly did live 900 years.
I’d require some references: Dee Brown and Glenn Lee spotted an item for sale that I might consider buying, depending on who the previous owner was (see accompanying).
Now, if it was Albert Einstein ...
Webbed site: “A family of ducks caused a traffic jam in the second and third lanes” of Seal Beach Boulevard, the city’s Sun newspaper said. “When the police came, they ducked into a planter, possibly averting a quack-up.”
Annals of strange police calls: “A woman called to say she went outside and kicked something on her lawn that looks like a hand,” the crime log of the Aliso Viejo News reported. “She said it was hard, there’s no fingers, but it looked like there’s possibly stubs.”
She also raised the possibility that it was just a “chew toy.”
I don’t think you’re going to like this picture! While several cities in California have cameras set up to snap the license plates of red-light runners, the L.A. Daily Journal reports that Wilmington, N.C., has more innovative methods.
For instance, that city’s officers sometimes dress up as “golfers looking for their ball at the edge of a golf course and ... outfitted with radar guns, they radio ahead to a partner dressed in a normal police uniform, who then tickets the offending drivers.”
As for the photo tickets, I’m reminded of the urban folk tale about the driver who received one, then mailed back a photo of the cash he was fined. In return, he received a photo of a jail cell. He sent in the money.
miscelLAny: Well, I’m off for two weeks to teach at a journalism workshop for high school students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
I hope these kids can teach me something.
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.