When Lifting Text, Remember to Edit
San Bernardino’s website carries details of its new civic slogan contest including, naturally, several paragraphs of mind-numbing legal conditions. The city apparently borrowed the mumbo jumbo from an event in another state -- and forgot to edit the stuff.
Thus the San Bernardino website says: “The Pennsylvania Tourism Office is not responsible for entries not received due to difficulty accessing the Internet....”
No argument from the Pennsylvania Tourism Office there!
A-sloganeering we shall go: It’s always a mystery to me why cities try artifices such as slogan contests to pump up business, when they’re so tempting to parody.
Columnist David Allen of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, for example, offered these suggestions to the city:
* “San Bernardino: The Blur on the Way to Palm Springs”
* “If You Visit San Bernardino, You’ve Missed the Turn to Vegas”
* “Redlands, Shmedlands”
I think the city wouldn’t mind it if he sent those to Pennsylvania instead.
Contests past: Years ago when Bakersfield was searching for a motto, suggestions from readers of the city’s Californian newspaper included:
“Bakersfield: Where Lizards Go to Die”
“Bakersfield: Closer to the Beach Than Mojave”
And (drum roll):
“Bakersfield: Everybody’s Gotta Be Somewhere”
None of them were chosen.
Sure, it once was rural but... I don’t think Covina wants to be known by the moniker found in an ad by George Bentley of La Puente (see accompanying).
‘Duh!’ award: John Goodlad of Corona del Mar noticed a sign for the extremely unobservant in Irvine (see photo).
Seeing red: I’ve come across more than a few crime blotter items involving angry customers in nail salons. Some of them must have received the service that Nancy Harvey of Laguna Hills read about (see accompanying).
Mondegreens of the day: Several of the word mix-ups sent here involve food (something that’s always on my mind).
Bill Hill of Upland, for example, thought that “There’s a Kind of Hush” by Herman’s Hermits was “There’s a Can of Fish.”
Jim Wilson recalled a popular country song with the lyrics “living on Tulsa time,” which prompted him to wonder why anyone would choose a diet of “toast and wine.”
And Pat and John Chevalier of Temple City wrote: “When Kenny Rogers’ ‘Lucille’ was a big hit, our little daughter, Laura, would sing the passage ‘four hungry children, and a crop in the field,’ as ‘400 children, and a grump in the field.’ There is a certain logic to it.”
miscelLAny: The website www.laradio.com notes that 82 years ago this week, KNX radio went on the air in Los Angeles. Proprietor Fred Christian, considered the city’s first disc jockey, played phonograph records from his bedroom for three hours each night. He didn’t do traffic.
*
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.