Unlocking a Student’s Potential to Get in Embarrassing Straits

Does this mean he’s engaged? USC’s crime log reports that officers “responded to a student who woke up in his residence with a bicycle U-lock secured around his neck.... The student stated that he did not know who might have placed it on him due to the fact that he was extremely intoxicated the previous night.”

School daze (cont.): Mike Dunn of Claremont noticed that a Claremont Colleges’ calendar got a failing score for spelling (see accompanying).

Don’t know much about history, either: Tom Bratter of West L.A. pointed out that statesman/soldier/explorer John C. Fremont (1813-90), nicknamed the Great Pathfinder, would have a difficult time finding the library named after him if he relied on one Metro bus guide (see accompanying).

United Nations footwear: Kathy Tarr spotted an ad for what she figures is “a Finnish shoe made in Germany to wear in the islands” (see accompanying).

Out of cold storage: The Times’ Calendar section reported that “A Rainy Day in L.A.,” the unpublished novel of Maritta Wolff, was stowed in a refrigerator at her house for 30 years.

Wolff has since died and the manuscript was recently removed and published under the title “Sudden Rain” (I like the first title better).

Some other works that have never seen the light of day (in descending order of importance):

* An undetermined number of short stories by Ernest Hemingway, lost in 1922 at a Paris train station; his wife, Hadley, was bringing them to him in Lausanne, Switzerland, when the valise containing them disappeared.

* A chapter titled “A Severe Insult to the Brain,” from the late Truman Capote’s unfinished novel “Answered Prayers,” last seen in 1979, according to Capote, under the bed in a lover’s Westside apartment.

* An account by Steve Harvey of a 1963 Hamilton High track meet intended for the school newspaper, the Federalist; the printer tossed it away, making good on his threat to refuse to publish any more stories handed in after deadline by Harvey.

miscelLAny: I mentioned thematic parking notices, i.e. church signs that say, “Thou Shalt Not Park Here.” J. Schwartz of Marina del Rey came upon a warning on an alley wall in Venice that would be more appropriate for a zoo parking lot.

It said:

“Do not park here

“Your car will be toad.”

Talk about an insult to the brain.

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.