Let’s Hope This Artist Isn’t Driven to Slice an Ear

Van Gogh sold hardly anything during his lifetime, but that was no consolation to an 8-year-old Goleta art student who received all of $5 for one of his paintings.

Problem was, it was not for sale. The just-finished work had been left outside only to dry and was to be entered in a local competition, reported the Goleta Valley Voice.

When a teacher went to retrieve it, all she found was a $5 bill left in its place. The unidentified artist was quoted as saying, “I worked for about five days on the painting, and it sure is worth more than $5.”

Definitely not a proponent of art for art’s sake.

If you plan to drop in, be careful: Marlene Ledesma of Lake Arrowhead spotted an open house that was open in more ways than one (see photo).

Dueling signs: Janet O of Santa Monica noticed that a cigarette notice and a menu description contradicted each other (see photo).

As if the 405 didn’t have enough problems: “Prison Break Alert,” exclaimed an electronic sign on the San Diego Freeway. This wasn’t a real-life emergency message, like an Amber Alert (though some motorists might have locked their doors in the slow-moving traffic just to be safe). The warning, on a Lawndale city message board, referred to a TV series.

And it reminded me of a message snapped awhile back by Mike Evans of La Mesa near an prison in Oklahoma (see photo). That message was serious, podner.

The L.A. River -- literary inspiration: How about this for the opening sentence of a novel? “A single sparkling tear,” wrote Bill Mac Iver of Berkeley, “fell from little Mary’s cheek onto the sidewalk, then slid into the storm drain, there to join in its course the mighty waters of the Los Angeles River and, eventually, Long Beach Harbor, with its state-of-the-art container-freight processing facilities.”

Pretty awful, you say? That was the idea. Mac Iver won in the “Purple Prose” category of the Bulwer-Lytton literary competition at San Jose State.

The event is named in honor of the writer who began a novel with the words, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

miscelLAny: The return of traffic cameras to the intersections of L.A. recalls an urban folk tale mentioned in the new book “Survive the Drive!” by David Rizzo.

A red-light-running motorist, angered when he received a photo of himself in the car along with a traffic ticket in the mail, sent back a photo of a check in the amount of the fine. He, in turn, received a photo of a pair of handcuffs -- and sent in the money.

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.