This woman’s emergency call was an appeal concerning a peel

For your file of unusual emergency calls, a woman dialed 911 to report that her husband had thrown a banana peel at her. He’d better watch his step. So should she.

Boo (cont.): One more set of Halloween shots guaranteed to render you too frightened to leave the house (see photos).

Some apples you wouldn’t want to bob for (from Scott Woods)

A graveyard with a redundant sign (from Walter Shields)

A macabre storage business (from Robert Manney)

A funeral home that sounds anything but somber (from Aaron Lewis)

And a global firm that must be busy every Oct. 31 (from Paul Parmentier)

No cents of humor: Near a Long Beach bar, writer Steve Propes was approached by a drunk who said: “If I tell you a joke and make you laugh, is it worth a dollar?” Propes said no and walked off before the comic could lower his rates.

Much ado: Propes, who writes the “Community Scanner” column for the Beachcomber newspaper, also saw a man outside a supermarket ask a customer for a quarter so he could pick up some pills from the pharmacy inside. He showed his prescription as proof. The customer gave him a few coins and moved on. The man spotted another customer and made the same request. The second customer invited him into the store and said he’d pay for the prescription. Thus was concluded what Propes called a rare “legal drug deal.”

Venerating the Valley: It was Johnny Carson of NBC’s “Tonight Show” who coined the phrase “Beautiful Downtown Burbank.” City officials loved it, ignoring the fact that the line always drew laughs.

Indeed, Carson would make other references to BDB, such as: “Burbank has 94 departures. No arrivals, just departures.” But at least he was getting the name out there.

Now, NBC says it’s relocating from Burbank to Universal City. Which moved the Daily News to suggest, in all seriousness, this intro for the program: “From the beautiful San Fernando Valley, it’s the ‘Tonight Show.’ ”

I dunno. That title lacks alliteration. Considering the Valley’s X-rated movie industry, made famous (or infamous) in the movie, “Boogie Nights,” I think a snappier line would begin: “From the sinful San Fernando Valley . . . “

miscelLAny: Catching the Halloween spirit, the Seal Beach Sun conducted person-on-the-street interviews on the subject “What is scary to you?” The answers: spider decorations, fires, roller coasters and “women in the real estate business.”

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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., Beautiful Downtown L.A. 90012; and by e-mail at steve.harvey @latimes.com.