Blame that freeway jam on Uncle Sam and his taxes
It was a motoring mystery. Several callers complained of backups in both directions on the San Diego Freeway approaching the Sherman Way exit the other night, said traffic reporter Richard Turnage of KFWB-AM (980).
“But,” he added, “none of the agencies we monitor for traffic info was reporting any problem. I speculated on-air that there might be police activity or possible road repairs, but didn’t really know.”
Eventually, Turnage realized the problem wasn’t police activity but taxpayer activity. The cars “were all heading to the post office on Sherman Way, which was staying open until midnight on tax day,” he said. Turnage dubbed it the “Uncle Sam Jam.”
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Really on the hot seat
“No chance of overcooking your steak when you can sit right beside it,” Richard Cowell of Valencia said of an appliance with an unusual feature that he saw advertised (see accompanying).
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More food for thought
Readers have written to me about sushi menu items with such edgy names as “911 Roll” and “Heart Attack.” Now, Pat Lee of Glendale has found a restaurant name that would seem to dare would-be patrons to enter (see photo).
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Offbeat Beauty Treatments Department
Harriet Klein of Palm Springs and Harry Adams of Palm Desert each noticed a machine offering a messy solution to weight reduction (see accompanying).
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Sliming Riverside
In the latest issue of Los Angeles magazine, Mirthala Salinas, the former Telemundo anchorwoman, recounts how she refused to be reassigned to an inland bureau after the revelation of her love affair with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
“It was a matter of dignity,” Salinas said. “They wanted me to go to Riverside. I wasn’t going to Riverside.”
Which prompted a lyrical response from columnist Dan Bernstein in the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
Mirthala, the mayor’s cavorter Saw her TV career shrink to
shorter When she spurned Riverside As undignified! Such logic, we fear, may
contort her.
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Don’t take it personally, Riverside
When it comes to cities, it’s each to his (or her) own.
As for the idea of settling in L.A., Woody Allen said in “Annie Hall”: “I don’t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.”
In James Cain’s novel “Mildred Pierce,” the ambitious title character declares at one point, “I’m never going back to Glendale.”
In a song by Lyn Fawlks & the Rubber Band, an industrial burg along the Pomona Freeway takes it on the chin. El Monte is “just about a mile from Rosemead,” the group warbles, “and a little bit north of Whittier/And you might like the city of Industry/ But our town’s a whole lot prettier.”
And then there are the endorsements that chambers of commerce don’t need. Music producer Phil Spector once said that he moved into an estate in Alhambra because it’s “a hick town where there is no place to go that you shouldn’t.”
Not that that kept Spector out of trouble.
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miscelLAny
A bill in the state Legislature would forbid pet owners from sharing the driver’s seat with their creatures. It was introduced by Assemblyman Bill Maze (R-Visalia) who said one insurance survey found that “8% of the respondents admitted to driving with a pet in their lap.” Wonder how many of the pets have been trained to hold cellphones?
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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., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.