Capistrano Valley mystery chef leaves only an aroma

Talk about a fiendish crime!

The police log of the Capistrano Valley News said “a resident reported that an unknown subject came into her residence and cooked something with garlic.”

The resident added that “her daughter was home at the time, but didn’t see or hear anyone inside.”

That last part’s not a surprise. I know that when my teenagers are in their rooms, the Russian army could march through the house and they wouldn’t notice.

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Shades of the ‘60s!

George Burditt of Thousand Oaks dined at a restaurant that seemed to be flouting the no-smoking laws (see photo). Or, I guess, you could take the marijuana to go (no jokes about druggie bags, please).

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Pardon the interruption

On a Lotto ticket, my colleague Cary Schneider noticed a warning that may or may not have caught the eye of serious gamblers (see accompanying).

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Gas pains

With the day of $4-a-gallon gas approaching (surprise, President Bush!), Times staff writer Pete Thomas saw an unfavorable commentary on oil companies on a Prius in Manhattan Beach (see photo).

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Fernandomania

David Chan of L.A. wonders whether Mississippi Valley State will find its way to the Honda Center in Anaheim for its Thursday game against UCLA in the NCAA basketball tournament.

He read in the Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth newspaper that Dr. Roy Hudson, the school’s interim president, said, “We’re going from the Mississippi Valley to the Fernando Valley, and we plan to show those people in Los Angeles just what the Valley is all about.”

Keep your eyes open for some lost Mississippi students, all of you out Fernando way.

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A tub of hope

The Times recently hosted a crew filming the story of a onetime homeless violinist whose life has been written about by columnist Steve Lopez. Reading Foreign Editor Marjorie Miller’s funny account in Sunday’s newspaper of the reaction of the movie folks to our work area, I was reminded of a couple of previous visits to The Times by Hollywood.

An actress researching a TV role as a hot-shot reporter once walked around the city room for more than an hour, carrying a notepad. When she left, a colleague of mine noticed she had scrawled only one thing on the pad: “Big Red Dictionary.”

On another occasion, actor Randy Quaid surveyed my pod while preparing to play a disheveled columnist in “The Paper.” (The disheveled part was a coincidence.)

He was most taken with a small gray wash tub I kept on my desk for junk mail. “That’s going to be in the movie,” he promised, but alas it wasn’t.

The day after I saw the movie, I fired the tub.

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miscelLAny

Some Sushi joints have edgy menus, with dishes like “911 Roll” and “Heart Attack.” It’s almost as though they’re daring diners to sample their food.

But such is the not the case with Yucki Sushi of Rowland Heights, which was discovered by Doug Stokes of Duarte.

The name, I was told a by a restaurant worker, refers to snow.

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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