In Newport Beach, Where There’s Smoke, There’s Somebody’s Pants on Fire
Liar, liar ... No, really, I’m telling the truth when I say that authorities in Newport Beach responded to a report of smoke in a garage and found only some pants on fire. Nobody in ‘em, luckily.
On the road: While visiting an island near Hong Kong, Ken Nelson of Palm Springs noticed a somewhat disquieting sign (see photo). “No one was in the water,” he added.
Speaking of sharks: Disney, as you may have read, is trying to unload the Anaheim Angels. Which makes me wonder if one of the prospective buyers might be the offramp entrepreneur who once tried to acquire another local team (see photo).
Don’t know much about geography: In the magazine of a pilots association, David Anderson of West Hollywood found evidence that Oceanside has washed inland, to damp Northern California (see accompanying). Luckily, the city long ago abandoned the slogan “Tan Your Hide in Oceanside.”
Dueling suburbs: Enough talk about the San Fernando Valley, future home of the city of the Valley or Camelot or 29 Malls or whatever. The other valley has some ambitious plans, too.
The San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership was quoted as saying that Pepperdine’s plans to build a branch campus in Pasadena would hasten efforts to “promote the San Gabriel Valley as the intellectual capital of the world.” Who needs Pepperdine? The San Gabriel Valley--specifically, San Dimas--already is known as the setting for the Keanu Reeves classic “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Adventure.”
Get me to the shore on time: “Nightmare Honeymoons” was the subject of a survey on radio station KOST the other day. My favorite story was told by a woman who eloped to Hawaii with her fiance--and five members of his family.
“They didn’t want us to be alone,” she said.
Upon arrival, she got into an argument with her fiance in the lobby. Her mother-in-law-to-be, it turned out, “wanted adjoining rooms to our suite.”
Things got worse. The best man dropped out two days before the wedding. On the big day, the groom decided to go marlin fishing. He promised to be back for the 2 p.m. nuptials. He made it, smelling of the sea.
The morning after the wedding, the phone rang at 7. It was the mother-in-law, informing her son he had left some of his clothes in her room.
The KOST caller said she and the marlin fisherman are still married and she’s come to know her mother-in-law as a “wonderful person.”
Sounds logical to me: The police log of the Los Alamitos-News Enterprise reported that, in Cypress, “a man parked in the alley behind a residence for four nights said he got better cellular phone reception there.”
Let’s hope she didn’t bite too: The “Call of the Week” in the same police log concerned a woman who was arrested “after she claimed she was Mike Tyson and struck another woman walking nearby.”
miscelLAny: Linda Tervillian sent along this Internet quip illustrating why husbands are not secretaries. A note that a spouse left for his wife on the refrigerator door said: “Someone from the Gyna College called. They said Pabst beer is normal.”
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, and by e-mail at [email protected].