He didn’t get to the church on...

He didn’t get to the church on time:

In a year-in-review column, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported that a woman tried to file a complaint with the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau against her fiance for backing out of the wedding.

A bureau official said no, explaining, “We’re not into shotgun weddings.”

HOT SEAT: Barry Freeman of Palos Verdes found a local mall with a chair that no one would dare occupy, especially a man on the run from his fiance.

WINNING TICKETS TO BURN: More than $200 million in prizes have been unclaimed since the start of the California Lottery a decade ago. Some uncashed Super Lotto tickets and the cities in which they were purchased:

* $15 million, Pearblossom, Jan. 20, 1996 (30 06 44 22 13 48)

* $4 million, Corona, April 5, 1995 (08, 30, 11, 21, 14, 12)

* $2.76 million, Santa Fe Springs, Sept. 8, 1993 (45, 13, 07, 35, 06, 29)

* $6.44 million, Montebello, Sept. 23, 1992 (12, 50, 31, 49, 36, 08)

* $16.4 million, Garden Grove, Sept. 12, 1990 (34, 16, 38, 26, 23, 35, B03)

* $4.7 million, Hawthorne, June 15, 1988, (32, 20, 10, 17, 40, 01, B31)

Oh, yes. Sorry if you’re just now awakening to discover that you had one of these tickets. Winners have 180 days from the date of the drawing to collect. Afterward, the dough is donated to the state’s schools.

INTO CAUSES: A car on the San Diego Freeway displayed these two bumper stickers:

Free Tibet

Surf Free

CONGRATS! Some locals cited in Esquire’s “Dubious Achievements of 1996”:

* “Winchell’s Donuts, a California chain, announced plans to sell Donut Cologne, which comes in a mini-bakery box emblazoned with a gold badge.” A spokesman said it smells “exactly like a cinnamon crumb doughnut.” Esquire’s comment: “It drives cops wild.”

* Madonna’s pediatrician was Dr. Paul Fleiss, father of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss.

* After the Dodgers’ Hideo Nomo threw a no-hitter, Republican nominee Bob Dole said at a campaign stop: “I’m going to pitch a no-hitter from now until Nov. 5. The Brooklyn Dodgers had a no-hitter last night.”

* Newt Gingrich, introducing Olympic beach volleyball gold medalist Kent Steffes at the Republican Convention, said: “A mere 40 years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about.”

Volleyball Free!

DOLE DRUMS: The Republican nominee’s reference to Brooklyn wasn’t the campaign’s only entertainment world miscue. Only in L.A. recorded two others in 1996:

Howard Cohen of North Hills saw a newscast in which Dole asked a Florida woman if the “Philadelphia A’s” still held spring training there.

And Pat Reddy of Santa Monica noticed that a Republican aide, vowing in California that the Dole-Kemp team had not written off the state, said: “This is not a goodbye tour. This is not like when the Rolling Stones broke up.”

Or the Beatles. Whatever.

miscelLAny

Writer Paul Jackson says his daughter, who works for a Granada Hills church’s answering service, received several calls on Christmas Eve from people asking what time midnight Mass would be held.