Last Year Looking Better -- or at Least Funnier -- All the Time

The year has started inauspiciously hereabouts, what with the last-minute postponement of L.A.’s New Year’s Eve party, the rainfall that befell the Rose Parade and the beating of USC in the Rose Bowl. So far, I don’t like the looks of 2006. So let’s retreat to 2005 one last time for some cheering up.

The Seal Beach Sun’s year-end list of humorous crime-log calls included these:

* Jan. 20: A dog was reported barking outside a residence and the animal’s tone “wasn’t the same tone it usually used.”

* July 16: A resident complained “that a child had been bouncing a basketball all day long.”

* Oct. 28: A resident baby-sitting a neighbor’s dog reported that the animal would not allow her to enter her own home. Bad boy!

Meanwhile....: In the Inland Empire, columnist David Allen of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin took note of these 2005 misadventures:

A burglar who parked his car in the driveway of his victim in Diamond Bar was later arrested after the victim (surprise!) took down his license plate number.

A man armed with a bow and arrow tried to hijack a train in Montclair.

It didn’t work. He was charged with carjacking, there being no law against stealing a locomotive with, or without, a bow and arrow.

And one last Christmas note: In South Pasadena, Henk Friezer of Eagle Rock spotted one structure that had the holiday spirit (see photo). Don’t think Santa went in there, though -- or was that one of the reindeer waiting for him?

Dueling signs: David Boone of L.A. found a business whose guarantee didn’t exactly shine (see photo).

Thanks for the explanation: John Koerber of North Hollywood noticed an identifying sign on a North Hollywood edifice that qualifies as the first “Duh!” award of 2006 (see photo).

Beats a telemarketer, any time: In the USC publication Annenberg Agenda, the much-honored radio dramatist Norman Corwin, now 95, recalls hearing “one of the great lines in Hollywood history.” His phone had rung and he picked it up to hear the “unforgettable voice” of actress Marilyn Monroe, whom he had met at a party a few weeks earlier. She asked if he was Norman Corwin and when he admitted he was, she said, “This is Marilyn Monroe. Do you remember me?”

New civic status symbol? A letter-writer to the Long Beach Press-Telegram recently complained, “A 98-cent store on Pine Avenue speaks volumes about the absence of political leadership in our city. We can’t even get a 99-cent store!”

miscelLAny: A plaque at the Disney Concert Hall (see photo) carries this quote from Diane Disney Miller, whose late mother, Lillian, was one of the principal financial backers of the building: “My mother told me she wanted it to look like a little brick church covered with vines.”

Architect Frank Gehry evidently pictured it just a bit differently.

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 [email protected].