Matt Weinstock, July 15, 1959

I'm sure "Uras" wasn't pronounced the way you think. Either that or the comics editors didn't have a clue.  Only in L.A. Sometimes it is very difficult to make clear to visitors that the natives are not really as quaint as they seem. Take, for instance, Bob Williams, TV editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, vacationing here. To get around our spread-out paradise, Bob rented a car. He parked it the other night at the curb outside the hotel in Beverly Hills where he was staying. Next day at 7 a.m. his doorbell rang. A stranger, polite but with a sense of urgency, asked if Bob would consent to having his car moved two spaces away. Just give him the keys. He would do it. Bob asked why. "We need the space for another car," was the reply. "IT IS IMPERATIVE," he went on, "that my employer's car be parked where your car is -- in front of the walk leading from his bungalow. I know it's an inconvenience and I wish you'd take this." He offered a $20 bill, which Bob declined. Bob, irked at being awakened by such a trivial matter, wanted to know how the stranger had located him. His rented car didn't have his name on it. The stranger said he'd found him through the rental agency, which was the same one from which his employer had rented his car. The more Bob thought of it the more it bugged him. He called the hotel manager. The manager refused to discuss it. He called the rental car agency and asked who the other person was, describing the car. "I can't give you the name," was the discreet reply. However, he confided the name of the big aircraft firm to which the car had been assigned. Baffled Bob will always have a dark suspicion that people here are driven by mad, uncontrollable whimsies. One thing sure -- it couldn't have happened in sedate Philadelphia. :: BREAKDOWN of negotiations and the resultant steel strike reminded newsmen of a classic line in another similar dispute. A union spokesman said to the management representative, "But you're talking money and we're talking people!" Whereupon everyone cried. :: THE stenographic pool at a large organization has been enhanced by some shapely young girls just out of school and an executive, who likes to keep abreast of developments, dropped in the other day and said to the supervisor, "I see you have some new talent." "Yes," she replied sweetly, "but all passes have to go through channels." :: AND THE WAY Don Perkins heard it, two fellows were chatting over coffee and one said, "I had a funny dream last night. I dreamed I was 8 years old and went to Disneyland." "That's strange," the other said, "I had a crazy dream, too. I dreamed that Marilyn Monroe came over to my house and 15 minutes later Jayne Mansfield dropped in." "You mean they were both there?" the first exclaimed. "Why didn't you call me?" "I did," was the reply, "and your mother told me you had gone to Disneyland." :: SOMEONE, Bob McMullen reports, has posted a derisive sign at Laurel Canyon Blvd. and Lookout Mountain Ave., "Guide Maps to Burned Out Homes" . . . And colleagues are talking of awarding a plaque for devotion to duty to a TV announcer who during the chaotic first moments of last Friday's fire kept pleading for people to keep out of the area. "Please stay home," he said, "and enjoy the fire on TV." :: AT RANDOM -- On Sunday Julia Nye counted six family groups enjoying picnic lunches on Hollywood Freeway islands and sidings -- the grassy parts. Apparently tourists think it's a park . . . A man whose little flower shop is near a saloon, into which he makes frequent pilgrimages, is known among his customers as the Petrified Florist. . . Obviously, says Harry Kabakoff, newsboy at 7th and Broadway, the Russian people feel that Mr. K. has an O in front of his name. . . Bruce Baptiste asks a typographical posy to the officer who on July 9 in the noon heat -- above 90 -- stopped and changed a tire for a lady in distress on Harbor Freeway near Vermont Ave.

Comments

[Arye Michael Bender]

"The stenographic pool..." Pity. Nobody left swimming in those pools today,