No Martians — Yet

All
right, relax, everyone. You too, Mary Louise. Those cryptic numerals
and markings on streets and sidewalks were not made by slithering
invaders from another planet plotting our destruction.

Perhaps
you too have seen them. Some are long, yellow-painted arrows on streets
with mysterious numbers and letters plus signs on them. A logical
interpretation of the uninformed is that the houses to which they point
are in for it, when the little green men take over.

Then there
are the white markings on sidewalks, usually at corners. Things like 3
AB 3:00 followed by 3 A 2:40 and so on in a lessening scale as are
visible near Audubon Junior High and 37th Street Elementary School

WELL, they’re
simply designations for proposed work on sewers, storm drains, gas,
water and power lines. Some are survey markings by the city engineering
department for upcoming street resurfacing. It seems there’s more to it
than burning off the top, dumping a load of macadam and letting a
mechanical roller smooth it out. First there has to be what is known as
a profile survey designating the existing elevations.

Next question.

EITHER SOMEONE lowered the chinning crossbar on a Beverly Hills school playground or Bill Ritzi,
deputy D.A., was riding too tall in the saddle. Anyway, he crashed into
it while riding his English bicycle and suffered a broken nose, a bad
gash on the forehead and some loosened teeth.

His doctor, stitching his face, asked what happened.

"I wrote my bicycle into a bar," Bill answered.

"I don’t smell liquor on your breath," the doc said.

So Bill, who doesn’t drink, explained.

ADDITIONAL HOLIDAY

OCCASIONALLY another
slice of music comes along that adds to the already imposing repertoire
of proof that modern jazz is not a meaningless cacophony, as the
unconvinced contend.

The familiar names in creative jazz are Ellington, Kenton, Basie. More recent ones are Brubeck, Hamilton, Shearing, Hefti, Rugolo
and the Mulligan-Baker groups — again to tap the surface. Not long ago
there was Gil Evans’ LP "New Bottle, Old Wine." The other night I heard
"Miles Ahead" with Miles Davis, also arranged by Gil Evans, and went
ecstatic over numbers titled "Maids of Cadiz" "Lament" and "The Duke."

Ask your favorite disc jockey to play them. Maybe he won’t, but ask him anyway. They’re great.

IT IS a
well-established fact that those who live by the telephone shall die by
the telephone, so to speak, which is a prelude to an exchange between a
lady named Harriett and her husband on his return home from the office.

"What kind of day did you have?" she asked.

"The phone
murdered me all day," he said. "I had four
He’s-away-from-his-desk-for-a-few-minutes and three
He-just-stepped-outs."

FOOTNOTES — Penciled
scrawl on a piece of brown paper bag: "Whose picture you using now? One
day the guy smirks over his left shoulder, the next day he smirks over
his right shoulder. When you going to let him smirk down the middle?
Why don’t you use your own picture? The one you took the day you had
the terrible toothache? Three Cushion Mac." You can’t win them all …
Isn’t it awful about the terrible weather the Vero Beach Dodgers are having down there? … All anyone can say is what the others are saying, that George Stevens’ "Diary of Anne
Frank" is a magnificent accomplishment, combining devastating impact
with restraint. Incidentally, a woman who lived through a similar
ordeal had nightmares after seeing it.