Petty Crime Solved

Having a little time to kill before a critics' preview of "The Naked Maja" the other night, United Artists publicist Roy Smith looked in a pet shop at 10650 W. Pico Blvd. A light was on so he tried the door. It opened and he went in.

No
one was in sight so he called out, "Anybody here?" A faint answering
"Hello" came from the cavernous rear of the shop. "Don't bother, just
browsing," he said, inspecting the rows of cages and fish tanks.

Ten
minutes later, as he headed out, he noticed the cash register was open,
with money showing. Then he heard the same muffled voice in the rear
calling, "Help, help!"

Envisioning a holdup and maybe a little
mayhem, Roy summoned police and a nearby druggist phoned the pet shop
owner. The mystery was quickly solved, amid laughter. The front door
had accidentally been left unlocked. The owner said he had left the
register open. As for the voice, it was probably some lonesome parrot.

NO, NOTHING is sacred any more. Melvyn Douglas, here rehearsing for an upcoming "Playhouse 90" drama, was walking along the beach at Laguna last Sunday with Jackson Leightner
when they came upon a beautifully executed sand sculpture of Christ.
Alongside someone, presumably the artist, had lettered, "Happy Easter,Cha Cha Cha."

HAPPY ENDING

–GUY MULLEN

ONE DAY, while trying to explain adjectives to an 11th-grade
English class at Arroyo High School in El Monte, Marcia Lander asked a
boy named Darryl, "What part of speech is the word 'selfish?' "

"A noun," he replied.

"A noun?" she echoed. "Can you buy a selfish, see a selfish?"

"Why, sure. You know, when you go ocean fishing you sometimes catch selfish."

Miss Lander saw the light but still doesn't know whether he meant shellfish or sailfish.

ONLY IN
North Hollywood — Rosetta Case Bent needed a cowboy hat for a PTA show
and went into a store that supplies them to the studios. They were
costlier than she expected, so she asked about a used one. These, she
learned, were more expensive than the new ones. Logically, no cowpoke
could be expected to bring the villains to justice wearing a new
Stetson.

ONLY IN GLENDALE — Glancing
out the window of her home on Allen Avenue, Lena Cook saw a police car
slowly weaving from one side of the street to the other. A closer look
disclosed the driver was herding a steer back to the railroad car from
which it had escaped.

CALL ME antisocial and inconsiderate. Say I'm picayunish
and unappreciative. I can only state that I have declined an offer to
judge a pizza eating contest, for which I am awarding myself a
mozzarella cluster on my Good Conduct medal.

AT RANDOM — Every day on the L.A. to Playa
Del Rey bus a man and woman play cribbage. The other passengers hold
her seat until the bus gets to the block where she gets aboard … The
Better Mottoes Association selection for the month is "Are you a man or
a mouse? Come on, squeak up!" … Under the heading "Above and Beyond"
the California Highway Patrol annual report reports, "In attempting to
unsnarl an Echo Summit traffic tie-up during a snowstorm, aCHP officer
discovered the cause for the delay was an elephant pushing a disabled
circus truck up the grade" … J. Stuyvesant Fish is still quivering
from a grammatical gem he heard during a radio interview. A participant
agreed to a point by saying, "That is very so."