Meet Mr. Malaprop

A police reporter on the Chicago American named Jim Murray is one of those rare birds, a natural malapropper,
a species which must be joyously esteemed wherever it is found. He
doesn't know it but a colleague, Pat Leeds of the Chicago Tribune, has
been jotting down hisinadvertencies. She is visiting L.A. and told them to Leo Batt, former Chicagoan now with this paper.

In giving a story to a rewrite man, Murray said, "He drove his car into a culprit."

Another time: "She had welches on her arms."

Another: "The coroner took a .22-caliber cartilage from the body."

Referring to a building across the street: "That building is a sore eye."

While working on a story: "I got a brain stroke."

Of his wife's devotion: "She thinks the ground I walk on is hollow."

Reading a paper. "The weatherman says we'll have snow furies."

When Ibn Saud came to this country: "I don't want those sheiks and their harlems in the country."

::

ONLY IN MALIBU —
A wealthy beachcomber has installed in his cottage by the sea a
wind-velocity gauge connected with a registering device on the roof
and, alongside, a barometer. He finds it comforting to sit at his bar
and thus observe the elements at their worst.

During a recent squall, as this veteran seafarer sat sipping a tot of rum, a friend asked if the barometer was falling.

"Not unless that nail comes loose," he said, "and I hammered it in good and tight."

::

SAME DIFFERENCE
As I go out to shop these days
I wonder more and more
Do I pay for what I buy or
The commercials I abhor?
-MABEL HUTCHINSON

::

DURING a discussion of people who marry out of their faith a lady Ken Tichenor knows remarked, "Worst of all, their friends sometimes osterize
them." And, as everyone knows, nothing is more humiliating than being
crammed into one of those blenders and being whirled around.

::

DO YOU, as Betty Buras does, mentally revise the cliches as you watch TV dramas? Here is some dialogue she changed:

"Darling, if I were fat and ugly and my father didn't have a cent, would you still want to marry me?" "No."

"You've
been threatened, beaten up and shot at — please forget your principles
and leave this town; I'll drive you to the city limits." "Okay, let's
go."

"Dad, he said the reason you don't wear a gun is that
you're a coward, scared that someone might pick a fight with you."
"That's right, son. I'm yellow as they come."

"What do you mean
you need a car? When I was your age I walked three miles to school,
rain or shine, and thought nothing of it." "Yeah, well, I don't think
much of it either!"

::

IN SOME instances
guide dogs are reassigned when the owners die or no longer need them.
Thus a sightless lady in a nearby city was provided with a dog which at
first caused her embarrassment. The pooch kept leading her into bars.
She doesn't drink but she soon learned that the previous master did.
Anyway, reports TV writer JimCritchfield, who knows her, she has become acquainted with almost every bartender in town.

::

AROUND TOWN ––
Note from California Club, of all places: "Whereas the possibilities of
rhyming Morse with horse and Luce with abuse are very tempting,
resolved that we will not yield to temptation and hope others will do
the same" … When JackieCardial, 5, gets excited she yells. "Woe, Bonelli
!" and her father Ron can't decide if it's a distortion of "Whoa,
Nellie!" or a warning to the self-exiled liquor czar … A lady in an
Olive St. bar ordered a "Headshrinker," and the bartender silently
served her a Martini. Gave Don Harris the sensation he had tuned in on
a new language.