Noisesome to Some

Apparently a
city employee who complained here about the music broadcast in City
Hall is not alone in his irritation. Other tortured souls have chimed
in with similar grievances.

One man writes: "Each day from 7:30
a.m. until 4 p.m. for almost eight months I had to listen to continuous
tin-can music on a job I held. I am a music lover, but this terrible
intrusion on my concentration made me nervous and angry. There wasn't a
quiet moment to relax the nerves. I felt like a slave being punished by
the notorious water torture."

A strip-tease lady named Vagablonde,
or so it states on the printed, perfumed stationery, writes: "Don't
they know down there that playing music to a captive audience is
illegal and they are breaking a federal law? After all, this is only
one step from the Commie propaganda blasted from loudspeakers in Russia
and China."

She goes on irrelevantly, "Besides, soft, dreamy music belongs to the strip teaser's act in hurly
burly, and your City Hall is taking the bread right out of our mouths.
Maybe what makes the dear old baldies there so sore is that there's no
strip teaser to go along with the music to create the proper mood."

SHE CONTINUES, "I will be on my way to the goosepimple
circuit in the Middle West when you get this letter. You should have
seen the way the boys kicked up the sand on Waikiki Beach when I wore
my bikini. Will you show me some new judo holds to use on fresh guys
sometime, Matt?" Great kidder, that Vagablonde, whoever she is.

Being
an entertainer, she can be excused from a slight error about such music
breaking a federal law. She was referring, doubtless, to the case of
the Public Utilities Commission of the District of Columbia vs. Pollack
in May, 1952.

Passengers on the city transit system protested
that their constitutional rights were being infringed by programs
broadcast on streetcars. The programs were 30% music, 5% announcements
and 5% commercial advertising.

The case was taken to the U.S.
Supreme Court and, the County Law Library informs me, the stern
gentlemen in the robes decreed that no one's freedom had been violated
by the streetcar music.

Bring in that violin section a little louder, Andre.

KID STUFF — Dick Pachtman,
deputy DA, took his son Larry, 5, to court to hear a case he was trying
and afterward asked what he thought. "Didn't you like that other
attorney?" Larry asked. "Of course," Dick said. "Then why did you keep
objecting all the time to what he said?" the boy wondered … A lady
named Julia doesn't know what she's going to do about her granddaughter
Vicki, 3 1/2, who somehow manages to get the baffled Police Department
on the phone when no one is around. Vicki explains, "They're my
friends." It seems she waves to traffic officers and they wave back.

::

ONLY IN L.A. —
As a bus driver on the 7 line stopped at 3rd and Alvarado Streets, he
opened the door and called out "Sunset!" meaning he wanted the newsboy
at the corner to bring him a sunset edition.* A few days ago he learned
a passenger had written a scorching letter about him to the management.
She'd got off the bus, thinking it was Sunset Blvd. So now he buys his
papers from Bill Franklin, who sells the Mirror News at 2nd and Spring.

::

TURN ABOUT

Here is a thought
That strangely appeals:
Now we've cars with fins,
What of fish with wheels?

-RICHARD ARMOUR

::

AROUND TOWN — If the city is so desperate for new tax money, Harold Kaner of Pacoima asks, how about selling advertising space on the rear of police cars? … Wayne Pease of the U-I publicity staff is another example of the true hi-fi
enthusiast. He has $425 worth of equipment — including AM and FM
speakers and tuners and a stereo head which plays tape through them —
in his 1951 Chrysler, Blue Book valuation $285.

* The Sunset Edition was the Los Angeles Examiner's last edition of the day. Weinstock is poking a little fun at the competition.–lrh