Start With People and Where Are You?

    PURE MUSIC
In the days when we
played the Victrola,
Yes, even the old
Grafanola,
Music sounded so good,
LIKE real music should
But that was before
this payola.
J. STUYESANT FISH

A WOMAN COUGHED as she got into an elevator in a building on 9th St., and remarked, “I guess I’m allergic to Los Angeles!”

Another woman, who likes it here and is fiercely resentful of criticism, retorted, “Maybe it’s just your eastern bugs that feel strange out here!”

AN ALHAMBRA couple, Dick and Margaret, have a parakeet named Terry, short for Terrified, which he is most of the time.  If they let him out of the cage he gets so scared he doesn’t remember how to get back in.

Lately, however, Terry has learned how to overcome his timidity.  All parakeets are attracted to bright, shiny objects but with Terry it’s glasses containing drinks.  When he spots one in someone’s hand he flies up and stands on the rim and sips.

If it’s alcoholic he soon becomes the bravest parakeet in the world.  In fact, at a recent party he dipped his bill so deep into the glass he toppled in and had to be fished out and dried.

A few days ago Terry disappeared and, after a frantic search, was seen in a tree across the street and down the block.  He refused to come down until Dick got a  highball and stood under the tree.

Terry flew onto the glass and guzzled all the way home.  He spent the rest of the day lying on his side on the bottom of the cage, Dick reports, feeling just great.

THE WORD “stranger,” purists keep insisting, is strong enough to stand alone.  It needs no emphasis.  Therefore it’s redundant to say “total” stranger or “complete” stranger or “absolute” stranger.  A word saver myself, I ordinarily go along.  But the other day Frank Goss, KNX newscaster, was introduced to Dave Shaw, KFI newscaster, and both said, “That’s funny, I never hear you.”  No wonder.  They both have news programs at 5:45 p.m.  Which is about as total, complete or absolute as two strangers can get.

HAZING IS A naughty word around SC since a recent unfortunate incident.  As a result, a fraternity which has a clean record of hazing has had difficulty convincing the administration the things that have been going on at the place are on the up and up.  One man broke both arms in a  fall from a float.  Another received a knee injury in a fraternity football game.  A third was hurt in a bicycle accident.  A fourth broke  a finger in a car door.  They’re thinking of hiring a safety director.

   ONE OF THE art exhibits currently at the County Museum is European Art Today which, to put it mildly, is weirdly abstract.  For instance, the one done in burlap and lampblack.

The other day several 12-year-old boys who had been inspecting the fossil animals from Rancho La Brea (known as the “bone room”) came into the art exhibit and the guard overheard one of them remark to his friends, “Say, do you suppose the prehistoric animals painted these?”