The Silly Season

    Obviously the sun spots which jammed radio and TV reception a few days ago didn't do people any good, either.  The kids are all mixed up, or at least pretending to be.

    Bob Owen thinks it's about time someone exposed what he considers an insidious publicity scheme to slip Chessman into public office, mayor maybe, with Dr. Finch as district attorney and Carole as head of health, education and welfare.

    Fellow named Art is mighty suspicious of the so-called return of the swallows to Capistrano on St. Joseph's Day.  He thinks it's romantic nonsense.  "However," he adds irrelevantly, "I personally have found that beating on a drum helps drive away eclipses."

    And someone signing A Sick Reader, noting the increase on falling objects from airplanes, points out that Chicken Little wasn't so wrong after all, in fact may have been prophetic, when it exclaimed, "The sky is falling."

 

    REST EASY, EVERYONE, a major problem has been solved by Gail Holdsworth, Huntington Park High School junior.  Her parents assigned her the task of pasting trading stamps in books, an overwhelming chore, considering the abundance in which they are issued.   Gail quickly came up with the answer.  She holds them out, her poodle Zsa-Zsa licks them and she slaps them into a book.

    POLITICAL SLANT

    ON THE "Studs Lonigan" set at Hal Roach studio the other day Joe Laitin ran into a former writing colleague, David Chandler.  Joe, there to interview actor Christopher Knight, who plays Studs, for a magazine piece, assumed Chandler was also doing an article.

    Together they watched a scene, laid in the prohibition 20s, in which Studs and his tough pals come into a Chicago speakeasy and cruelly goad an aging prostitute at the next table.

    The woman playing the role, Rita Duncan, gave a remarkably sympathetic portrayal and after several takes Joe said, "Miss Duncan is the best soiled dove I ever saw in front of a camera."

    Chandler reared up in mock indignation.  "That's no soiled dove!" he said, "that's my wife!"  Joe didn't know.

    CROSS OFF another imponderable.  Mack Tuesley has figured out why spiders were created.  So people would have something to fish out of their swimming pools besides lady bugs.

    THE LANTERN, McNeil Island prison publication, has a staff-written feature titled, "It's Like This, Doctor," consisting of hypothetical quotes from people who consult psychiatrists because of marital problems.  Examples:  "I've got a husband who is always out of ardor."  "I left her because of another woman — her mother."  "I'm sure no one would ever blackmail my husband.  The things people would try to blackmail him for, he brags about."

    AT RANDOM — Diana Schofield, Burbank fish-watcher, reports that Billie's pet shop in Wilmington recently advertised "A complete line of whodunit puppies."  Also, someone wanted to run a notice in Fin Fun, which she edits, to dispose of a litter of "cockeroodles" the result of a chance encounter between a cocker and a poodle . . . Ordinarily riots aren't predictable but the one at UCLA yesterday was.  Fellow named Wintergreen got up to make  a campaign speech and a heckler named Throttlebottom broke it up — to call attention to the campus production "Of Thee I Sing" April 27.  Another riot was scheduled today . . . If you promise not to noise it around, one of the scout cars in a  previous Economy run ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere.