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

Shell Game

It is the nature of
shell collectors to correspond with each other and, thus, adman Bennett
Foster has learned of the fantastic tale of R. Julian Dashwood, the only white man on the island of Mauke, in the Cook group, 1,000 miles from New Zealand.

Thirty years ago Dashwood
found himself on the beach in Australia, then in a depression, and he
resolved never again to be dependent on errant society. He went to Mauke, married a native girl, and was welcomed into the tribe by the
hospitable Polynesians. He built a house of coral and set about
indulging his hobby, shell collecting. He worked out a co-operative
deal with the natives and they enthusiastically went to work collecting
shells for him.

BUT ABOUT a year ago he became bored and
left for Auckland, where he opened a little shell store. After three
months he knew the dizzy pace of civilization was not for him and
returned to the atoll.

Last year the battery went dead on his
shortwave radio, his only contact with the outside world, and he was
frantic for a while, wondering what the world was up to. Then he found
he didn't really care.

Not long ago another crisis arose. The
natives got tired of collecting shells, and his trade, carried on by
the four ships a year which call at the atoll, came to an end. No
matter what he offered them, they refused. After all, what good was
money on an island without a store and where everything they ate, drank
or wore was in natural abundance.

FINALLY he had an idea.
He sent to Auckland for a movie projector and some old films. At the
first showing the natives went wild over them. But on the night of the
next show he stood at the door and told them the price of admission was
a penny. Of course, no one had a penny.

The economic dilemma was
quickly solved, he recently wrote Foster. He pays them a penny a week
to collect shells and they pay it back to him to see the movies.

::

ASIDE TO the
Detroit boys — A large lady couldn't get into the low-slung car that
was to take her to her husband's funeral, the other day, and she had to
ride with the undertaker.

::

RIGHT SCHOOL

How wise we are; what worthy labor
To note each weakness of our neighbor,
If in the night, like busy elves,
We use the list to test ourselves.

-GUY MULLEN

::

 ONLY IN L.A. —
A wife in a downtown bar became increasingly critical as her husband
gulped drink after drink long after she had pointed out it was time to
go home. Finally she asked sarcastically, "What are you doing, trying
for an Oscar?" Her befuddled spouse retorted proudly, "I already got
one!" He thought she'd said ulcer.

::

THOSE WHO felt the full force of Sunday's big wind don't think it received enough attention.

Ray Keplinger hit a full iron shot on the Hesperia course and the ball landed 10 feet in back of him.

Publicist
Jim Bishop was playing volleyball at Malibu and a gust of wind caught
the ball and it went over his head. He chased it endlessly, and if a
little girl hadn't finally stopped it he'd probably have jogged all the
way to Manhattan Beach. A car was sent to retrieve him and the ball and
the speedometer measured five-eights of a mile.

::

AT RANDOM —
Sudden thought: How about an added Pulitzer prize for the unknown
reporter who had to cover the Clare Luce-Sen. Morse story in Time? …
Morey Gold, the Whittier Blvd. bicycle and key man, swears he heard a KHJ newscaster talk about a "dubbish
rump" … Cartoonist Dave Hall had a live foot-and-a-half-foot-long water
snake on his desk yesterday to take home for his youngster's nature
study class. OK, so it was in a gunny sack … Mike Goodman knows a
fellow so lazy he has to shake his self-winding watch to make it go.
Himself.

Non-Conformist

There is a
widespread belief that conformity has so overwhelmed everyone that even
the hardiest individualists have lost their incentive and inspiration.
There's evidence today that this is not entirely true.

A solid citizen, piqued at some flaw in civilization, went out on the town and, after the bars closed, followed some new-found friends to their home in Beverly Hills.

All of a sudden it was 7 a.m., time to go to work. But when he looked for his car he couldn't remember where he'd parked it.

He
took a cab downtown, but decided to stop at a favorite bar for a
refresher before going to the office. There he met a couple of cronies
and he related his misfortunes. He had neglected to go home, he was
late for work, he had misplaced his car and he had been forced to spend
$5 on cab fare.

One friend said, "I can solve all your troubles for $6 more."

This sounded like a good deal, and our hero said he'd buy it.

The
friend handed him a pawn ticket and, inadvertently coining a new
definition of the word sympathy, said, "It's for my 38 revolver — go
shoot yourself!"

::

SPEAKING OF PARKING,
two married couples a few nights ago went to open house at the school
their children attend. The husbands let the wives out at the entrance
and went to look for a place to park. They drove for blocks without
finding a vacant space and then noticed a bowling alley in the
distance. The same diabolical thought — they are avid bowlers —
struck them simultaneously.

This is to report that midway in the
open house proceedings a voice came over the public-address system
announcing, "For the first time in history our school must report a
lost father. Will Mr. Blank please join his wife in Room C-2."

::

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

The modern generation has so much,
Nothing seems to faze or floor 'em.
The only thing they really lack
Is some good old-fashioned decorum.

-JUNE R. DRUMMOND

::

THE CITY COUNCIL, as you may have read, is considering an ordinance to make it illegal to feed pigeons. Which reminded Cal Crotsenburg of the old story about the hard-working farm boy from Morongo Valley whose parents decided he'd earned a day off.

He
was feeding popcorn to the pigeons in Pershing Square when a slicker
came by and said, "You're a stranger in town, aren't you?" When the boy
said yes, the slicker gave him a fast flash of breakfast food police
badge and said, "I figured you were. You know there's a $1 fine for
feeding a pigeon in L.A. How many did you feed?" The boy said two and
the slicker said, "That'll be $2."

Relating the incident later
to his parents, the boy said jubilantly, "I sure fooled him. I told him
I'd only fed two but I'll bet I fed at least a dozen."

Now we'll have to figure out a new ending.

 ::

QUOTE & UNQUOTE —
When people ask how he feels, a man who recently underwent surgery
replies, "Well, at first I was miserable but now I'm merely
uncomfortable" … It's odd how the same expressions keep cropping up
through the years … A man noting a repeated street excavation
remarked, "They didn't find the boss' watch the first time so they had
to dig it up again" … Remember the observation here by a man recently
restored to bachelorhood that the most amazing thing was how long a
tube of toothpaste lasted? A gal who now lives alone has a different
impression: "The nights last longer."

::

AROUND TOWN —
A friendly young man named Drew Howard is known as the good Samaritan
of 1st and San Pedro Streets. He tells the near-sighted ladies waiting
there whether the approaching buses are on the SierraMadre or Sierra
Vista line. They sometimes get on the wrong one … Wildlife question
for today: Why do baby birds flutter their wings when their patients
feed them?