Warning: Picasso’s Art Can Be Striking

Les Hansen of Venice picked up some tickets from Ticketmaster and noticed that the small print warned that he had assumed “all risks” of injury “by hockey pucks, sticks and balls, other spectators or players or by thrown objects.”

Hansen experienced no such problems. Then, again, the tickets were for the Pablo Picasso show at the L.A. County Museum of Art. For some reason, they had been printed on the ducats used for hockey games.

“The only things flying through the air,” Hansen said, “were snappy judgments by art dilettantes.”

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DUELING SIGNS: Tim McCartney of Carson came upon a set of signs in San Diego that would seem frustrating for motorists who needed to make a pit stop (see photo).

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DUELING RESTING PLACES: A while back, Shawn Chanslor of Porter Ranch snapped a shot of a “Final Days” notice that stood ominously near a sign for Crawford Mortuary. The “Final Days” notice pertained to a furniture outlet that, sorry to say, did indeed succumb.

Well, Chanslor went back to check the other day and found that the site is now occupied by a mattress store, whose symbol also stands as an odd counterpart to the mortuary sign (see photo).

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CITY OF ANGELS GOES DOWN FOR THE COUNT: L.A. seems in line to land the 2000 Democratic National Convention, which should lessen the pain over the crushing loss of another extravaganza: the 1999 West Coast Cauliflower Alley Club Convention.

The group, made up mostly of retired boxers and wrestlers, along with a few movie stars, is shunning L.A. for the first time in 33 years. And where is it going? New York City? Las Vegas? San Francisco? Nope, Newton, Iowa.

“They’re building a wrestling Hall of Fame there,” said former wrestling champion Marie “Tigress” Bernardi, a Cauliflower board member. Club President Lou Thesz, a grappler who used to appear at the Olympic Auditorium, persuaded a majority of the other members to accept Newton’s bid, much to Bernardi’s chagrin.

“It should be here,” said Bernardi, who isn’t attending. “This is where the club began.”

Luckily, there wasn’t any rough stuff during the debate.

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URBAN FOLK TALES: You may have heard some version of the yarn about the person who finds a dead cat on the road, places it in a sack, and is about to deposit it in a dumpster at a shopping center when a thief grabs it. The thief, upon later opening the bag, faints. Do you ever wonder how old some of these stories are? I found a version of this one in the L.A. Times--in a 1954 edition. And, even back then, the writer commented that the story was “making the rounds again.”

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MYSTERY DISH: The menu at Matteo’s in West L.A. lists such dishes as “Veal, Clint Eastwood,” “Chicken, Dabney Coleman,” “Mostaccioli and Cauliflower, Walter Matthau” and “Fettucine Hay ‘n Straw, Bullets Durgon.”

I was afraid to ask the waiter who Bullets Durgon was.

miscelLAny:

It’s later than you think. Howard R. Cohen of L.A. found a notice on his doorstep from a sanitation firm that announced: “Spring Cleaning!”

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.