Meeting Provokes Food for Thought

The Unocal Retiree Alumni Group holds a monthly luncheon in the L.A. area, and Doug Hays of Glendale wondered if there was a problem with the food at the last get-together. After all, Hays points out, the notice for the April event said:

“We are very happy that no deaths were reported at the March meeting.”

BATHED IN TRADITION: Venice High historian Leonard Gottlieb shared a copy of a permission form sent to parents of girls in 1911, the year the school opened (see accompanying).

It sought an OK for the girls to dance with boys. Yes, the times were a bit more innocent. Nowadays you have the feeling that a comparable letter would ask permission for participation in a clothing-optional dance.

You’ll notice the school’s 1911 address, listed on its stationery, was: “Coral and Aldebaran Canals.”

The original school was in the old Venice Bath House. (The pool was drained and boarded over, no doubt to the students’ distress.)

SNAKE EYES: Gottlieb also enclosed a 1911 letter from a pupil who begged forgiveness from principal Cree T. Work. The lad despaired of “having forfeited my standing and right to membership in this school by improper conduct [throwing dice].”

SUDDEN THOUGHT: Does anyone throw dice anymore--I mean, other than in casinos? The disappearance of this art from the streets has, I believe, been a cultural blow to the nation. Think of all the movies and plays (“Guys and Dolls,” “Dead End”) in which craps played an important role. How do you make an exciting Lotto production?

DRIVING L.A.: Discussing the numbers game that motorists must play on freeways, Frommer’s “Irreverent Guide to Los Angeles” notes that “the 101 can be the Santa Ana (south of downtown), the Hollywood (north of Downtown), or the Ventura (north of Studio City). The 11 is the Harbor Freeway going south toward Long Beach and the Pasadena when it heads toward Pasadena. Happily, the 10 is always the Santa Monica Freeway.”

Unhappily that’s not true. The 10, of course, becomes the San Bernardino Freeway east of the Civic Center.

And the 10 has also been designated as the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway in California.

And, by the way, the “11” is really the 110.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Frommer’s guide tries mightily to be edgy, offering pearls of wisdom in such categories as “Guaranteed O.J.-free golf courses,” “Move your fat a--,” and “Sex food.”

Speaking of grub, the guide says of Mayor Riordan’s 76-year-old Original Pantry Cafe:

“The menu features cheap, fat-loaded food for late-night revelers who can’t taste anything anyway, and the graveyard shift workers who feel like they’re dead already.”

Wow! Isn’t that review something? Reminds me I’ve got to get over to the Pantry soon for a bite to eat.

miscelLAny:

“Orange County,” the movie, is due out this summer. Honest. Not sure the county is going to love the publicity, though. Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd reported a while back that it includes a bondage club scene that was shot in a club in Hollywood. What an insult. Orange County bondage clubs weren’t good enough?