Lying Down on a Repo Man’s Job

In the Culver City News, Jack Nelson spotted a police log item about a resident who saw a repo man attempting to drive his car out of his driveway. The resident lay “in the driveway in front of the vehicle from 4:30 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. to block the repo man.” Then the cops arrived to postpone the action.

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TRANSITIONS R US: That’s one of the strangest repo stories I’ve heard since 1992, when KCBS Channel 2 news reported a dispute between a woman and American Honda Finance over the seizure of her car by repo men . . . while she was driving on the Ventura Freeway. (She was persuaded to move to the side of the roadway.)

The station then aired a commercial that featured testimonials from drivers answering the question, “What would it take to get you out of a Honda Accord?”

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SKIING IN YORBA LINDA: My colleague Deniene Husted passed along the “Winter 2000” program from Yorba Linda’s Parks and Recreation Department, which has a striking shot of that city’s snowcapped Mount . . . Mount . . . Well, to be honest, I can’t find it on any of the city’s maps (see photo).

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MORE LIKE GOLD DUST: Jane Keeve of Culver City writes, “Thought you’d like to know just how expensive ‘basic brown dust’ is these days” (see accompanying). Actually, she added, the item was “a long, duster-type raincoat.”

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SUCH A DEAL: A reader noticed an auto shop’s (redundant) warranty that seemed barely long enough to cover the customer’s drive home (see accompanying).

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A MINOR REBELLION: “During the time I was with KFWB, one executive editor issued a memo saying the word ‘major’ was never to be used on the air because it was trite,” Don Herbert recalled on the Web site of reporter Ron Fineman.

“Therefore, no major fires, no major battles, no major injuries, etc. We had an anchor at the station at the time, Jeff Riggenbach, who did book reviews and he immediately launched into a review of the book, ‘Catch-22’ in which a major character is . . . Major Major. Now that was a major event at the station.”

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ARMAGEDDON AT DODGER STADIUM: Some people thought the devil would take charge of things when the year 2000 dawned. He / she didn’t. But there is a Satan making the rounds, Joe Meyer of Burbank points out.

Satan, a Buffalo Sabres hockey player whose first name is Miroslav, scored a goal to help bury the Mighty Ducks a couple of days ago. But the Kings overcame Satan and the Sabres by a 5-3 score Tuesday night.

It was Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully who pointed out a truly epochal confrontation between the forces of good and evil a few years ago. It occurred when a Dodger pitcher named Gott (God, in German) faced a San Diego hitter named Teufel (devil, in German). Gott was too much for Teufel, I’m happy to say.

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MAYBE HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE TYPE-CAST: The movie “Man on the Moon” is a biography of the late comic Andy Kaufman, who was in TV’s old “Taxi” show. In the movie, several members of the “Taxi” cast appear as themselves. But Danny DeVito, who was temperamental Louie de Palma on “Taxi,” does not play himself in the movie. Instead, he plays Kaufman’s agent. Too bad. I think DeVito could have done a darn good job of playing DeVito.

miscelLAny:

Adding to our list of misnamed entities, Jay Goldberg of La Palma points out that the new Long Beach Towne Center Mall “is on the eastern border of Long Beach, actually abutting Hawaiian Gardens. That’s the center of town(e)?”