Landmark Discovery in Land Down Under

Forget about the threatened strikes by actors and screenwriters. Those are small potatoes au gratin compared to the catastrophe uncovered by Nancy Martin of Pasadena--mainly the theft of Hollywood’s greatest landmark.

Martin spotted the storied sign near the town of Glenorchy, New Zealand, looking somewhat the worse for wear (see photo). Maybe it was dragged all the way.

Incidentally, Martin said the Hollywood monument is easy to find in New Zealand. It’s near the Sunset Strip pub.

AYE, AYE, MATEY: Vina Sealtiel of Long Beach saw a sign that seemed to have been written by a graduate of the Long John Silver School of English (see photo).

HERE’S ONE YOU WON’T SEE ON “ANTIQUES ROADSHOW”: Susan Olpe of Redondo Beach found a company that buys in such volumes at auctions that it could acquire California (see accompanying). Who knows? Maybe the state’s new owner could solve the electricity crisis.

SHADES OF FLORIDA: It wasn’t clear whose fault it was that an estimated 2,000 blank ballots wound up in the house of one of the mayoral candidates a few days before the election.

Months before he decided to seek election to the office, local activist Joe Shea of Hollywood had signed up to be a poll worker. He says he later phoned the city three times to withdraw from the precinct job but couldn’t contact anyone.

Shea added that since he was on the ballot, he figured the city clerk’s office would halt delivery of the ballots to his house.

But City Clerk Mike Carey pointed out that he hires 8,400 workers for 2,143 precincts and said it was Shea’s responsibility to withdraw. He accused Shea of seeking publicity.

Shea denied wanting the ballots in his house. “I was out campaigning,” he told Associated Press. “My daughter signed for them.”

The city took the unopened boxes away in time to find a new precinct worker. Shea did not make the runoff.

SCHOOL DAZE: More from the collection of student bloopers collected by high school teacher Juel Goldstock of Long Beach:

* He was a spy. He was captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to be short.

* Vexed: verb, confused. The twins looked so alike that I vexed them.

* If I was filming “The Old Man and the Sea,” I’d get Bruce Willis to play Santiago, John Travolta to play Manolin and, for the marlin, I’d get Flipper.

* And then they showed me the evidence: the guns, the rifles, the pullets.

* Best of all, this Christmas, was exchanging my family members.

And, finally, a tribute to the teacher:

* I really like Mr. Goldstock. He has a light mentality.

miscelLAny:

The downed U.S. spy plane in China recalls the grim tale of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. Powers was later released and went to work for KNBC television, piloting a traffic helicopter. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Encino in 1977.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.