Please tell us this sky isn’t falling:”Whatever...

Please tell us this sky isn’t falling:

“Whatever you do, don’t look up,” say the billboards for the upcoming movie “Independence Day,” which show a giant flying saucer hovering. The same warning could apply to the picture postcard received by Charles Jeannel of L.A. (see photo).

Obviously, someone is poking fun at the City of Angels, right? Not exactly. The postcards advertise a program by local water agencies whereby residents can replace their old toilets with free ULFTs (ultra-low flush toilets).

Hasn’t enough, uh, flak fallen on L.A. without this campaign, too?

NOW FOR SOME PENNIES FROM HEAVEN: Bob Green was leaving his girlfriend’s apartment in West L.A. when he noticed an open yogurt container filled with pennies in a trash can.

“They hadn’t been knocked over,” Green said. “I didn’t have to sort through anything. I counted them and there was $6.50 worth. I could understand someone throwing away a few pennies, but this?”

Green said it took him about 10 minutes to count the loot. Perhaps that’s too much time for some Westsiders to spend for such a modest return.

TODAY’S BLUE-PLATE SPECIAL: Bruce McKenzie of Downey had no trouble understanding why a white Volkswagen would have a vanity plate that said, ML8 ML8. Can you guess its meaning?

PLATE CLUE: The car was a Rabbit.

PLATE ANSWER: The license plate was quoting the White Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland”: “I’m late! I’m late!”

WHICH REMINDS US: David Koenig, author of “Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland,” recalled a real-life instance when the White Rabbit wasn’t tardy at all. It seems that a male patron in Disneyland once pulled a knife on the character dressed as Alice and demanded a date. The Mad Hatter tried to come to her rescue and was slashed, though not seriously. Fortunately, Koenig told The Times, “the White Rabbit arrived with security to apprehend the man.”

STICKING HIS NECK OUT FOR HUMANITY: Marla L’Angelle, who works for a broadcasting company in West L.A., sent us a copy of a fax she received from a man claiming to know a vampire on West 59th Street in Manhattan. “I know you got connections,” the bloodsucker’s acquaintance said, “so if you are interested, I would like to capture the vampire and present it to you for aerospace, medical and national defense research.”

IN OTHER VAMPIRE NEWS: By coincidence, Minto Keaton of L.A. spotted an ad in a weekly newspaper for a house that would surely meet the needs of a Dracula-type (see excerpt).

WHY DO YOU NEVER BET A LAWYER?: The girlfriend of a Pasadena attorney told him she thought lawyers were overrated in the brains department. So he invited the young woman, a model, over to his house to see who would achieve a higher score while watching TV’s “Jeopardy!”

He got every answer right, except one. She couldn’t help being impressed--unaware that he had made a point of seeing an earlier satellite feed of the same show so he could memorize the answers.

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Jan Janicek of Sherman Oaks noticed that a photo in the sports section of The Times’ Valley edition showed four cheering students doing a spell-out of the Sun Valley high school’s name. Each had daubed a letter on his bare chest. How inspired their classmates on the field must have been to see the spell-out: P O L I.