A Movie That Tells All Our Secrets

Daily Variety ran a photo of Mayor Riordan attending the premiere of “L.A. Confidential.” Maybe he thought it was a movie about the back-room negotiations over the downtown sports arena.

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KIDS GROWING UP FAST: Priscilla McCarty, an Echo Park schoolteacher, recalls giving a lesson in which her first-graders were supposed to tell her the difference between addition and subtraction.

“I got predictable answers . . . the plus sign has two lines, the minus sign has one line, etc.” she says. Then, one first-grader who was apparently familiar with adult tests of another type said, “Nu-uh . . . the plus sign means you’re pregnant and the minus sign means you’re not.”

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DUH! PICTORIAL AWARD OF THE WEEK: Dede Stokes snapped it in the L.A. County library parking lot in Duarte (see photo). Can’t think of anyone who would try to park there, except perhaps the driver of a tank.

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THERE’S SAFE AND THEN THERE’S SAFE: Eugene Wohlner of Pasadena noticed one name in particular among the tenants whose abandoned property is being auctioned later this month by Save-Most Self Storage in Arcadia. That tenant’s name was Feel Safe Security.

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YOU’VE HEARD OF THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW: Val Rodriguez of Signal Hill took a picture of the long arm of the window washer (see photo).

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SO DON’T SUE ME: Sept. 22-26 has been designated “Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week” in California by Gov. Pete Wilson, who praised the efforts of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. The Torrance-based, nonprofit group, many of whose members are small-business owners worried about nuisance lawsuits, encourages citizens to write to legislators to reform the civil justice system.

Some recent lawsuits the group has branded as “ridiculous”:

* A prison inmate “filed a $5-million lawsuit against himself, claiming he violated his own civil rights by getting arrested.”

* A woman “who married her psychiatrist sued him for psychiatric malpractice and negligence after their divorce more than five years later. She claimed he breached the standard of care by dating her.”

* An attorney sued an office mate after a famous rock musician’s death because the latter hung “a cardboard tombstone in his office that read, ‘R.I.P. Jerry Garcia (a few too many parties perhaps?)’ ”

* A prison inmate filed a suit, “demanding L.A. Gear or Reebok” shoes instead of the type he was issued.

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HOW MANY BUS TRANSFERS WOULD THAT REQUIRE? Colleague Rick Collins saw a MTA bus carrying a Raiders “Commitment to Excellence” ad on the Hollywood Freeway. And he spotted a Raiders billboard on a street corner in Tarzana. Further proof that the Raiders don’t know whether they’re coming or going, which is OK with me. As long as they’re not coming back to L.A.

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OVERBLOWN LINDA: A radio ad for a hotel chain joked about things you can count on, like a weather forecaster’s “10% chance of rain meaning a hurricane headed this way.” Obviously, the ad was directed toward Easterners. As we’ve learned in the last few weeks, the reverse is true here: a hurricane forecast means a 10% chance of rain.

miscelLAny:

The latest theory about the 1MAKUPU license comes from Richard Karl Koch, who figures that the owner operates a collection agency. Translation: “I Make You Pay Up!”