Some Skeletons in the Gift Shop’s Closet -- and Just in Time for Christmas
The L.A. County coroner’s offbeat gift shop has a public viewing of sorts in the latest issue of Smithsonian magazine.
I’m a periodic visitor to Skeletons in the Closet, as it’s called, so I was aware of the various items with body outline logos (see photo). But I hadn’t heard about the nifty business-card dispensers, which allow the cards to pop out of the spring-loaded jaw of a small plastic skull, until I read about them in the article.
Just the gift for the warm body that has everything! What’s more, profits from the decade-old business, which is open to the public in the L.A. County-USC Medical Center complex, help support various court programs.
Incidentally, writer Kevin Roderick reports that one item is no longer sold at the shop: an “L.A. County Coroner” windbreaker.
“Too many customers were using it to gain admittance to actual crime scenes,” according to Roderick.
Mini-mall confidential: Interesting how the signs from unrelated businesses can combine to make startling statements, as Bob Drake of Brea points out (see photo).
Everyone’s a performer at heart: Especially in Southern California, so maybe the cabinets that Ileene Morris of L.A. read about would come as no surprise (see accompanying).
Gridiron growls: In a discussion here of sports quotes, I recently mentioned “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” and said it is often attributed to Hall of Famer Vince Lombardi. I added that Lombardi denied authorship, which raises the question of its origin.
Well, Doug Thomson of Westwood writes that Lombardi’s biographer, David Maraniss, said it was first uttered by Red Sanders, a UCLA football coach back in the 1950s (when UCLA had good football teams).
For a contrasting football philosophy: Jim Glass passes along this rousing cheer from his alma mater, MIT:
Tangent, secant, cosine, sine
Three point one four six five nine
Slipstick, logarithm, hyperbolic sine
Go Tech!
Added Glass: “A ‘slipstick’ is a slide rule, for the uninitiated. It’s what we used to use instead of calculators.”
MiscelLAny: The L.A. Downtown News, discussing restaurant business on the nights of sporting events at nearby Staples, quotes one eatery’s manager as saying: “Laker crowds are very needy. Most of them feel that they’re deserving. It’s the ‘Do you know who I am?’ attitude.” No surprise there. Another restaurateur said that for some games, “meatloaf will go off the charts” at her diner. No doubt she meant ice hockey.
Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.
