Let’s not have a liquid gold rush

In this era of $4-a-gallon gasoline, Richard Turnage of KFWB-AM (980) reported a sighting of “a stalled gold mine” on the Long Beach Freeway the other day. A gasoline tanker had broken down.

In the interest of “promoting law and order,” good citizen Turnage reminded everyone “about the illegality of showing up there with siphon hoses and storage cans.”

“Aren’t final exams bad enough without having to eat slop?” Rabbi Leslie Bergson wrote of a menu at Pomona College (see accompanying).

Food for thought

Unclear on the concept

In La Puente, Richard Espinosa saw a business-as-usual sign in a strange setting (see photo). Business for weed-pullers, perhaps?

Unclear on the concept, 2

Marna Geisler of Santa Monica noticed a set of swimming pool instructions that seemed to warn bathers that they must walk on their hands (see photo).

A real head case

Still no sign of a large crystal skull, said to have healing powers, that was stolen more than a week ago from Kindred Spirits, a New Age shop in Claremont.

“He was on an altar, and he just enjoyed being here,” employee Kristen Nestor said of the noggin.

Nestor told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin that the skull “participated” in her crystal-reading classes. “He’s quite an old skull,” she added. “He’s about four or five hundred years old. He likes to travel and things like that. He was here for about four months, just enjoying everyone who comes through here.”

The skull was named Solar Ray by owner Don Marr, who had lent it to Kindred Spirits. The theft might have been inspired by revelations that crystal skulls are mentioned in the latest Indiana Jones movie. Makes you just shake your head.

Parents who don’t use their skulls

A reader wrote to the Palisadian-Post that while dining at a local upscale restaurant, he was bothered by a 5-year-old whose parents were allowing her “to scream frequently.”

He continued: “When I mentioned my displeasure to the parents, the mother stated this was her daughter’s ‘happy time’ and to correct her would upset her.”

He’s lucky it wasn’t the kid’s “unhappy time.”

miscelLAny

The death last week of Danton Burroughs, the affable grandson of “Tarzan” author Edgar Rice Burroughs, brought to mind a Tarzan-yell contest I attended years ago. Danton Burroughs confided to me that the distinctive holler made by the Lord of the Jungle in many movies was dubbed. The yell, he said, consisted of the sounds of a yodeler combined with the bleat of a camel, the high C note of a soprano, the squeak of a violin string and the scream of a hyena.

Just what I’d always suspected!

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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.