MTA and the World of Make-Believe

A notice at MTA headquarters alerted employees that a TV crew would be filming in the garage, adding, “There will be loud noises, tires screeching, gunfire and breaking glass.”

Hey, sounds like an ordinary MTA meeting!

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COULD BE THE NEXT “X-FILES” EPISODE: It was mentioned here that Peg Needleman of Granada Hills received a letter with the greeting, “Dear Human.” Well, this thing seems to be going around (see accompanying). A library referred to Yvette Herndon of Long Beach as “Unknown,” a veterans organization called Julie Babineau of Hawthorne “Non-Person Babineau,” and an insurance company reduced Susan Tellem of Beverly Hills to “Covered Spouse.”

At least they’re more than just a number.

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DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT. . . . More than one person has joked that the new $20 bill--with its enlarged numbers and portrait--resembles Monopoly money.

Among the doubters are some postal machines. When Steven Millar went to buy stamps from a machine in Lancaster, he saw a sign warning that it might not “recognize” one of the bills as “legal tender.”

A spokesman for the Postal Service said it is “in the process of modifying” the stubborn holdouts. Until then, don’t be surprised if a postal machine treats the updated Andy Jackson as “Unknown.”

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TALK ABOUT VERSATILITY: Among the items offered new members of the James Randi Educational Foundation, points out Richard Sherer, is “an official JREF pen. Good quality item. Writes in any language.”

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WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT? The Randi Foundation, headed by James Randi, a magician and professional skeptic, is an organization devoted to exposing pseudoscience. Its Web site (https://www.randi.org), as Sherer notes, is obviously “spoofing the hype that surrounds a lot of products.” Another gem offered contributors to the foundation is a T-shirt with two holes for the arms and a separate hole for the head.

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THAT’S ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT: Seal Beach police received a call from a resident who reported that a heavily damaged pink Corvette was stranded along a local pier and being pounded by waves. Officers raced to the scene and found nothing. When the resident continued to insist the Corvette was there, the police visited his beachfront home.

Turns out the man had a new high-powered telescope, which he was still trying to figure out how to operate. He actually had it trained on a Barbie-sized toy Corvette, less than a foot long. Police recovered the toy.

“Had he panned his telescope up a little from the ocean, or if a fish would’ve come by, he would’ve realized what he was looking at,” said Sgt. Rick Ransdell. “Of course, then we’d have had a report of a whale swimming up.”

miscelLAny:

I’m still hearing from Temple City boosters after I was so foolish as to imply that not much happened in that fair town. Dan Crowley, now of Mar Vista, reminded me that Temple City was the site of the world’s first Winchell’s Donuts stand (1948). And no less an authority than the Rhino Records Calendar notes that on Feb. 15, 1979, the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra performed on TV’s “Mike Douglas Show,” along with guest kazooers David Brenner, Cheryl Tiegs and Lou “The Incredible Hulk” Ferrigno.