The day the earth . . ....

The day the earth . . . sighed? The members of Scrabble Club No. 44 in the Fairfax area had a good laugh, reports Chester Collins, when one player brought in a British publication that referred to a “horrifying earthquake” with a “scale of 1.5.”

“Somebody must have sneezed,” Collins said of the seismological event.

“Oh, no, it couldn’t be that,” countered Steve Paster. “A sneeze is a 2.”

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The legal jungle: The book “Lawyers and Other Reptiles” offers an anecdote about an L.A. man who was “so upset when he failed the State Bar exam (that) he allegedly coerced his seven-months-pregnant wife (an attorney) to dress in men’s clothing and take the bar exam under his name.”

But that’s the only L.A. reference in 102 pages.

As if we don’t have our share of sleazy barristers out here!

Of course, the author, Jess M. Brallier, lives in Massachusetts. Yup--just another example of the Eastern bias against L.A.

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Trying to see the light: Speaking of bar exams, when David Hollander took his test at the L.A. Airport Hyatt Hotel in 1993, the lights went out for 16 minutes. And Hollander failed the exam. He was also upset--but acted in a more lawyer-like manner.

Hollander sued Hyatt Corp., seeking damages for emotional and mental distress, etc.

In reply, Robert Anderson, Hyatt’s attorney, told California Lawyer magazine that if Hollander “has a problem with the bar’s administration of the test, he should sue the bar. This is a little akin to a jealous husband shooting a male lover for the infidelity of his wife.”

Hollander, by the way, passed the bar on a subsequent try.

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What’s another hazard or two for Angelenos?When a disaster strikes, the MTA invariably receives a letter from a certain owner of an East Coast firm that builds monorails. The owner wants the MTA to reconsider its decision to build a subway in the San Fernando Valley, which he says would be less safe than a monorail.

In one note, he cited the Northridge quake, even though L.A.’s Downtown subway came through it in fine shape. He later mentioned the New York subway bombing as another example of what can go wrong.

And most recently he wrote that the “flooding in Los Angeles identifies a brand-new problem for the politicians who support subways.”

Actually, neither a monorail nor a subway would be high on our list of places to be during a disaster. Except maybe a 1.5 quake.

miscelLAny Entertainment Weekly named as the third-worst book of 1994 Bret Easton Ellis’ “The Informer,” a novel “about spoiled, L.A. college kid vampires.” Gee, we can remember drinking Bloody Marys in college. . . .