Seems Like Someone Was Full of Beans

Here’s another episode you won’t see on “Cops.” Bill Howes of Seal Beach read it in the “Police Blotter” column of that city’s Sun newspaper:

“Pacific Coast Highway, 1:42 a.m.--A report of battery was unfounded when the bottle that a woman reported being thrown at her turned out to be a burrito.”

WOULD SAN DIEGO SAY YAHOO? What’s this under L.A.’s Christmas tree? Another major league baseball team?

Well, Robert Butchko noticed this blockbuster on the Yahoo! News site:

“One major hurdle to the development of San Diego’s baseball-only stadium is removed. A San Diego judge is allowing the city to proceed with acquiring and developing a 40,000-square-foot parcel in downtown L.A.”

But why a new development for the L.A. Padres? They could play in the Coliseum, as the Dodgers did in the 1950s. The stadium’s left-field screen, 250 feet from home plate, must be sitting around in a warehouse somewhere.

NEW L.A. TEAMS (CONT.): I refuse to get my hopes up about Yahoo’s otherwise-unconfirmed report that L.A. is gaining another baseball franchise.

Especially after I believed Peter Lefcourt’s prophecy in his novel “The Dreyfus Affair,” set in 1998.

In Lefcourt’s story, an expansion team called the L.A. Valley Vikings plays in a 125,000-seat stadium in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area.

There’s still no dam team out there.

IT’S A WACKY LIFE: Pardon me for getting sentimental on you here. But I’d like to reprise a couple of Only in L.A. holiday standards.

One is a shot of a billboard revealing Santa’s bulging doughnut problem--atop a Winchell’s stand.

The other shows a traffic school offering seasonal gift certificates for L.A.’s many red-light-running, tailgating speeders (see photos).

TEST RUN: Adrienne Omansky, who teaches an L.A. city-sponsored acting class for senior citizens, received a rush call from the makers of the movie “Mulligan Men.” They needed someone to lie in a coffin.

Dan Birnbaum, one of her students, got the job, which called for him to grasp a lily while holding his breath for a few moments in the pine box. He wore the traditional dark suit.

When he got home, his wife asked him how it went. Birnbaum said fine, and noted that the mortuary where the scene was shot is across the street from the cemetery where he has a crypt reserved.

“He said it was a good dress rehearsal,” Omansky added.

BUT CAN WE GET IT IN WRITING? When KNX radio commentator Tom Hatten reported that the Artist Formerly Known as Prince had vowed not to sing his hit “1999” again after this year, anchor Bob McCormick noted hopefully:

“Now that is a promise.”

miscelLAny:

Alice Raskoff wonders what programming genius decided on a 10 p.m. broadcast time for “Grow Old Along With Me,” KCET’s hourlong special on aging. “We, the aging, need our rest and don’t stay up until 11 p.m. to watch TV,” commented Raskoff, who describes herself as “87 next week and aging well.”

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 and by e-mail at [email protected].