An Offering or a Discard for Church?

Actress June Lockhart reports that when the collection basket was passed during a recent children’s Mass at St. Monica’s Parish Church in Santa Monica, one young man contributed a Pokemon card. He later sheepishly admitted that the character was a villain.

DON’T SMART OFF ABOUT THIS NAME: After George Bethell alerted me about Two Idiots Selling Furniture, I phoned the Garden Grove store to ask about the name (see photo). It wasn’t the owners’ original choice.

“But we had so much trouble dealing with the city, getting licenses and permits, that my partner said, ‘We’re a couple of idiots for even attempting this,’ ” Oscar Garza Jr. recalled. “I said, ‘Hey, that’s a good name.’ ”

The store sign has become a local attraction.

“We have more people taking pictures of it than we do people buying stuff from us, so far,” Garza said. “But we don’t know if it turns off as many people as it attracts. Some people may not want to deal with idiots.”

REMAKING HISTORY: The surprise current events test that a reporter gave Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush the other day reminded me of the time in 1988 when his pop declared that Pearl Harbor Day was Sept. 7.

A few weeks later, George W. appeared on an L.A. radio talk show and criticized the media for focusing “on whether Pearl Harbor was Sept. 9 or Dec. 9.” It wasn’t clear whether he was kidding.

SCHOOL’S OUT: Bill Adams of Playa del Rey noticed a high school that seems to be shooing away visitors (see photo).

INSPIRATION: I mentioned last week’s “Fall of Troy” halftime show in which UCLA and University of Washington band members poked fun at USC. How enthusiastic were the participants? Well, a colleague ran into a piccolo player from the Washington band in a hospital emergency room the day before the show. It turned out that during a rehearsal of the routine, a trombone player had become so animated that he accidentally smashed his bandmate’s hand.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: The discussion here of the 1983 mouseburger lawsuit, written in rhyme, brought a note from the author of same, attorney Joseph Peter Myers.

His client claimed to have found parts of a rodent in a burger. Myers said that in starting “to draft a semi-humorous complaint, after there had been futile negotiations, two lines of doggerel pentameter occurred to me. Deciding there were no rules against it, over the next few days I thought of others.” The judge gave his permission for the presentation.

The press learned of the poetic plea, and Johnny Carson read portions of it on the “Tonight Show,” including:

But in all their adverts, the defendants,

Never placed the smallest sentence,

Warning the public, or the plaintiff,

That they might serve up just a whiff,

Of mouse, or rat.

Imagine that.

The restaurant gave Myers’ client a nice settlement. “And after almost 20 murder cases,” he said, “the story that earned the Warholian 15 minutes was about a dead mouse. Such is life.”

miscelLAny:

For my collection plate of euphemisms, Elliot Zweibach of L.A. offers a market’s announcement that its premises would be patrolled by a team of “professionally trained safety ambassadors.”

If crime increases, I presume the market will add some professionally trained safety ambassador Dobermans.