Putting on a Face Is So Hard to Do Without That Digital Camera Monitor

Talk about an expensive hand mirror: John Secia of Agoura Hills spotted a young woman in Topanga Plaza’s food court who had trained her digital video camera on herself. She was studying her face in the camera’s display monitor as she touched up her makeup.

But there was more to the operation than that. “She was also talking on a cell phone and getting cosmetic advice from someone,” Secia said. “I guess she was too lazy to use the mirror in the restroom.”

Digging for items: Only in L.A. goes underground today (can’t you feel the excitement?) with these gems (see accompanying):

* An opening for a private detective’s aide who is obviously expected to “dig up dirt,” as Duncan Reed of Simi Valley pointed out.

* A mirror ad that prompted Lori Lydeen of Westminster to observe: “Wouldn’t it be too dark in a burrow to use a mirror?”

* And, finally, a sale of critters that probably wouldn’t interest picnickers (Gordon Singleton of Torrance).

Moving up the food chain: Jeff Bliss of San Luis Obispo was visiting pals at the San Francisco Chronicle when whom should he see but executive editor Phil Bronstein. The latter, who is married to actress Sharon Stone, is up and about, following his disastrous toe-to-toe meeting with a Komodo dragon at the L.A. Zoo. And his sense of humor is intact.

“He was wearing a shirt emblazoned with dragons,” Bliss reports.

Calling card of sorts: Riding from a Cleveland hotel to the Indians’ ballpark, Anaheim Angels broadcaster Mario Impemba left his cell phone in a taxi.

The phone was still there an hour later when another passenger noticed it and thought he recognized the casing. The passenger dialed his own home number on it, whereupon the name “DARON” appeared on the display screen.

And that confirmed the suspicion of Daron Sutton that the phone belonged to Impemba, his broadcast partner.

“Either that,” Sutton joked later, “or someone else in Cleveland knew my number.”

A scary possibility to be sure.

Department of Redundancy Dept.: In an Orange County bookstore, Richard McDonough saw a shelf sign that said: “Alphabetical By Letter.”

A young lady of letters: I taught at a journalism workshop recently where a promising student from Dos Pueblos High in Goleta revealed that her father was an old newspaperman.

“When my parents were deciding on a name for me, Dad typed all the possibilities into his computer at work,” she said.

Why? “To see which combinations would fit in a byline, since our last name is quite long.”

Dad finally decided on Nora.

And I expect to see the byline Nora Desruisseaux squeezed into newspaper columns some day.

miscelLAny: Don’t trade in that old jalopy. Strip it!

In Belmont Shore, the store Blue Windows sells picture frames that are “handmade from 100% recycled car radiators” for $50 apiece.

Down the street, the store Five Thousand and One offers furniture “made from recycled tires”: chairs for $249.95 and tables for $149.95. You can’t kick the tires before buying, however.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, 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 [email protected].