Maybe Flower Shop’s After-Hours Bonfire Was to Get Ready for a Fire Sale

The Los Alamitos News- Enterprise reported that a resident looked into a flower shop that was supposed to be closed for the day and observed four people “sitting on the floor around a bonfire having a religious ceremony.�

Finding humor in the most unexpected places: Brian Crowley of El Segundo arrived at LAX to take a flight and noticed there were new screens “displaying data about the flight as well as a list of standby passengers. To preserve privacy, standby passengers were listed by only the first three letters of the last name followed by a slash, and the first initial of the first name.�

He couldn’t help noticing that the first standby passenger on his flight was “BOM/B.�

“I stood there, knowing that I had to keep a straight face,� Crowley said. “I couldn’t draw any attention to this curiosity, and couldn’t say a word about it to anyone . . . until I was safely away from the airport in Columbus, Ohio.�

We should be so lucky: When I looked at the snapshot sent along by Sarah Fishman of La Canada-Flintridge, I thought it expressed a concept alien to Southern California drivers (see photo). Sure enough, Fishman said it was taken at a loading dock for a ferry near Seattle.

No use being first to open wide: Allan Bergan of Palm Desert says he might delay an appointment with the person hired at an Indio office (see accompanying).

G’day! A Melbourne, Australia, resident has been having trouble selling a CD from the 2000 film “Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles� via the EBay Web site--not that he’s asking an exorbitant amount (see accompanying).

Can’t understand why there hasn’t been a bigger demand for such selections as “Hypnotize the Pig,� “Spider in Hat� and “Eraser Rat.�

Is he an innie or outie? Hal Cutler of L.A. went to an audition for an HBO series that was looking for “specialty actors.� The specialty, it turned out, was impersonating a corpse; the series, “Six Feet Under,� is about a family that operates a mortuary.

Portraying a corpse is not as simple as you might think.

“They told me to lie down and not breathe,� said Cutler, 73. “They said it was very important for me to hold my breath for at least 30 to 40 seconds.�

Cutler had no problem with that.

“Then they said, ‘Can we see your bellybutton?’ � he recalled. “So I raised my shirt.�

Cutler’s waiting to hear if his bellybutton was right for the part.

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miscelLAny: When my mother told me Thursday morning that she had heard the name “Steve Harvey� on the radio I modestly replied it must have been a reference to the actor/comic of the same name. “No,� she said, “they were talking about your column. And they said you made a mistake.�

The mistake was expressing the theory that Dodger pitcher Chan Ho Park was entitled to Barry Bonds’ disputed 73rd home run ball because he was the last person holding it before Bonds connected. Alas, it turned out that the ball was actually served up by teammate Dennis Springer.

I don’t know about Park, but Mom said she forgives me and hopes I’ve learned my lesson.

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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].