How to Be Annoying: It’s All in the Cell-Phone Users’ Manual

Cell-phone users know all sorts of ways to be irritating. They putter along on uncrowded freeways at 40 mph, engrossed in conversation. They shout into the gadget in restaurants. And they can’t make a purchase in public without consulting someone via the phone, no matter how long the line behind them. The last tendency prompted this warning in a Brentwood coffeehouse, noticed by Art Purcell:

“Do Not Talk on Cell Phone and Order at Same Time.”

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HEY, NO CELLULAR CUTS! I’m reminded of another cell-phone trick by a story Danielle Fairlee told of a slow-moving line at a Koo Koo Roo in Studio City. An impatient person in front of Fairlee asked a passing employee the phone number of the place. The impatient woman then whipped out her cell phone and called in her order to Koo Koo Roo. The others in line were amazed to hear the counterman asking her--over the phone, naturally--what size drink she wanted. She picked up her food ahead of several of those who were in front of her, and escaped without being jeered.

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HI, I’D LIKE TO RESERVE A COMFORTABLE CHAIR NEAR THE CHECKOUT COUNTER: With the economy on the upswing, Southern California hotel rooms seem to be completely booked up, judging from the unusual marquee that Wally Hein of Westlake Village spotted (see photo).

UNSEALED: It is one of the small ironies of life that Seal Beach has no seals--unless you count Slick, the bronze creature who is landlocked for eternity on the city pier.

Real seals once frolicked there before development, pollution and a shrinking supply of food drove them away. Now the Seal Beach business community is talking of placing a barge near the city’s pier that would lure the animals back.

I hail this action and hope that other areas also will try to live up to their names.

Thousand Oaks, for instance.

A survey by school children once found there were 3,422 oaks in Thousand Oaks. The city stubbornly refused to update its name.

Elsewhere, the founder of the desert town of Twentynine Palms once admitted that he’d seen only 26 palms.

And finally, the community of Lake Los Angeles not only is in the Antelope Valley but has no lake. Or even an L.A. River.

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]