It’s All Just Semantics--or Is It That British Sense of Humor?

Jan Franklin Jackson said one of her favorite country road signs in England warned: “Hounds Gentlemen Please.” It was an appeal to drive carefully because fox hunts were held in the area.

Arthur Gimson of Redondo Beach said that “while living in the UK from 1988 to 1990, my California-born wife kept a notebook of interestingly different road signs. Her two favorites were ‘Loose Chippings,’ for a warning against the perils of freshly installed gravel, and ‘No fly tipping,’ which advised that dumping of rubbish was not permitted.”

Finally, Father Tom Elewaut of St. Joseph High School in Santa Maria pointed out that “what we call speed bumps, the English call sleeping policemen.”

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STAR-CROSSED: Roy Kamen of Covina found an intersection in Burbank that seemed to pay tribute to the mother and daughter Judd singers (see accompanying . . . OK, Wynonna was misspelled).

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STUPID BICYCLIST TRICKS: Hopping across the Pacific this time, we bring you word from Patti Garrity of Manhattan Beach, who says the traffic is wilder in Tokyo than here--and she means all types of traffic.

Garrity vividly recalled “a young lady wobblingly bike-riding in the rain, pedaling on four-inch platform clogs she probably couldn’t walk in, miniskirt hiked up, holding an umbrella with one hand, the other hand on the handlebar with a cell phone tucked between chin and shoulder as she chatted on the traffic-clogged street.”

Good thing she didn’t hit a sleeping policeman.

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LAUGHTER IN THE DARK: Is the Hollywood community’s love for Bill Clinton fading over his sloppy exit from the presidential stage? During a star-studded tribute to Barbra Streisand at the Beverly Hilton on Thursday night--attended by everyone from Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood to Elizabeth Taylor--two clips of Clinton were shown. Each time his face appeared on the screen there was some derisive laughter from the audience.

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POST SCRIPT: A letter addressed to “Sir or Mad” was sent to Bob Borden of Kay’s Stationers in L.A. “What luck,” Borden said. “I’m both!”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, 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].