An Airport There Would Have to Be a Seaport

It’s discouraging. Here’s Southern California, trying valiantly to increase tourism, and USA Today is recommending that our visitors be dumped in the Pacific Ocean (see accompanying).

Everyone but that newspaper knows that Ontario International Airport isn’t west of downtown L.A., especially not that far.

Actually, I’m not really sure where Ontario International Airport is, but I know it ain’t offshore.

Ooh L.A. L.A.: Reader Tom C. noticed that a technical bulletin for a product he bought used a rather racy description (see accompanying).

Speaking of amour ... : CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz told Golf Digest about an embarrassing on-air moment that he had with Clint Eastwood. “I’ll bet you didn’t know that when [golfer] Davis [Love III] was a young boy, one of the first adult films his father ever took him to see was one of yours,” Nantz told the star.

Responded Eastwood: “I have never made an adult film in my life.”

While you’re still feeling that Dirty Harry chill: In Lompoc, Bob Wyckoff spotted a movie marquee that had a wintry theme (see photo).

Searching for the Great El Segundan Novel: I wrote about the official who did not want to name a reading room in El Segundo’s public library after Agatha Christie because “she has no connection with El Segundo.”

Afterward, the closest I could come to a prominent book with an El Segundo connection was Michael Katz’s mystery “Last Dance in Redondo Beach.”

But a friend has since reminded me that Mattel, the mother of Barbie, is based in El Segundo.

So I found “Mondo Barbie” by Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole (see accompanying), a collection of fiction pieces with such titles as “Twelve-Step Barbie,” “Hell’s Angel Barbie” and “Barbie Comes Out,” in which the young miss links up with Kendra, the recipient of a sex-change operation. Yup, good old Ken.

Plenty of material there for a Barbie Reading Room.

miscelLAny: It’s one of life’s little ironies. “American Idol” judge Paula Abdul, who pleaded no contest to a charge of hit-and-run driving Thursday involving an accident on the Ventura Freeway, sang the hit “Straight Up.”

Some of its lyrics:

Straight up now tell me

Do you really want to love me forever oh oh oh?

Or am I caught in a hit and run?

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].