Accentuate the negative: An Iranian immigrant, testifying...

Accentuate the negative: An Iranian immigrant, testifying about the robbery of his family in Reseda, was asked whether the intruders spoke with accents. The question was important because the robbers wore disguises and the victims were blindfolded.

“It was a white-guy accent,” the immigrant said. Later, he used the term “cowboy accent,” which, he said, meant the same thing. He explained he had trouble recognizing the accents of Americans.

Since the defendants in the L.A. Superior Court trial were East Coast residents, the victim was asked if any of the robbers spoke with a “New York accent.”

“I don’t know what you call a New York accent,” he responded. “I’ve been in New York. They’re not nice people. They’re kind of pushy.”

Suddenly, a voice growled “Hey!” from the gallery.

Everyone turned to see an indignant burly man in the front row.

Told to be quiet, the heckler said: “I’m sorry”--in a very New York accent.

*

Please, don’t seize the Charmin: “We have had to discontinue our practice of having two rolls of toilet paper out at a time because of continuous theft,” said a notice posted at Sherman Oaks Elementary School. “Please check to see that there is toilet paper. If there isn’t, buzz the office and paper will be sent immediately.”

The saddest aspect of the case, a school employee told the United Teachers-L.A. newsletter, is that the scene of the crime is an adult restroom.

List of the Day: Some local utterances in the just-released New International Dictionary of Quotations (Excuse the white-guy accents):

* “Let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.”-- writer/actor Robert Benchley (also credited to director Billy Wilder and writers Charles Brackett and Alexander Woollcott).

* “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”-- detective Philip Marlowe, in the Raymond Chandler novel, “Farewell, My Lovely.”

* “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”--Richard Nixon, in a 1962 press conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, after losing the gubernatorial race.

* “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”--studio chief Samuel Goldwyn.

The closest thing to an L.A. put-down is this outdated remark from comic Fred Allen: “California is a great place to live--if you happen to be an orange.” Allen said it in the early 1950s, before developers had leveled most of L.A.’s orange trees.

*

Please don’t squeeze City Hall: One of the new murals in the Olive Street lobby of the L.A. Athletic Club is especially timely with the mayoral election upon us. The figure in the work by Evans & Brown of San Francisco could be seen as the ultimate L.A. politico: He’s straddling a fence. And while one arm is squeezing City Hall, the other arm is dipping into the financial district.

miscelLAny:

High-heel shoes are forbidden on Seal Beach’s wooden-plank pier.