Angels Are Out of Their League Giving Directions

Searching for directions to an Angels game, my colleague Jim LaVally noticed that the team’s official website instructs fans to catch the 605 Freeway in downtown L.A. (see excerpt). The 605, of course, does not go to downtown L.A.

Gee, you’d think an L.A. team like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim would know that.

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A rose by any other name -- please!: An ad that gave one flower a distinctly unhygienic image came to the attention of Gabi Dendinger, Ilana Tauber, Janine Krasik and Martha Bell, among other readers (see accompanying).

They pointed out that it was supposed to say “Salvia,” with Dendinger commenting: “I don’t think Blue Saliva would be a big seller.”

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Unreal estate: Apparently property is so valuable in Southern California these days that Manny Siegall of Anaheim chanced upon one homeowner who squeezed a four-bedroom home into a kitchen (see accompanying). Easier to eat in bed that way, I guess.

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Speaking of kitchen duties: I thought the days were gone when secretaries were asked to perform personal tasks for bosses. But Patricia Saperstein spotted an opening for an office assistant whose duties included cooking (see accompanying).

Myself, I’ve never felt like marinating my computer -- but I have felt, at times, like drowning it.

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Fish story: The 1,300-foot slab of concrete known as the Venice Pier doesn’t have the romantic image of its counterparts in Huntington Beach and Santa Monica.

But in a profile of the Venice Pier in its June issue, Field & Stream magazine describes it as an “angling circus,” every bit as interesting as the more famous show on the Venice boardwalk.

The colorful regulars include a homeless ex-con who says he once wrote a song with funk legend George Clinton, a Mexico native who sets up five rods along the railing (and doesn’t like to eat fish), and an older Russian woman in a babushka (who doesn’t fish).

About 3 p.m., the magazine said, the woman can be seen wandering “from fisherman to fisherman offering $3, and always $3, for a herring, surf perch or white croaker.

Her money is invariably refused by the regulars -- even the homeless fishermen wave it away as they hand over one of these” fish to her.

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miscelLAny: My colleague Jim Carr saw the following plates on consecutive cars on the San Diego Freeway:

WAY ENUF

IAM TRBL

And I’d be taking the next offramp.

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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].