Try Getting to Sleep After This, Airport Foes

Residents in the vicinity of the proposed El Toro airport have been losing sleep over the possibility that they’ll lose even more sleep if it becomes a reality.

In a 10,000-plus-page environmental review, Orange County attempted to defuse that issue by including a study of residents living near Heathrow Airport in England.

The study found that just 5% were awakened in the night by airport noise. Other causes of interrupted sleep were dreams (3%), illness (4%), bedmate (8%), children (15%), and the sound of flushing toilets (17%).

Perhaps the Heathrow area needs an environmental report on the local toilets.

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HOLIDAY TRAVELERS ADVISORY: This is dedicated to those of you leaving town soon:

The cab arrives, he honks his horn,

I stumble out in the early morn

And tell him of the place I’ve got to go

We hit a hundred signal lights . . .

L.A. International Airport

Where the big jet engines roar.

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A LIVID LEGEND: Some day, I predict, “L.A. International Airport” will be followed by another great song of that genre--one with these lyrics:

El Toro International Airport

Quieter than the toilets’ roar

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SLEIGH’S-EYE VIEW: Welcome to the “Only in L.A. Holiday Special” on radio station K-Only, with your host Santa Steve. Merry Christmas! Before we play some holiday ditties, let’s go to our first traffic report:

On the night before Christmas

All down 101

The traffic was deadlocked

It wasn’t much fun.

That’s from the book-size poem “The Night Before Christmas in California” by Catherine Smith and Steve Egan, in which a massive fog temporarily blocks Santa’s view.

(Remember, more traffic reports appear in “Only in L.A.” than in any other column.)

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SURF UPDATE: From the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise’s “police log”:

“Seal Beach, Ocean Avenue, 8:16 a.m.: A woman accidentally dropped her fishing pole into the water, and surfers reportedly refused to return it to her.”

I know that none of those surfers could have been a plump gentleman with a long, white beard.

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ADVENTUROUS DINERS GUIDE: Tired of the traditional Christmas meals?

An L.A. eatery is offering “Y2K enchiladas.” (See photo.) I’m not sure I’d try them at midnight Dec. 31, though. Or midnight any day, for that matter.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (800) LA TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at [email protected] and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.