Valleytalk

valleytalk/cw1st/mark2nd Dressed to Thrill The sun may still be high in the sky, but it’s fall at the mall as retailers set their sites on back-to-school business. To help, Macerich Co., which owns and operates Panorama Mall, has compiled a survey on what students will be shopping for this season. According to the survey, students will spend an average of $234.19 on their back-to-school wardrobes. Though most will hit up mom and dad for the cash, about one-third said they will be using their own money. The athletic look will be popular, as will the retro-’70s style popularized by the Austin Powers movies. For phat fashion leaders, the kids picked Buffy Summers, the lead character on TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” played by Sarah Michelle Gellar on WB, and “Friends” Chandler Bing, played by Matthew Perry on NBC. But if you think it’s the girls who will be placing the most emphasis on how they look, think again. The survey revealed that boys are more likely than girls to believe that the right duds will make them popular. Biting Hand That Feeds The slippery slope of sign usage just keeps getting steeper. The Studio City Hand Car Wash made news recently when it got into a brouhaha with area residents over its sign featuring a giant ceramic hand holding a full-sized Corvette. The car wash owner wants an exemption from the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan that restricts advertising signs along the boulevard. Residents say the sign is an eyesore and they want it removed. Now community squabbles over signs are taking a more corporate turn and with it, a somewhat bizarre twist. It turns out that ABC, which has placed banners along Ventura Boulevard, along with Wilshire and Olympic boulevards to promote the network, may also be in violation of the city’s sign ordinances, and the company could be asked to take the lamppost banners down. But unlike the car wash and other merchants who are being asked to take their signs down, ABC paid the city to put their signs up $46,000, to be exact. Defining the Terms For developers battling the objections of community groups and others to their projects, the Van Nuys-based Apartment Association recently published this guide to opponent attitudes: NIMBY: Not in my back yard. NIMFYE: Not in my front yard either. BANANA: Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody. NIMTOO: Not in my term of office. NOPE: Not on planet Earth. Name Game When word surfaced that CBS and ABC had a couple of competing dramas with similar titles set for the fall season, the question became who would blink first and make a change. So far, everybody is holding firm. The CBS drama is titled “Now and Again,” an eerie tale about a man who comes back from the brink of death in another man’s body. ABC is offering “Once and Again,” a domestic drama about two single parents who come together. In an apparent attempt to force a move by ABC, CBS Television President Les Moonves reportedly said he won’t be making any changes. “(Moonves) said, ‘let them worry about us,'” according to Glenn Gordon Caron, who is producing the CBS show. “Whenever you get bullishness from a network head you don’t want to diminish that.” Slimming Down Wondering why sections of the L.A. Times sometimes come in different sizes these days? It’s because the newspaper continues its move to a slimmer format. The conversion may be annoying to those who expect their paper to be the same size, but complaints have been few, according to officials with the Times’ customer-service section. So when will the changeover be finished? “We’re looking at the third or fourth week of October,” said spokesman David Garcia. “It will be about an inch narrower.”