People and Events

Santa Catalina Island might seem to be one of the better spots to be marooned, but not to hear Andre Dupret tell it. The 32-year-old design director was still angry three days after he, his wife and 7-year-old daughter found themselves among 1,500 or so mainlanders stranded overnight when 60-m.p.h. winds forced closure of Avalon’s harbor.

Although the trapped sightseers were given shelter at the Casino theater as well as at a school gymnasium and a church, Dupret complains that Avalon restaurants shut down at their normal times and “with 2,200 people living in Avalon, not a single home was open to us.”

The Casino did offer the unexpected guests a free movie, Dupret admitted, “but the theater operators had the audacity to sell us popcorn and Coke.”

About the only action he saw out of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who police the island, he said, was that of one officer who cited a member of Dupret’s tour group for having an open beer container in public.

On that incident, Lt. Dale Goss, commander of the Avalon Sheriff’s Station, said, “That’s a possibility. We don’t allow open containers over here.” As for the rest of it, Goss couldn’t say much because “I happened to be stranded on the mainland.”

He did, however, note that it was “inconceivable” that Avalon would be equipped to handle that many unscheduled overnight guests.

City Manager John Longely said that while some of the strandees were upset, most seemed happy. He said the Catalina Island Co., fire officials and private citizens made “a good community effort.” Avalon is “taking measures,” he said, to make sure it has enough cots and blankets next time.

Inglewood, on the other hand, began publicizing its inhospitality--at least to drug buyers--by launching an energetic ad campaign that calls attention to the success of police sting operations there.

“Buying crack in Inglewood could put you between a rock and a hard place,” read the billboards and bumper stickers and bus benches designed to warn coke customers to go elsewhere. “Behind your rock could be a cop!”

In the past year, Mayor Edward Vincent and Police Chief Raymond Johnson said, cops have posed as pushers at known drug-peddling sites nearly a dozen times and have made more than 200 arrests for buying and selling.

Cher sued the National Enquirer in Los Angeles federal court Tuesday for $15 million, claiming it was dead wrong in printing that she berated comedian Eddie Murphy after his Oscar show accusation that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences discriminated against blacks.

Cher, who won the Best Actress statuette for her work in “Moonstruck,” was quoted by the Enquirer as telling Murphy, “This is not a platform for your grievances. How could you do this? You put a damper on the whole thing.”

She couldn’t have said that, Cher maintained in her suit, because she didn’t talk to Murphy or see him at the ceremony and was not even aware of his comments at the time. The publication made her look like a racist, she said, when just the opposite is true.

The suit’s official allegation is infringement of the right of publicity for commercial purposes.

The Civic Center Triforium, the so-called “million-dollar jukebox” that stands above the mall near the Los Angeles City Hall, finally has been reactivated (sort of) about eight years after its big speakers fell silent and its 1,500 colored glass prisms stopped glowing.

Although it still will cost an estimated $25,000 to fully overhaul the thing, the Triforium is making a slow comeback, with its carillon chimes being turned on every 15 minutes.

The next step, according to Joel Greenberg, an aide to City Councilman John Ferraro, will be to hook it up to police, fire and other agencies so it can blare out emergency information.

The lights, which are supposed to brighten and soften with the music, will probably go crazy.