The turning point in Matt Matich’s life...

The turning point in Matt Matich’s life came six years ago when he was broadcasting the news for the Loyola Marymount campus radio station and came upon an item about Bonefish Day in Florida.

“Everyone was having some kind of an official day so I thought we should too,” Matich said.

He capitalized on his gastronomic passion and invented Burrito Day, now an annual celebration of station KXLU. Burrito Day, which is next Monday, involves the naming of a Miss Burrito as well as a tour by LMU students and friends of as many dispensaries of the tortilla-clad delicacies as they can endure in one day (12 is the record).

Matich is still active on Burrito Day, though he confesses he now works in an Italian deli. “I checked out the burrito factories,” he said, “but the deli paid more.”

Of the more than 25,000 exhibits available for perusal by the jurors still deliberating in the fraud trial of carpet-cleaning magnate Barry Minkow, there is nary a scrap of rug.

Put off filing that lawsuit, have you? Well, in the spirit of the holidays, a Covina-based company called the Justice Center, which handles small-claims cases for individuals, is offering to pay filing fees for such suits for a limited time. A sign in the company’s display window proclaims: “December Special.”

Sporting an avant-garde look, it was intended as a monument to Los Angeles by its designer but quickly became the butt of jokes.

The projected West Coast Gateway, “Clouds of Steel?”

No, this particular monument was the Triforium, which made its debut in the Los Angeles City Mall 13 years ago and cost the taxpayers $1 million.

While “Clouds” has become a conversation piece, the Triforium has become the city’s version of a homeless sculpture. The 6-story-tall jukebox with 1,500 colored-glass prisms hasn’t made a peep or flashed a light in more than a year, and plans to replace its worn-out computer have been stalled for months.

Of course, the Los Angeles City Council, at member Joel Wachs’ urging, recently voted to create an endowment that would raise as much as $20 million annually for the arts. A Wachs aide was asked how much is earmarked for the Triforium. “No one’s even mentioned it,” the aide said.

It’s just a coincidence, of course, but just as a new earthquake fault was detected under Dodger Stadium, the team raised its ticket prices for the box seats, which happen to be on the ground-level.

Experts seem hard pressed to explain how to combat an infestation of ash whiteflies, which are threatening local fruit groves. Not Jack Rendant of Arcadia. Besieged by the little critters, he says he sprayed them with dish detergent and he now has healthy orange and lemon trees. Clean ones, too. “We used ‘Dawn,’ ” he said, “but others would probably be as good.”

Landmark status in Southern California evidently is attained more easily than, say, Rome. One restaurant is bragging these days in radio ads that it’s been “a landmark in West Hollywood for more than 19 years.”