Obscenity

Neighbors of a local surf shop say a weekend promotional event veered out of control when someone repeatedly yelled obscenities over a public address system. Residents complained to council members Monday night that a young man shouted something into a microphone about performing a sex act with a skateboard during a skating exhibition held at Inflight Surf and Sail on Saturday afternoon.

A baggage handler charged with making obscene telephone calls to female students at UCLA pleaded guilty Monday and was sentenced to one year in jail. Wallace Bouier, 42, was arrested on the job Saturday night at Los Angeles International Airport, according to Deputy City Atty. Michele Anderson. The calls to UCLA students began in July, two months after Bouier was placed on probation for making calls to USC students in university housing.

The U.S. General Accounting Office said Friday it had opened an investigation of alleged improper funding of obscene artworks by the National Endowment for the Arts, responding to a demand for a probe earlier this week by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). A GAO official, however, said a preliminary reading of the NEA's 1990 appropriation bill, which precludes funding of obscene works unless they meet high standards for artistic excellence, appears to give the arts endowment extremely wide leeway.

An Irvine man was arrested Thursday for impersonating a sheriff's deputy and making a series of obscene telephone calls to women in various Orange County areas, authorities said. Sheriff's Lt. William Francis said deputies seized several security agent badges, police-type clothing, a police baton and a Taser gun when they arrested David T. Avery, 22, at his home in unincorporated Lake Forest. Deputies also found 15 stolen credit cards at the residence, Francis said.

The Oregon Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously overturned as unconstitutional a state law against making obscene telephone calls. The justices had overturned an earlier law in 1979, and the Legislature enacted a new statute in 1981. But the Supreme Court said the latest version does not meet constitutional muster, either. "This telephone harassment statute is hopelessly overbroad," the court said in an opinion by Justice Robert Jones upholding the state Court of Appeals.

A Jefferson Park man was accused of making obscene and annoying telephone calls to 117 female students at USC, the Los Angeles city attorney's office said Monday. Wallace Bouier, 41, was charged Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court with nine misdemeanor counts of making obscene and annoying telephone calls. The calls, which were all sexual in nature, were made to telephone numbers with the same prefix at USC housing facilities.

Controversial pro-gun Councilwoman Sandi Webb apologized Friday for making an obscene gesture at U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, saying: "I blew it and I'm sorry." Webb faxed a letter of apology to Feinstein's office from Simi Valley City Hall. And she signed an open letter to the citizens of Simi Valley apologizing for throwing the senator a middle-fingered salute in a dispute over gun control.

A coalition of adult film producers and distributors filed suit Tuesday against the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking to overturn a wide range of federal anti-obscenity statutes they say "exact too high a price" for delivering sex films to an increasingly accepting American public. In a civil suit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the newly formed Adult Video Assn.

An obscenity charge has been dropped against a woman who received nationwide attention when she was arrested in November in Burleson and accused of selling two sex toys to undercover police officers. A judge dismissed the case against Joanne Webb, Johnson County Attorney Bill Moore said in a statement. He said he asked the judge for the dismissal to prevent wasting county resources, but didn't say when the dismissal occurred.

The Senate voted, 68 to 28, to impose strict anti-obscenity curbs on federal grants for the arts, but it refused, 67 to 27, to cut the budget of the agency that distributes the money. The first measure, by persistent NEA foe Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), tells the National Endowment for the Arts that no tax dollars can be used "to promote, disseminate or produce materials that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual or excretory activities or organs." It was added to a $12.