Plates

French novelist Victor Hugo is widely quoted as saying that there is "nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come." The time for advertising and sending messages to motorists traveling along California's highways came long before I introduced SB 1453, which The Times pilloried in its July 9 editorial, "What's wrong with this picture?" Blinking, scrolling, flashing billboards already beam advertisements to passing motorists on California's freeways. Vanity and environmental license plates tell motorists who you are, what you like and where you are from.

Sandra Sandor of Lake Elsinore said she first learned that a murder suspect was sleeping in her home when she turned on the radio Thursday morning. The broadcast described the car and gave the license plate number of murder victim Denise Duerr, 21, of Garden Grove. Authorities had found Duerr's body near the Orange County-Riverside County line on Wednesday afternoon. She had been missing for two days. The radio reported that her car, with its personalized license plate CEEYA 3, still had not been recovered.

Back in the days when people explored the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet, they might have returned with commemorative state plates, meant more for displaying on kitchen walls than for serving supper. Now crafty Stella Anthony has transformed these vintage souvenir dinner dishes and some sweet midcentury graphic designs into cool kitchen clocks, priced from $18. Call (323) 513-3478 or e-mail her at saamzplace@sbcglobal .net. -- David A. Keeps

Satisfy your inner architect and set the dinner table with these platters, plates, mugs and linens embellished in blueprint-style patterns. The Floorplan collection's black-line drawings depict just about every type of urban abode available, from the post-college studio to the uptown penthouse. "Customers are putting them all together and having fun with them," says Sara Mills, who worked on the design team with Julie Gaines, owner of the Fishs Eddy housewares outlet in Manhattan. The stackable pieces are made of sturdy china and are safe to use in the microwave and dishwasher.

Disegno in Italian means "drawing," but an English speaker would not be entirely misled by the similarity of the word to the English design ; for, as Nicholas Turner explains in his introduction to this collection of drawings from the British Museum, disegno was for the Florentines "the animating force uniting the different arts."

Anton Orlov held one of the glass plates to the light. The hand-colored image seemed to glow. Two soldiers in long brown coats, rifles over their shoulders, stood with their backs to the camera. A trolley rushed out of the frame. A small patch of sky held a delicate blue wash, and red banners with yellow letters hung from the sides of a building. Orlov swore he recognized the building. It had granite garlands above the windows and carved figures supporting the corbels beneath the balcony.

Honk if you love farmers. The California Department of Food and Agriculture is trying to rally public support for special license plates that tout a driver's support for the state's agricultural industry and would charge a premium fee for them. The bulk of those fees, which would be tacked onto a person's normal vehicle registration costs, would pay for statewide education and training programs aimed at secondary school kids interested in farm careers. The fees for plates with numbers randomly selected by the state Department of Motor Vehicles would cost $50 for the first year and $40 a year to renew.

California legislators who have proposed selling digital ads on car license plates to help close the state budget gap vow that, if they ever go ahead with the plan, they will take steps to ensure the "integrity" of the venture. Unfortunately, that would be impossible. In order to ensure an idea's integrity, it has to have integrity in the first place. It's true that the economy is dog-paddling, the state budget deficit is at $19 billion and counting, and no one is eager to pay extra taxes.

It's a story so revolting and so legendary that it has achieved near mythical status. One night in the 1960s, during a particularly heavy bout of drinking, Jim Morrison stood up and urinated on the long wooden bar at Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood. Rock god status and titillating snug leather pants or not, Morrison was booted from the famous restaurant and bar. "Of course, this being Barney's, they wiped it off and put a plaque there," jokes Jim Ladd, the KLOS-FM DJ known for spinning raw, classic rock sans formulaic playlists for nearly 40 years.

TWO "food dudes" -- laid-back, long-haired cooks who grew up in Florida and are culinary graduates of the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale -- make their way to California and end up at the late Chadwick in Beverly Hills working with Ben Ford and Govind Armstrong. In 2004, the dudes, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, found Carmelized Productions, a catering company. Soon, they're starring in the Food Network docudrama series, "Two Dudes Catering," which purports to show "two young renegade chefs who play by their own rules" in "the big time world of Hollywood catering."