West Valley Students Eerily Sedate, Well-Behaved Today, Reports LAUSD

By Jordan Covello, Quilt staff




DATELINE: WEST VALLEY SCHOOLS, 4/20

High school students in the West San Fernando Valley were remarkably and inexplicably well-behaved today, notes an official with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Havemeyer. Photo: LAUSD

“Usually I get reports of fights, insubordination, vandalism, truancy — the ‘Big Four’— but today was particularly light in all those areas,” says Dr. Ernest B. Havemeyer, superintedistrator of LAUSD’s West Valley district.

“There was significant tardiness, yes. Most students meandered in at their leisure and didn’t seem to be particularly worried about the consequences. But aside from a few other unexplained incidents, it was a good day, albeit a strange one.

Teachers at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills reported a lot of eating in the classroom — despite rules to the contrary — and occasional and sustained outbursts of giggling among some students seemingly unprovoked by anything the teachers or anyone else did. 

Says Chatsworth High physics teacher John Russo, “I was explaining the Twin Paradox and everyone in the class was just completely enraptured and fascinated by the concept. We spent forty-five minutes discussing it, and then someone noticed a fly buzzing against the inside of a window and [the class] fixated on that for the rest of the period. Which was fine by me, because I had some more levels of Word Cookies to complete.”

Across the West Valley, the school day ended as it began, with students lazily drifting out of school anywhere from ten minutes to more than an hour after the last bell. “I had to literally beg a group of students to leave a classroom so I could mop the floor,” says Reseda High School custodian Frank Helupka. “They were just staring at a pencil sharpener.”

Whoa. Whoooa, man. Whoa — seriously. Wow, right?  Image: Huh? Like Whoooa. 

High school sports, too, were affected by the students’ unexplained behavior. The Canoga Park Hunters baseball team had a game against Sylmar at Lanark Park today at 3 p.m. 

“It was the strangest thing,” notes Berta Dorchek, who was being walked by her pit bull through the park. “I don’t know who was winning or losing or what, but at exactly twenty minutes after four, both teams just sort of wandered off the field to the skate park area and started hanging out with the kids there.”

“It’s just nice to see everyone getting along, you know?”

Religious Iconography Appears On Easter Eggs in Canoga Park

By Nita Keswick, Quilt Staff

DATELINE: PARTHENIA PARK

An unexplained phenomenon — perhaps an Easter miracle of sorts — occurred this morning at a family Easter egg hunt in the park at Parthenia Street and International Avenue in the tight-knit, tightly-packed Parthenational neighborhood of Canoga Park.

“Yeah, I got up early and went out [to Parthenia Park] to hide some eggs for my kid, you know?” says Gabriel Machura, of the Transitional Arms Apartments.  “Then not even five minutes later I come back out with him and told him to go look for them.”

Armed with a plastic Easter basket from Dollar Tree, 6-year old Jakob eagerly went to work, scouring every corner of the approximately 1-acre park.

“Well, he found them all, only now they were all marked up an’ shit when he got to them. One of them was eaten, and only the shell was left.”

Ova Stigmata? Mysterious messages and symbols, possibly of a religious nature,
appeared on colored eggs hidden in Parthenia Park on Easter morning. Staff photo.

“I told him it was the Easter Bunny — like he had to eat one of his eggs, ‘cause he was so busy hiding them and didn’t have time for breakfast,” says the 33-year-old tow truck driver with Peppy Impound on Saticoy.

The single father admitted he didn’t now if his son “bought it” especially after a derelict man in his late 40s with some bits of crumbled egg yolk on his face approached them and hungrily eyed either the rest of the eggs in the basket or his son.

“Well, at that point we just got the hell out of there,” Machura reports. “Besides, I left the gate to my building propped open and I saw some guys with paint pens and Sharpies heading that way.”

BREAKING: SUSPECTS ARRESTED IN KNOCK KNOCK JOKE BURGLARY CASE

By Sherman Farralone, Quilt staff.
DATELINE: FANCY-SCHMANCY WEST HILLS

Four suspects were arrested last night in West Hills on suspicion of burglary — one of the first major breaks in the so-called Knock Knock Jokes burglaries, so named after a string of break-ins following a similar pattern that have been reported in the area.

Mugshots of the four suspected knock-knock joke burglars arrested last night.  Image: LAPD.

Officials said the burglars, who usually work in bunches, tend to target single-family homes in affluent neighborhoods and then knock on the front door to determine whether anyone is home.

After knocking, and a resident answers “Who’s there?” the suspects will respond, “Banana,” to which the homeowner will attempt to ask “Banana who?” but is immediately interrupted by the suspects knocking again, forcing the resident to repeat “who’s there?”  This pattern will continue a total of three times. 

“The quick repetition completely throws the victim off his or her guard, generally confusing them — and making it easy for the criminals to exploit the situation,” says Capt. Reed Malloy of the LAPD.

Finally, just before the homeowner becomes suspicious, the bananas will split toward the back of the home and break in while a fourth accomplice, an innocent-looking citrus fruit, will take over and identify himself as “Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?” keeping the homeowner distracted at the front door while the other robbers quickly ransack the house.

Surveillance camera footage of suspects from an earlier robbery attempt.
Photo: Facebook / Crimebusteroos Club of West Hills & Woodland Hills

“We’re pleased with these arrests and are encouraged to have gotten these suspects off the street, but there are others thieves committing these same sort of crimes in the area,” says Malloy, who heads the San Fernando Valley Knock-Knock and Over 100 Other Funny Jokes for Kids Burglary Task Force. “We’re still on the lookout for a diminutive, elderly woman, possibly of Swiss ethnicity. 

“So we are cautioning residents to not open the door to a little old lady who...
...eh ...yodels.”

Rare Fabergé Poptop Vial on Display At Local Marijuanery

By Ingomar Schoenborn, Quilt staff

DATELINE: DEERING AVENUE

A priceless poptop vial, made by the House of Fabergé for the last tsar of Russia, is on display through April 18 at High AF Collective, a marijuana dispensary, located in the heart of Canoga Park’s fragrant dope district at 420 Deering Avenue.

On loan from the State Hermitage Smoke Shop & Wellness Center in St. Petersburg, Russia, the ornate container, a handcrafted polypropylene cylinder bejeweled with countless gemstones and wrapped with delicate filigree, was one of many commissioned by Nicholas II as an Easter present to his wife Alexandra. 

Easter Surprise: Known unofficially as 'the Cheetos Jar,' the poptop container is exquisitely
decorated in diamonds and rubies, and contains a solid gold deep-fried puffed cornmeal snack
finished in extremely rare orange gold dust. It's on display in Canoga Park now through Easter.

In all, fifty tiny canisters, all different, were created between 1885 and 1917.  Each of the decorative vials were opulently embellished and included a tiny surprise inside to delight the tsarina — from a miniature hand-carved Woody Harrelson to a tiny gold bong shaped like Rasputin’s penis, modeled after a full-size working model, a favorite of the Empress. The cannabis containers also held a small quantity of marijuana, which, when smoked or otherwise ingested, made the less interesting among the annual gifts’ surprises seem much more fascinating. 

All of the royal Easter gifts were exquisitely designed by a team of artisans led by Carl Fabergé’s son, Jeff, with some taking over a year to complete, due to the fact that the workers often became distracted and ended up binge-watching hours of Family Guy and Robot Chicken episodes or heading out to get “a дерьмо-load of those Doritos knishes.”

Following the Russian revolution and the totally harsh and seriously uncool execution of the Romanovs in 1917, many of the Fabergé weed containers were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and eventually made their way into private collections; though some, such as the legendary ‘Friday’ vial, depicting a scene in miniature from the film of the same name and containing a tiny music box that played “Roll It Up, Light It Up, Smoke It Up” by Cypress Hill, have been lost, probably because whoever had it at the time totally forgot like where they stashed it.

See the exquisite Imperial Family ‘Cheetos’ poptop at High AF Collective, open every day from 10am to 8 pm. Note: Limited viewing availability on Thursday and Friday due to scheduled field trips from local middle schools.