The booms a bit of a bust?

A little of this, a little of that …

Hold Your Fire Dept:  I might be wrong – I frequently am – but it seems to me that the use and abuse of illegal fireworks this Fourth of July time was markedly milder than in years past.

We live near the Garden Grove-Westminster city limits and it seemed to me that there were relatively fewer booms, blasts and flashes on July 1-3 and on July 5. Independence Day was, of course, a bigger deal, but even that seemed milder than usual.

I am especially tuned to this because our flat-coated retriever, Shadow, does not like fireworks. He doesn’t howl and carry on, but gets a very depressed look on his face, as if he is reading the results of an Angels game.

Miles of Smiles Dept: The deal that the Westminster City Council approved with Branded Cities LLC to build and operate two big electronic billboards facing the San Diego (405) Freeway seems like a good one.

It will bring in at least $825,000 annually to a city which is a drink of cool water to a city tromping through a desert of deficit.

I like those e-boards: more colorful, eye-catching and witty than the traditional version, but that’s the problem. I find myself “reading” the ads there instead of just glancing at them, which may not be good for traffic safety.

Back in the 1960s, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson campaigned to remove billboards from freeways and turnpikes on the grounds they were ugly and hid the natural beauty. The problem with these devices may be that modern successors are too good-looking.