Reporters’ Notebook

WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH'S WAX LIKENESS was replaced Thursday by one of Barack Obama at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, studio artists D.P. Shapiro and Andrea Pavles reminisced.

They remembered the countless times that the Bush figure had been vandalized. Once, they said, someone knocked it over, which shattered the poor guy's wax head into a hundred pieces.

"Thank the lord for this woman here, because she put him completely back together," Shapiro said.

"Yeah," said Pavles, "like Humpty Dumpty."

RICHARD LAKE

SHAPIRO AND PAVLES SAID THEY HADN'T WITNESSED anyone throwing a shoe at the soon-to-be former president, but they were sure it had happened. The thing about Madame Tussauds is that it's billed as interactive, which means folks can goof around with the figures. Which means the museum needs people on staff to make repairs.

"That's our job security," Shapiro said.

RICHARD LAKE

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER: "Hey, do you guys have an eye on mullet-boy over there?"

WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING AN ACCURATE COUNT of quagga mussels in Lake Mead, don't hold your breath. The fingernail-size foreign mollusks that invaded the lake at least two years ago have multiplied so rapidly that places where there were none now have as many as 55,000 per square meter.

"At a lot of sites, there's no way to count the mussels," National Park Service diver-biologist Bryan Moore told scientists Tuesday. "You'd run out of air."

KEITH ROGERS

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER: "There are crackheads everywhere."

TUESDAY'S STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS was the last for outgoing Las Vegas City Manager Doug Selby, who is stepping down to pursue other career options.

Mayor Oscar Goodman asked the crowd to give Selby a round of applause, but stepped in when he thought it had gone on too long.

"That's enough," the mayor said, and the clapping turned to laughter.

"That's more applause than I got, Doug. That's very disturbing."

ALAN CHOATE

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER: "We're at the house, guys. And I've gotta pee."

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER A FEW DAYS LATER: "I need a potty break."