Cellphone User Is All Wet

The other day I spotted, to my surprise, a cellphone yakker who had come to a stop in his lane. Yup, a complete halt. Luckily, there was no traffic behind him. Luckily, too, he was in a lane of a swimming pool at a gym.

There’s just no escaping these gizmos. Maybe I’ll switch to scuba diving.

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The real skinny: “People are wasting time thinking about what they eat while they’re dieting,” surmised Robert Nicolais after seeing a window display (see photo). What they’ve obviously got to do, he said, is stop drinking all that fattening water.

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Healthy eater with another unhealthy habit: Writer Art Vinsel of San Pedro read in the South Bay’s Daily Breeze about a gourmet shoplifter who was nabbed after allegedly smuggling three bottles of designer water, an organic fruit salad and a plate of tuna sushi out of a Bristol Farms Market. What? No Grey Poupon?

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For the bicyclist who pedals with his head down: Donna Sweet of Goleta found today’s “Duh!” winner on a construction site blocking a path at UC Santa Barbara (see photo).

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Ooh L.A. L.A.! Hiroko Walsh of Redondo Beach noticed a property ad that revealed some secrets of a local residence (see accompanying).

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Unreal estate: This has nothing to do with the previous item -- honest -- but I just read in the Daily Pilot that ex-beach boy Dennis Rodman sold his Newport house for $3.8 million. He’s moved to Las Vegas, which means, I guess, that Newport Beach police will have more time on their hands now.

In recent years, they made more than 80 visits to Rodman’s home in response to complaints about his noisy parties.

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Downsizing Los Angeles: I mentioned that historian Ralph Shaffer traced the use of L.A. to denote Los Angeles at least as far back as a passenger list in the 1881 Los Angeles (or L.A.) Times.

Interesting to note that Los Angeles is one of the few cities known by its initials. “You don’t hear anyone referring to St. Louis as S.L. or to San Francisco as S.F. or San Diego as S.D. or New York as N.Y.,” the late Times columnist Jack Smith once wrote. But L.A., he pointed out, “comes trippingly to the tongue and seems to fit our casual style.”

L.A. is not quite alone in this regard, though.

Michael Kember e-mailed me: “I grew up in B.A. and moved to L.A. In Buenos Aires, the English-speaking people call it B.A. The Argentines don’t use the initials but the English do.”

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Just don’t tell L.A., “You’re fired”: The L.A. Downtown News, introducing “the ultimate reality show,” is polling readers about the City of Angels with such questions as “What or who in Downtown needs an extreme makeover?” and “Who would you vote off the Downtown island?” As for the latter question, I’m just happy that the Raiders went north.

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miscelLAny: After I published photos here of Thisa Way and Thata Way in Hemet, Marlene House of Indio scolded me for failing to point out that they intersect with Whicha Way.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at [email protected].