SigAlert: Radio Advertising Alongside Freeway Has Logic Taking a Detour

“With 100 stations, you’ll run out of traffic before we run out of music,” boasts a satellite radio ad on the San Diego Freeway.

Run out of traffic?

Obviously these radio folks have never been on the 405.

Self-dueling ad: Eric Wright of Palos Verdes Peninsula sent along a real estate blurb, touting a bedroom with “seperate” spa, that seemed to question its own truthfulness (see accompanying).

Thanks for the warning: Another reader noticed an “estate beauty”--an extremely slim beauty (see accompanying).

Pre-sprawl L.A.: The Times’ Bob Pool wrote about the 75th anniversary of UCLA’s move from a Vermont Avenue location to an area out in the sticks: Westwood.

It’s interesting to note that USC was in West Los Angeles in the 1880s (see accompanying).

The school is now south of downtown, of course.

But here’s the strange part: It has never moved. Only the concept of “West Los Angeles” has changed.

Subtle message: I spotted a license plate holder that said, “Go to church this Sunday--avoid the Christmas rush.”

And I thought back to a story told by The Times’ late “Cityside” columnist Gene Sherman about one of the briefest sermons on record.

The minister “mounted the pulpit, gazed for several silent seconds over the unusually large congregation and said: ‘Merry Christmas--because that’s the next time I’ll see most of you.’ ”

And that was the end of the sermon that day, which was Easter Sunday.

Insulted intersection: Michael Wagner of San Diego is understandably upset that the song “Pico and Sepulveda” was omitted from L.A. magazine’s list of “L.A.’s 100 Greatest Songs.”

And you do have to wonder how lyrics like these could be overlooked:

Doheny, Cahuenga, La Brea, Tar Pits, Tar Pits!

La Jolla, Sequoia, La Brea, Tar Pits, Tar Pits!

You can keep Alvarado, Santa Monica,

Even Beverly Drive.

Vine may be fine, but for mine I want to feel alive!

And settle down in my La Brea Tar Pits.

The song has been recorded by such luminaries as Oingo Boingo, the Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band and, originally, by a group from the Freddy Martin Band in the 1940s.

The latter used a pseudonym: Felix Figueroa and his Orchestra.

Intersection (cont.): Oh, yes, Pico and Sepulveda also get mentioned. The lyrics seem to be a play of sorts on “San Fernando Valley,” an earlier recording by Bing Crosby.

Der Bingle sang how he intended to “settle down and never more roam, and make the San Fernando Valley my home, unless it secedes from L.A.” Actually, I added the stuff about secession, but I think Bing would have agreed with me.

miscelLAny: After the New York Yankees were routed by the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix in the first two games of the World Series, Chuck Madden of KNX-AM (1070) said: “It was the worst performance in the desert since Warren Beatty hooked up with Dustin Hoffman in ‘Ishtar.’ ”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, 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 steve.harvey@latimes.com.