Diogenes searched for one honest man. Barbara...

Diogenes searched for one honest man. Barbara Sohmers of Glendora is seeking “people who are enjoying their life without counting their money.”

Sohmers, an actress, wants to interview them for a television show that she’ll host beginning next month on public access Channel 29 in the San Gabriel Valley.

She said she wants to combat the “attitude in our society and on so many TV shows that nothing is any good unless it costs a lot.”

The title of her show?

“Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown.”

As a matter of fact, the “good life” in California--and especially Los Angeles--doesn’t seem as good as it used to be, according to the latest issue of Newsweek. The magazine’s cover story cites such statistics as:

- Average yearly number of earthquakes in Southern California that measure more than 3.5 on the Richter scale: 63.

- Number of days per year in Southern California when the air is rated “unhealthy” to breathe: 232.

- Average projected speed on L.A. freeways in 2010: 19 m.p.h.

The last figure is misleading, however. Traffic will speed up after Metro Rail is completed a bit later in the century.

The Walk of a Thousand Lights first appeared in Long Beach property records at the turn of the century, a marketing ploy by promoters of a seaside amusement park.

Within a few decades, the boulevard was host to such glorious attractions at the Pike as Reckless Ross, the Dodge ‘Em Fun House, Painless Parker and the Cyclone Racer (“World’s Greatest Ride”).

But that was long ago. Nearly all of the Pike has been dismantled to make way for a huge development of somewhat less colorful office towers and hotels.

One stubborn holdout is Nick Frudakis, whose grandfather founded the Checker Board bar in 1951. Frudakis, an attorney, so far has managed to fight off the wrecker’s ball.

Since no street signs are left on the Pike’s forlorn patch of asphalt, Frudakis’ stationery and business cards are just about the only reminders of the boulevard’s halcyon years. He stubbornly continues to use the address “335 Walk of a Thousand Lights.”

To the list of appropriately named local officials, Kenneth Ayeroff of Beverly Hills notes that “Messrs. Waters and Powers (are) working hard to provide us with same.”

Indeed, Daniel Waters is an assistant general manager and Norman Powers is chief financial officer for the Department of Water and Power.

Naturally, Waters is listed ahead of Powers in the DWP letterhead.

With so many tragic stories in the news, it’s nice to report that Dan the Muffler Man is back in Paramount.

The sculpture, made of muffler parts, was the mascot of a Paramount shop until the company was told that Dan couldn’t be stationed out on the sidewalk.

He was given away and disappeared for a couple of years until the other day, when Marty Jones, an employee for a Paramount towing firm, spotted Dan in some bushes while tugging a car into Whittier.

“The man who lived there said I could have him,” said Jones, who now displays a tidied-up Dan on her front lawn. “It’s neat because kids just love to come by and look and have their picture taken next to him.”

David Fuhrer will attempt to yak his way into the Guinness Book of World Records tonight in Hollywood in the “world’s fastest backward talker” category. He says he’s going to recite the lyrics in Queen’s “A Night at the Opera” album--about 22,000 words--in under 13 minutes.

But with today’s rock lyrics, who’ll be able to tell whether he’s talking forward or backward?

If Fuhrer succeeds, it will be fitting in a way. Southern California was also the launching point for a man named Plennie Wingo, who found a place in the Guinness book for his 1931-1932 feat of walking 8,000 miles from Santa Monica to Istanbul, Turkey--backward.