How bad is the traffic in L.A.?...

How bad is the traffic in L.A.? Anthony Manzella’s BMW was hit and extensively damaged the other night while it was parked.

Inside his garage.

With the garage door down.

“My wife and I were in the kitchen when we heard this crash,” said Manzella. “And then the car alarm went off. We went to check--and there was an old Datsun with its nose sticking into our garage.”

Police were called to the home in West L.A. and arrested the Datsun driver on suspicion of drunk driving.

The BMW, which was pushed forward into a wall, required front and rear body work.

“We had to get a new garage door too,” added Manzella.

The late Dan Rowan (of Rowan & Martin) was a famous comic. Until now, though, he’s never been known as a political pundit.

But Jim Cooper of Studio City was watching a repeat of the old “Laugh-In” TV series (1968-1973) on a cable channel when Rowan began a remarkably prescient comedy segment called “News of the Future.”

“Rowan said, ‘1989--the Berlin Wall was taken down,’ ” Cooper said. “It just blew me away.”

Let’s hope that the second half of Rowan’s item doesn’t pan out, though.

Rowan went on to say, “But it was replaced with a pack of wolves.”

It could hurt business a bit if potential customers misinterpreted the sign on the front door of one grocery store in Little Tokyo:

“No Food or Drink.”

In a recent item on a poll by KFI’s Joe Crummey--he asked listeners whom they’d like to see sprayed with malathion--we spelled his name Crummy . It was a regrettable error, since he comes from a long line of Crummeys. His full name is Edward Joseph Crummey III.

However, he did start at KFI as E.J. Hilliard. It took him a while, he says now, to persuade his bosses that it was OK for a Crummey to be a talk show host.

TV and radio personalities switch names almost as often as they switch cities.

KFI’s Rush Limbaugh (real name) went by Rusty Sharpe in Cape Girardeau, Mo., before moving to a Pittsburgh station, where he was handed a list of approved names. He was Jeff Christie for the next seven years.

Deejay Art Ferguson came up with a new name during a stint in Oklahoma City and it’s now inscribed in the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Charlie Tuna.

An exception is KABC-TV weatherman Johnny Mountain, who says he uses his real name--he’s one of about 2,000 Mountains in the U.S.

But KNBC-TV’s Kelly Lange was known as Dawn O’Day when she was a morning traffic reporter at KABC radio in the late 1960s.

And KHJ-TV sportscaster Stu Nahan started out as Captain Philadelphia as the TV host of a cartoon show in that town. In Sacramento, he was Skipper Stu, showing cartoons while piloting his boat, the Channel Tender, with his faithful octopus helper, OU Squid.

For some reason, when he moved to L.A., Skipper Stu didn’t bring along OU Squid.

When you own a car that’s nine years old, it’s understandable that you might search for ways to pep up your romance with the hunk of metal. So it is with some DeLorean owners.

Sun Valley-based DeLorean World Magazine reports that one driver of the 1981 jalopy possesses an audio tape that warns you when you’re low on fuel “in a provocative female voice.” Another owner is marketing a system whereby “you can change from a California girl to a French girl by simply unplugging one cartridge and plugging in another.”

Oooh la la.