The summit apparently caught Glendale-based Baskin-Robbins off...

The summit apparently caught Glendale-based Baskin-Robbins off guard. The ice cream maker, which recently signed an agreement to build a plant in a Moscow suburb, has designated Gorbachocolate as its flavor of the month--for July, long after the visiting Soviet leader will have gone home.

“We would have had it in June, but we didn’t have time to get all the ingredients to our (U.S.) plants after the summit was announced,” spokeswoman Marilyn Novak said.

Those wishing to honor Gorby now might consider a double scoop of Rocky Road.

At the risk of overloading this column with calories, we’d also like to point out that an exhibit exploring the ways of incorporating candy into art has opened at the California Museum of Science and Industry near Exposition Park.

The piece de resistance is a chocolate bust of Albert Einstein.

Radio daze:

One motorist phoned KNX traffic reporter Bill Keene to say that eastbound traffic on the Simi Valley Freeway was sluggish Monday morning because the sun was in drivers’ eyes.

Also temporarily befuddled was the KRTH-FM announcer who declared that “the attorney general’s race is a dead heat between Ira Reiner and Arlo Guthrie.”

Guess there’s no need to tell you whose campaign headquarters is at Alice’s Restaurant.

And some early-morning commuters might have been shaken from their start-of-the-week lethargy by one local radio sportscaster’s “teaser” on the news about the Dodgers’ manager.

“Lasorda resigns!” he said.

Despite the just-completed disastrous home series against Cincinnati, he hadn’t quit to devote full time to his diet.

What he did was re-sign.

“Most Peculiar Debris Items Reported” ranks among the year’s most unusual lists. It’s an account of what volunteer workers with the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation found during a 1989 cleanup of California’s beaches.

Along L.A.’s coast, they recovered a fake $20 bill, a plastic Santa Claus and sleigh, a fishing line with worms attached to stockings and a prosthetic joint “for some unknown limb.”

Other trophies included an “I Love a Clean San Diego” button found in San Diego County, 20 sticks of dynamite in Monterey County and a blue condom in Sonoma County.

For those interested in de-littering the state’s shoreline--or merely seeing what bizarre objects it will have to offer this year--the California Coastal Commission and the CMC are planning their 1990 Adopt-a-Beach Coastal Cleanup Sept. 22.

During the Tony Awards broadcast, it was interesting that emcee Kathleen Turner felt obliged to remind viewers that the title of the award-winning musical, “City of Angels,” refers to Los Angeles.

Since the city is L.A. to most everyone, even its residents probably don’t ponder the translation anymore. But, in the mid-1800s, when crime was widespread in the dusty pueblo, the name occasioned a pun that made L.A. a laughingstock to the rest of the country.

The city was nicknamed “Los Diablos” (The Devils), historian David Clark wrote, adding that a letter addressed to Los Diablos “would have reached its destination.”

miscelLAny:

The coldest days ever recorded in L.A. were Feb. 6, 1883, and Jan. 4, 1949, when the temperature fell to 28 degrees.