The road not taken is not forsaken.Route...

The road not taken is not forsaken.

Route 66--America’s Main Street, desperation highway during the Dust Bowl, big fun on the blacktop for postwar vacationers, the nation’s first all-paved trans-Western roadway from Chicago to Santa Monica--is fading from the road maps, but not from the government’s memory, and we taxpayers all know how long that lasts.

Congress has ordered that the road be studied for possible historic designation and commemoration as the asphalt that took us from the Jazz Age in 1928 to the Space Age in 1984, when it was finally bypassed by superhighways.

Once a majestic 2,448 miles long, stretches of it now serve as humble frontage roads for interstates, while other parts lie untouched--not unlike the 1960s TV series, “Route 66,” which makes more appearances in trivia games than on TV.

Stay tuned. At the signpost up ahead, your next stop: the history books.

A little song, a little dance, a little malathion down your fly.

For five bucks, you can get in on an evening of ecologically conscious roistering at the Iguana Cafe in North Hollywood this Friday, the proceeds going to stop malathion spraying.

Folk singer Fred Starner, who says he has sung with the old master minstrel himself, Pete Seeger, has a couple of protest tunes of his own composition to perform.

For the rest of the program, poets will prosodize, and one performer, mindful of the fact that Medflies are put to flight by harmonica music--as who among us is not?--will play a medley of same. Yes, afraid so--a harmonica convergence.

Couture corner: While everyone was intent on what Zsa Zsa Gabor wore for her post-pokey appearance in El Segundo the other day, let it not escape notice that her Germanic husband, Prince Frederick von Anhalt, was resplendently done up in blue jeans and Western boots. A regular Rhine-stone cowboy.

Norman Sklarewitz of West Hollywood dials a lot of international calls, but he didn’t recognize the overseas prefix on the phone message left for him. He didn’t find it in the directory, either. So he called the AT&T; operator and asked, where is this place?

Oh, that’s Marisat, the operator told him. It’s an island in the Pacific. And it’s a very expensive place to call too.

Now Sklarewitz is a man who keeps abreast of the news--countries declaring their independence and all that--but he’d never heard of the Sovereign Nation of Marisat. Unlikely the U.N. has either, for it turns out that Marisat is an abbreviation for “marine satellite,” one used to transmit shipboard messages, and it has its own calling prefix.

Which prompts Sklarewitz to ruminate: “I wonder if they have a flag and a national anthem too?” And what about Club Med?

Put on those thinking caps, the ones without mouse ears. Disney has put its foot down, and simply won’t incorporate in its new Long Beach theme park that horrid Spruce Goose thing next to the Queen Mary. So mail your ideas to This Space: What to do with the Goose, the big wooden flying boat? Give it back to the spotted owls? Run an ad to see if Howard Hughes will turn up to reclaim it?

Special FX: a fax to This Space got so muzzied up coming through the ether that “Raul Rodriguez,” the champion Rose Parade float designer, came out looking like “Paul Rodriguez,” and as everyone knows, Paul Rodriguez is the comedian. No flowers, please.

miscelLAny:

In L.A. County, about 100 streets--and variants thereof--have the word “sun” in their names.