Not exactly “Whistle While You Work,” is...

Not exactly “Whistle While You Work,” is it?

Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Bo Diddley highlighted a lunchtime outdoor concert at the Westin Bonaventure on Thursday with what he said would be a special number for all the women in the crowd.

“This song,” Diddley announced, “is called, ‘Shut Up, Woman.’ ”

Say what? The song’s lyrics would hardly make the National Organization for Women’s play list. But it did hold out a comeuppance:

“Woman, why are you comin’ so close to me?” Diddley shouted in the last stanza. “What you got in your hand? . . . a razor!”

And thus inspired, everybody went back to the office. . . .

To the frustrated Angeleno whose cry, “Can anybody read this?” was painted above a sprawl of graffiti, and appeared in a photo in This Space: the answer is yes. And no.

Several callers said they had deciphered the markings as those of a Latino gang. There were two votes for La Vida Loca, one for Vivia Logos, one for La Via Logos, three for La Via Locos. One man suggested it was LA, and Via, like the preposition “through”--hence, “Through L.A.” A guided tour? The most inventive: Lavia Locos, followed by a word with RAT in it. Maybe, this Champollion of the streets suggested, it says “Lavia Locos Are Rats.”

Think of it as a composition for winds and surf, brine con brio .

Five top high school musicians, here for the Malibu Strawberry Creek Musical Festival, tuned up in surf’s up on the Santa Monica Pier.

As a publicity stunt, it worked; you’re reading this, aren’t you? As a musical climate, there was less to recommend it. The musicians, all in beach gear, played valiantly through Gyorgi Ligeti’s “Six Bagatelles,” fretting about what sand could do to their instruments.

Legend holds that when young Brian Wilson turned in an early version of “Surfin’ USA” as an assignment in a high school music composition class, he got an F.

Granted, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a lot of water in one place, but let’s not get hysterical.

Another newspaper’s story about two large swimming pools at the AAF Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena noted that the combined “water space” is “roughly the size of Lake Michigan.”

Not us, says center President Terry Wilson. “We have a lot of water, but nowhere near that size.” Lake Michigan covers about 22,300 square miles; L.A. County, 4,070 square miles.

If that was written tongue in cheek, nobody’s got that much cheek. If it’s true, we tell you this to give you time to get to higher ground.

The local government section of the phone book lists an MIA hot line. We got very excited.

Could we have stumbled onto a secret? Have those American military men who vanished sometime between the Tet Offensive and the 1975 Vietnam pullout been held downtown all this time, and subjected to the Geneva Convention-busting agony of listening to Board of Supervisors meetings?

The MIA hot line is a health department number; MIA stands for Male Indigent Adult. Aware of the confusion, they do provide the number for the real MIA office, for men still missing in action.

miscelLAny:

James Dean ate his last brunch at Farmer’s Market on Sept. 30, 1955, before wheeling off on his fatal journey.