The DWP Board of Commissioners meets today...

The DWP Board of Commissioners meets today but one member--Mike Gage--won’t be there. The ex-deputy mayor, who will soon begin moonlighting as a reporter/commentator for KNBC, is in Marion, Iowa, attending a school for television reporters.

Don’t forget to smile at the camera, Mike!

Back to you, Kelly and John.

Take two aspirins and hold the anchovies:

Joe Ortega of L.A. discovered to his surprise that, grouped with the hospitals in the Spanish-language Yellow pages for the San Gabriel Valley, is a high-calorie health-care alternative (see photo).

A Hollywood Christmas Carol:

Several years ago, Michael Attie says that his “peaceful meditations in a Japanese Zen temple were interrupted by a shocking telegram.” His father had died and Attie inherited the family business, a lingerie shop on Hollywood Blvd.

As Attie tells it, “My real desire in life was to become a priest and run a temple. . . . I’ve tried to convert the store into a sort of ‘lingerie temple.’ I am a lingerie monk.”

Each holiday season, he becomes a lingerie Santa. On Friday at 2 p.m., he’ll hand out 100 free Christmas trees in front of his store, Playmates of Hollywood, at Hollywood and Wilcox. It really tugs at your G-strings, er, heart strings, doesn’t it?

Speaking of high-strung:

John McEnroe, the scourge of tennis linesmen, tangled with some airlinesmen Wednesday.

Flying from L.A. with his family and nanny, the Macs missed a connection in San Francisco, and he had words with two United Airlines agents. Some bumping apparently ensued on both sides, an airport policeman said.

McEnroe was escorted to airport police headquarters for further talks, and released 45 minutes later with no charges filed.

One last note about the old “pest farm” at Chavez Ravine, which we mentioned last week. The hospital for contagious-disease victims, which closed around 1930, existed not on the present site of Dodger Stadium but in the area now occupied by the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center, writes Naval Cmdr. James Pettit.

Sports were not unknown to the area prior to the Dodgers’ arrival. Pettit enclosed an article written for a historical society that spoke of 19th-Century Angelenos attending bullfights and cockfights there “as well as bull- and bear-baitings for entertainment.”

Can’t buy them love:

The Lakewood Chamber of Commerce has reduced the price of its “I Lakewood” buttons from $1 to 50 cents apiece.

miscelLAny:

Uncle Milton Industries Inc. of Culver City is the world’s largest seller of ant farms, having peddled more than 12 million since 1956. That works out to about 360 million ants, give or take a few escapees.