Parking-lot princesses: Numerous truck drivers--as well as...

Parking-lot princesses: Numerous truck drivers--as well as their spouses and other kinfolk--rumbled to the rescue to solve our Mystery of the Day, the sighting of a “No Lot Lizards” bumper sticker.

The term “derives from prostitutes who hang around truck stop parking lots--i.e., ‘I wonder what that lot lizard charges,’ ” wrote Victor Gutierrez of Temple City, who adds that his mother is a trucker.

“That (the truck stop) is where the money is,” added Carl Anderson of Bakersfield. “You have single guys--and guys with no wives around. And sleeping quarters are in the truck.”

The “No Lot Lizards” bumper sticker is not just a moral statement, added a caller named Keisha, whose brother is a trucker. Keisha pointed out that it’s designed to discourage ladies of the evening from “knocking on the window and waking a driver who’s sleeping.”

Would Universal sue Him?One thing Southern California evidently doesn’t have to worry about is an 8.3 earthquake striking here.

God wouldn’t dare because, as one of its advertisements shows, Universal Studios has registered that event as a trademark.

Like father, like son: It was four years ago that George Bush Jr. appeared on an L.A. radio talk show to defend a misstatement by his father, the Republican presidential candidate. The elder Bush had been kidded for declaring in a campaign speech that Pearl Harbor Day was Sept. 7. Young Bush told Angelenos that the media had spent far too long focusing “on whether Pearl Harbor was Sept. 9 or Dec. 9.”

Why ask why?Gatorade says it will give away free cans of its new Gatorade Light drink to the homeless who show up for lunch at the downtown Los Angeles Mission on Labor Day.

Controversial crustaceans: Vanity Fair’s glowing September piece on L.A. sculptor Robert Graham makes no mention of the mysterious disappearance of the three bronze crabs from the base of “Source Figure,” his new Bunker Hill sculpture. The deadline for the article evidently came before the absence of the creatures was noticed on July 21.

The crabs had mystified some observers and angered others inasmuch as “Source Figure” is the likeness of a nude woman of African heritage. A writer in the L.A. Downtown News had condemned the figures as “a slap in the face” to black women.

Only in L.A. has been unable to find out when replacement crabs will be installed--if ever.

In the meantime, Vanity Fair does come up with an explanation for the presence of the critters in the sculpture. The magazine says they’re “symbols of the sea and of life’s origins.”

There’s also a Hollywood angle. The crabs, Vanity Fair says, represent the astrological sign of Graham’s actress wife, Anjelica Huston.

Free advice: When a passerby declined his request for money, a downtown panhandler responded: “You know that money you’re not going to give me? Use it to get a haircut, would you?”

miscelLAny:

The Frisbee, introduced in 1957 by San Gabriel-based Wham-O, was initially called the Pluto Platter.