Spago U.: USC, we all know, is...

Spago U.: USC, we all know, is not just an institution of higher learning, but of higher society as well. In keeping with its fashionable image, the school recently entered into an agreement with Southern California’s most glamorous restaurateur. Yes, coming soon to the university Commons: a Wolfgang Puck Pizzeria. Duck sausage, and all that. Reservations, no doubt, will have to be made months in advance.

Meanwhile, in the halls of academia: Rock legend Little Richard is scheduled to guest-lecture at 4 p.m. today in USC’s Hancock Auditorium. The class is “Classic Rock: Popular Music of the ‘60s and ‘70s.” We wonder how the students will address him. As Mr. Richard? Or is the singer a just-call-me-Little kind of guy?

But back to food: Incidentally, we resent having this region’s dishes lumped together under a state heading--California Cuisine. How about Angeleno Eats?

Some Like It Not: At a time when the county is facing millions of dollars in budget cuts, Supervisor Mike Antonovich spent 90 minutes at Tuesday’s board meeting examining the 1962 drug-overdose death of Marilyn Monroe. Antonovich, a one-time reserve police officer, was inspired by a recent TV special on the subject.

So compelling an argument did Antonovich make about the suspicious circumstances of Monroe’s death that his colleagues reacted thusly to his motion to have the case reopened:

Deane Dana: Silence.

Ed Edelman: Silence.

Kenneth Hahn: Silence.

Gloria Molina: Silence.

“Motion dies for lack of a second,” intoned Dana, the board chairman.

No mystery over the cause of this motion’s death.

Dueling signs: While the Monroe issue has probably been laid to rest until someone makes a movie on the 40th anniversary of her death, the debate over sex is very much alive on Century Boulevard, near the airport (see photo).

How do you spell “damage control”?In his now famous Bay Area speech of May 19, Vice President Dan Quayle accused the title character of the TV show “Murphy Brown” of “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’ ”

Appearing on KTLA (Channel 5) Tuesday, Quayle said he had not criticized single mothers in his May 19 speech but only wanted to “give a wake-up call to the fathers of America” who had abandoned their families.

Mystery of the Day: At an L.A. press conference, Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) distributed 10-page packets of statements, all of which were stapled on the right-hand side. Why? To woo right-wingers?

An Only in L.A. investigation revealed that it was the work of a volunteer, an exchange student who stapled the material on what must have seemed like the natural side. A Seymour spokeswoman explained that the volunteer is from Egypt, where Arabic is read from right to left.

miscelLAny:

William E. Willmore, the founder of Willmore City, was found shortly before his 1901 death in a Downey poorhouse. Willmore City, by the way, is now Long Beach.