Oh, say can you Doo-Dah?The 17th occasional...

Oh, say can you Doo-Dah?The 17th occasional Doo-Dah Parade will offer something new Sunday: An anthem, which will be introduced at a post-parade rock fest at Pasadena’s Memorial Park.

“I haven’t heard it,” said Doo-Dah czar and all-around contrarian Peter Apanel. But, referring to guitarist Geoff Leiter, the anthem composer, Apanel added: “Geoff promised me it would be as bad as ‘We Are the World.’ ”

Freeway far: As The Times’ Footnotes column reported, First Federal Bank of California has compiled a cheery list of “One Hundred Great Things About Living in L.A.,” which includes, oddly enough, Disneyland, Duke Wayne Airport and the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Sad to say for Angelenos, First Fed is only being realistic.

Fifteen years ago, a comparatively quiet era when L.A. didn’t even need radio traffic advisories 24 hours a day, visitors to the city were asked to list their favorite stops. Disneyland ranked first, which was disenchanting enough. But San Diego was sixth and San Francisco seventh.

Asked what areas most disappointed them, the visitors ranked L.A., as a whole, fourth.

Freeway follies: It seems as though it’s been days since we’ve had a humorous Caltrans misspelling, so it was reassuring to open the mail and find Gerry Borts’ Foothill Freeway photo.

Known quantities: Members of six unions representing City Hall employees will attend a City Council session today and demand an apology from artist John Marshall and the city Cultural Affairs Department for Marshall’s “Monument of the Unknown Government Employee.” The unions found the display of Marshall’s coffee-pot-on-a-pedestal work in the City Hall rotunda “outrageous,” especially in view of a proposal to lay off 84 workers from the Planning and Building and Safety departments.

Flakes we have known: We haven’t heard the last of J.H. Kellogg, the recent Only in L.A. cover boy. It was Kellogg, you’ll recall, who developed the corn flake (with brother W.K.) because he thought the “unstimulating” grain would counterbalance “stimulating” foods such as coffee that “excite the sex organs.”

Author T. Coraghessan Boyle of Woodland Hills writes that he has set his latest novel, “The Road to Wellville,” “in 1907-1908 at JHK’s Battle Creek Sanitarium. . . . I have a lot of fun with the notion of ethical eating and diet and sex (and Kellogg’s) sometimes sane and often crackpot theories.”

Boyle sent along Page 1 of Chapter 1, which is titled: “Of Steak and Sin.”

Sounds like another reason to shun vegetarianism.

miscelLAny:

El Cholo, the oldest Mexican restaurant in L.A., was founded 65 years ago on what was then L.A.’s Westside: Western Avenue.