In the beginning there was Hollywood: The...

In the beginning there was Hollywood: The September issue of a comic strip with the biblical name of Genesis portrays the armies of two mighty powers colliding, setting off an explosion that destroys Los Angeles. It’s a fate the city has suffered often in the movies. The Malibu Comics feature has ravaged L.A. being replaced “by the city of Slugtown.” Sounds as though the only survivors were Hollywood agents.

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Sappy talk: We treasure those moments when TV news readers chatter back and forth. But some unsuspecting Raiders fans must have felt cruelly disappointed late Sunday afternoon by KNBC anchor Rick Chambers. He commented before the sports report that “the Raiders had a great game,” noting that they had defeated a “scrappy” team of Cleveland Browns. In fact, those Browns were so scrappy that they rallied in the final seconds to defeat the Raiders, 19-16, evidently after Chambers had stopped watching. The Browns’ winning touchdown had been broadcast, by the way, on KNBC--live.

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List of the Day: The Glenn M. Anderson Freeway, which you may have never heard of, opens next month. You probably know it better as the Century Freeway, its original moniker until the Legislature named it after the former lieutenant governor.

We suspect that Century Freeway may remain in popular usage because it’s been the butt of so many jokes--the name derives from the 100-odd years it seemed to be on the drawing boards, etc. Still, many of the freeways in the county had different, mostly forgotten, names when they were first proposed. Some examples:

--Hollywood: Cahuenga Parkway

--Pasadena: Arroyo Seco Parkway

--Riverside: Santa Ana Canyon Freeway

--San Bernardino: Ramona Parkway

--San Diego: Sepulveda Freeway

--Santa Monica: Olympic Parkway

--The Marina: Original name. Then it became the Richard M. Nixon Freeway, before taking back its maiden name after a certain scandal stemming from a “third-rate burglary.”

--Long Beach: Los Angeles River Freeway (one of the countless insults suffered by the concrete waterway).

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A cutback of whereases and therefores?Mayor Richard Riordan’s proposed budget calls for the layoff of two of the eight workers in creative services, which prepares the commemorative scrolls handed out on behalf of the city. In fact, things are so tight that the mayor is considering eliminating scrolls for anyone under the age of 75.

We’re not sure how that change would have affected some of L.A.’s most memorable parchments, like the one for “Freddy Krueger Day,” honoring the actor who played a mass murderer in several movies.

Whatever, L.A. politicos have long been criticized for spending too much time on such ceremonies. “I’ve often thought of bringing a Skid Row drunk to a City Council meeting,” the late City Councilman John Gibson once said, “and introducing him as the only person in L.A. who hasn’t received a scroll.”

miscelLAny:

UCLA’s administration is drawing up plans to make the university a no-smoking campus.