La-La is great: While visiting Sweden, Times...

La-La is great: While visiting Sweden, Times writer Bob Elston ran into a group of Iranian students who were fascinated when they found out he was from Southern California. One student asked, “Do beautiful women in swimming suits patrol the beaches looking for people to rescue from the water like they do on ‘Baywatch?’ ”

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The hottest Occidental College grad?No, it’s not Hall of Fame quarterback Jack Kemp, the Republican presidential hopeful. The alum recently featured in Occidental Magazine was Sammy Lee II--the Beverly Hills police detective who helped bring about the arrest of accused madam Heidi Fleiss.

Lee, who met Fleiss at a Beverly Hills club while posing as a wealthy Japanese businessman, was offered the services of some “full-service entertainment” by Fleiss for $1,500, police say.

“I drove up in a Testarossa,” Lee told the magazine. “If you drive up in a TR, you tend to get more respect than if you drive up in a Hyundai.”

We’ve noticed the same thing at Denny’s.

Good luck, Hugh: We wonder if the founder of Playboy magazine posted the garage sale sign that was photographed by Merilyn Walker.

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Overseas humps: L.A. officials said recently that they won’t label their planned street barriers as “humps,” though that’s what they are, because mischievous college students tend to steal the signs. Well, D.E. Homestead sent along some alternative terminology that he snapped in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Are you listening, freeway commuters?

Let op! *

Loaded for bear: Some readers were disappointed when we went along with the U.S. Forest Service’s policy of banning the “the” from the name of Smokey the Bear.

And they disputed the logic of a Forest Service defender who wrote: “It is Smokey Bear just as it is Steve Harvey, not Steve the Harvey.” Responds John Hamilton Scott: “What about Felix the Cat? Bullwinkle the Moose? Sam the Sham?”

Lloyd Peyton says Smokey’s official name “doesn’t sound right.” And he asks whether one would say, “Alexander Great, Attila Hun, Ivan Terrible”?

Actually, regarding those three gentlemen, we’d call them whatever they wished.

Blame it on Uncle the Sam: Singer/songwriter Ross Altman of L.A. even sent along a tape of his composition, stubbornly named “Smokey the Bear.” Sing along now:

Why do we say Easter Bunny

And not Easter the Bunny?

‘Cause Easter the Bunny

Would sound a little funny . . .

But ain’t it like the government

I mean, “Uncle the Sam”

Always makin’ problems

Where problems never am?

(Never am ? Oh, let op, Altman! Let op!)

miscelLAny:

How do you show your appreciation for a former teacher in Beverly Hills? You name a sitcom character in his honor. Christopher Lloyd, an executive producer of TV’s “Frasier,” named the show’s restaurant critic, Gil Chesterton, after his journalism teacher at Beverly Hills High. Charles Rosen, another ex-Chesterton pupil who’s an executive producer of TV’s “Beverly Hills 90210,” also saluted his old teacher, giving the journalism instructor at the show’s high school the first name of Gil.