Bailiff--seize that billboard! We wonder if jurors...

Bailiff--seize that billboard! We wonder if jurors in either the O.J. Simpson or Heidi Fleiss trials will be allowed to dine at the Original Pantry Cafe on Figueroa Street. Well, maybe--if they promise not to look across the street at the big billboard advertising, “NOT GUILTY JEANS.”

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The latest insult lobbed Southern California’s way: A Money magazine survey indicates that the Internal Revenue Service is more suspicious of L.A. than most areas.

The agency audited 1.21% of L.A.’s returns in 1993, the fourth-highest figure among the 63 IRS regions. Orange County shouldn’t smirk. It came in at No. 7. Las Vegas was the most heavily audited (gee, you mean you can’t trust Vegas?).

The survey seems to be disturbing news for local taxpayers who aren’t fleeing the area. But is it? With the publication of the magazine article, perhaps the IRS will figure that Angelenos are going to be more careful in filling out their next returns. And the agency’s hounds will concentrate, instead, on the least-audited cities, such as No. 63 Milwaukee.

Or is that what the IRS expects us to think?

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To the tune of “It’s a Small World”: A road sign in Nevada seems to indicate that IRS targets L.A. and Las Vegas are also close geographically, as is Salt Lake City.

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List of the Day: As always, the Los Angeles Downtown News’ annual reader survey awarded some illustrious titles.

* Best Panhandler: “Shorty at 5th and San Pedro” outpolled “The friendly, lanky guy who rotates his hand around his stomach at the corner of 3rd and Figueroa.” Also nominated: “The state of California.”

* Local Space Mountain: Bunker Hill, which won that nickname because so little of its commercial office space has been rented.

* L.A.’s Real Mickey Mouse: Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, City Councilwoman Rita Walters, Mayor Richard Riordan, Police Chief Willie Williams and Gov. Pete Wilson.

* Best Public Art: “Corporate Head,” by Terry Allen at the Citicorp Plaza at 7th and Figueroa streets, which is accompanied by this touching inscription by poet Philip Levine:

They said I had a head for business. They said to get ahead I had to lose my head. They said to be concrete and I became concrete. They said, go my son, multiply, divide and conquer. I did my best.

* Best Sports Team: L.A. Dodgers. But, of course, this survey was taken before the baseball strike, which has left fans feeling like butting their heads into concrete.

miscelLAny:

Some of the phony words used by players but disallowed at the 1994 National Scrabble Championships at the Universal Hilton Hotel included ag, cooie, epeeing, eupniae, grrr, ghie, hogwire, isocaine, jeepy, jiviest, joup, kav, mauver, ouguiyas, outruin, overtaut, pfuis, smat, yuh and zoons. We still think something has gone hogwire with baseball.