That name again: He pops up at...

That name again: He pops up at events ranging from concerts by the Rolling Stones and the Three Tenors to celebrity benefits and championship prizefights. Even the O.J. Simpson trial.

So we weren’t surprised when we received a press release informing us that “Robert Shapiro has been named senior executive consultant for the telecast of the 67th Academy Awards. . . .”

Seemed like a logical new venue.

However, the press release, despite its ambiguous headline, refers to Robert Shapiro the producer, who is no relation to Robert Shapiro the attorney.

In fact, when we reached Shapiro the producer, he asked: “There’s another Robert Shapiro?”

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Please forward to County Jail: “I am sick of the case,” said Cindy Moody of Northern California. You can’t blame her for her feelings about the People vs. Simpson. Moody’s a mail clerk in Brentwood--the city of Brentwood (Pop.: about 7,500), 45 miles east of San Francisco.

And postal authorities have been receiving as many as 500 pieces of mail a day intended for O.J. Simpson, including some fruit baskets and at least one knife catalogue.

Some people have mistakenly used the Northern California ZIP code because it’s the only Brentwood listed in directories. Not only that, but Brentwood has a street called Rockingham Terrace and Simpson’s home is on Rockingham Drive.

The letters are returned to senders, as Elvis would say. We always knew we could link Elvis to this case, somehow.

A lot of hot air: “I had heard those commercials warning us not to be surprised if our gas bills were a little higher than usual due to the recent cold weather,” writes George Hardy of L.A. But Hardy couldn’t help but be surprised when his bill jumped in one month from around $70 to $4,713.86.

The suspicious Gas Co. sent out a serviceman to determine “to what use I was putting all this natural gas. . . . Was I the neighborhood’s new natural gas wholesaler?”

No answer emerged during a 90-minute inspection. “Even then, the serviceman was noncommittal,” Hardy said.

Later that day, however, the Gas Co. phoned--to apologize. A billing air, excuse us, error.

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Of course, no one’s perfect: Several readers, including Gerda Wendlandt of La Canada, have pointed out that an ad in The Times seems directed at L.A.’s aerobics-conscious eaters.

miscelLAny:

Cost overruns and funding problems continue to plague the stalled Disney Concert Hall project, sometimes known as the Disney Concert Hole. This week, the L.A. Downtown News ran a piece headlined, “Alarm in County Grows Over Disney Hall.” If the Civic Center project is abandoned, we hope that the preliminary digging won’t be wasted. The site could be converted into something that kids would embrace: the Disney Swimming Hole.