Stuck with brand X:Mayor Richard Riordan’s Administration,...

Stuck with brand X:

Mayor Richard Riordan’s Administration, which is trying to upgrade the image of the City of Angels, didn’t exactly receive a boost from the new Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

The museum’s “500 Songs” exhibit, a list of rock’s most influential tunes, ignored Randy Newman’s exuberant “I Love L.A.” Instead, it included “Los Angeles,” a 1980 downer by the punk group X.

The song, about a woman fleeing the city because she is unable to bear the urban pressures, has this chorus: “She had to get out / Get out / Get out / Get out.”

To Seattle, Seattle, Seattle, we’d guess.

LIST OF THE DAY: Oh, well, at least the Rock Hall of Fame also snubbed the L.A. songs with these lyrics:

* “All the vampires walkin’ through the Valley / Move west down Ventura Boulevard.” (Tom Petty)

* “I wanna live in Los Angeles / Not the one in Los Angeles / No, not the one in South California / They got one in South Patagonia.” (Frank Black)

* “If I can just get off of that L.A. freeway / Without getting killed or caught.” (Jerry Jeff Walker)

* “L.A. proved too much for the man.” (Gladys Knight and the Pips).

* “Santa Monica Freeway / Sometimes makes a country girl / Blue-ooh-ooh-ooh.” (Shelley West)

* “Coming into Los Angeles / Bringing in a couple of keys / Don’t touch my bags if you please / Mr. Customs Man.” (Arlo Guthrie)

We just wish the hall of fame had honored the touching “I Left My Liver in the L.A. River.” (author unknown)

HIS MACHINE WENT OUT, OUT, OUT: Remember those Maytag commercials with the lonely repairman who never gets any calls? A colleague sent us this heart-warming message: “We have a Maytag clothes washer that stopped working Wednesday. So I called Mr. Lonely to come out and fix it Thursday morning. He said the earliest he could come out is next Tuesday.”

OK, JOHNNY, WRITE ON THE MARQUEE 100 TIMES: J.L. Johnston of Tujunga, who snapped today’s photo, says school is back in session not a moment too soon.

HIGH-TECH TIMES: David Gershwin, who lives in the Wilshire district, checked out a tape of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” from the L.A. Public Library.

“In true Chaplinesque fashion,” he continues, “when I put it in the VCR, the tape snapped. Of course, maybe this is the interactive version and that’s supposed to happen.”

miscelLAny L.A. has car lanes (including diamond lanes), bicycle lanes, pedestrian lanes, jogging lanes and skateboarding lanes. Then there’s the stretch of 4th Street where it crosses the L.A. River. Two double yellow lines, about 10 feet apart, run down the middle of the street. And how is the vacant terrain between the yellow lines employed? Well, we’ve noticed that street people have turned it into the city’s first shopping cart lane.