Every day’s a marathon race for L.A....

Every day’s a marathon race for L.A. drivers:

A South Bay-area billboard on the San Diego Freeway says:

--LAX 4 miles

--Santa Monica 15 miles

--L.A. Marathon 26.2 miles

The clever promo for the March 3 race reminds us of the time when former KFI disc jockey Al Lohman decided to drive the marathon course on an average weekday morning.

Lohman’s jalopy completed the 26.2 miles of surface streets between Exposition Park and Hollywood in 2 hours, 8 minutes--which was no world record, for either drivers or runners.

Lohman, a non-fitness buff, explained later that his time would have been faster, “but I had to stop at a liquor store to buy some cigarettes.”

*

TORCHED: So there was former Mayor Tom Bradley, all set to endorse an Assembly candidate in a news conference atop the City Hall stairs Thursday. Suddenly, another media event broke out at the bottom of the stairs.

The rival news conference, a colorful, balloon-filled pageant starring current Mayor Richard Riordan, honored the individuals chosen to run in the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay this spring.

Bradley and his candidate, former City Councilman Robert Farrell, were virtually ignored by the press. Who do politicians carry a torch for anyway?

*

MAYBE SHE’LL GET HER OWN TALK SHOW: After Princess Di admitted in a TV interview that she suffered from bulimia and depression and had been unfaithful to Prince Charles, a British historian on TV’s “Nightline” commented:

“She behaves like a Californian.”

Ian Shoales, a columnist for the newspaper Funny Times, commented: “Well, as a Californian, I had to take umbrage at that remark--or I would have if, as a Californian, I knew what umbrage was.”

*

COLOR IT . . . WHAT? James Rodriguez, a machinist for a Duarte aerospace firm, sent along “one marker, color blue, which we use to mark metals for identification, etc.” (see accompanying). The marker’s contents are a real mystery.

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DUELING INSTRUCTIONS: The Rev. Holly Ann Burt of San Pedro sent along a food wrapper, whose directions cause her to ask: “And just how are we supposed to manage that?”

* HE STOLE EVERYTHING BUT DI’S HEART: When he read about a 1954 urban folk tale in this column, Lance Paulson said it “sounded familiar.” Sure enough, Paulson, an English teacher at Ontario High School, found a short story with a similar plot in a 1977 collection by the late British author Roald Dahl.

“The Hitchhiker,” set in London, is about a driver who takes on a “small ratty-faced” passenger and decides to impress him by driving 120 mph. A cop gives him a speeding ticket.

Later in the trip, the hitchhiker reveals he’s in a “highly skilled trade”--and thereupon produces several items of the driver’s, including his watch, belt and shoelaces. And he turns over the cop’s ticket book.

“So you’re a pickpocket,” the driver says.

No, the indignant hitchhiker objects: “I’m an expert with my fingers, so I’m a fingersmith.”

miscelLAny:

Walt Hopmans of Santa Barbara says the funny names this column solicited from readers for the nation’s “much needed electric cars are re-volt-ing.”