Some healthy skepticism:Six-year-old Emily Koreivo of Long...

Some healthy skepticism:

Six-year-old Emily Koreivo of Long Beach asked her father why they were visiting a health food store. Her father was explaining the benefits of nutritious eating when two punk-style teens entered the store. “But, Daddy,” said Emily, “how can the food be healthy if it makes your hair turn pink and purple?”

L.A.--WE FOUND IT! As a native Angeleno--that’s anyone who’s lived here more than five years--this columnist has come to resent those local businesses that take the names of exotic and far-off places. The Paris this. The St. Petersburg that. There’s even a Brooklyn Bagel Factory here, for gosh sakes.

So today we salute those firms that proudly extol their L.A. roots--whether they serve you beef patties, decorate your body or hold up your pants (see photos).

OVERRULED: “Monster,” John Gregory Dunne’s witty account of co-writing a Disney movie (“Up Close & Personal”) that required 27 drafts, has a humorous side story about running into Disney boss Michael Eisner at dinner.

During that meeting, Dunne mentioned that he underwent the same heart operation as Eisner, whereupon the latter remarked, “Of course, mine was more serious.”

We’re chagrined that Dunne omitted our favorite part of the story. That’s the rebuttal that came from a friend of the writer--attorney Leslie Abramson--who also was at the table. Abramson, with a straight face, told Eisner that his operation was more serious because “you’re a richer and more important person.”

WHEN SALES OF “GATSBY” WERE ANYTHING BUT GREAT: A&E; network’s “Biography” show about F. Scott Fitzgerald the other night revealed that the novelist is enjoying sustained popularity these days--300,000 copies of his “The Great Gatsby” sell each year, according to one biographer.

Such was not the case in 1939, a year before Fitzgerald collapsed dead of a heart attack in a modest furnished apartment in West Hollywood.

Fitzgerald confided to writer Budd Schulberg that sales of his novels “Gatsby” and “Tender Is the Night” were virtually negligible. Fitzgerald “had, in the past year, sold five of one and three of the other,” author Robert Westbrook wrote, “earning a grand total of $13 in royalties.”

LIST OF THE DAY: L.A. Times employees, like other members of the news media, are supposed to report stories--not become a part of them. But mystery authors don’t go by those rules. Here are some novels in which fictional L.A. Times reps have been given roles:

* “The Concrete Blonde,” by Michael Connelly: Joel Bremmer, a burly reporter with “small but sharp green eyes,” tangles physically with L.A. Police Det. Harry Bosch.

* “Simple Justice,” by John Morgan Wilson: Hard-drinking reporter Benjamin Justice finds out his problems are only beginning after he wins a Pulitzer Prize.

* “Kiss the Girls” by James Patterson: Reporter Beth Lieberman becomes a victim of the bad guy she’s investigating.

* “Bleeding Dodger Blue” by Crabbe Evers: Sportswriter Joe Start becomes an editor when his wife complains about his frequent road trips; then, she leaves him anyway. “Couldn’t stand me home or away, I guess,” Start observes.

So far, humor columnists seem to have escaped.

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A tennis pro’s bulletin-board notice in an L.A. store said, “Foreign language OK--Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English.” We’re tempted because we took 12 years of English in school.