Breakdown Over Freeway Lingo

Before he retired, radio trafficmeister Bill Keene nicknamed the East L.A. freeway interchange as “Malfunction Junction.” The Auto Club disagreed, identifying the confluence of the 405 and the 22 on its maps as “Malfunction Junction” (see accompanying).

Well, Keene’s successors don’t seem to use the phrase much anymore. The Auto Club has even removed the term from its freeway maps (though retaining such nightmarish designations as the “El Toro Y” and the “Orange Crush”).

An Auto Club spokesman said “Malfunction Junction” was erased because “no one in the transportation business uses that phrase anymore.”

I think I know why. The term’s too general. These days in Southern California, every junction’s a malfunction junction.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Al Zuniga of Toluca Lake found an ad for a ring that Mrs. Bugs Bunny would be delighted to wear, while Harry Northup of L.A. came upon what seemed like a cafe’s warning about a flirtatious cook (see accompanying).

NO, NURSE, I’M NOT HERE TO SEE MR. HYDE: One of the monthly winners of KNX-AM radio’s best vanity plate contest was Dr. Stephen Spooner of Anaheim, who displays DRJEKIL

Spooner quipped on the contest Web site (knx1070.com) that he chose that designation because “I work in the medical field and I have a good and a bad side.”

SCARY THOUGHT: I wonder if a DRJEKYL plate had already been taken by someone else in the medical profession.

ONLY AT BEVERLY HILLS HIGH: Students in Gil Chesterton’s beginning journalism and broadcast journalism classes are encouraged to find guest speakers. They have an impressive record.

“On Thursday,” Chesterton said, “one of my cubs asked if I’d like to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as a guest (the student’s mother’s friend is his manager). I told her that we could probably work him into our class schedule.

“Over the years the guest list has included Betty White (a friend of a student’s father was dating her), Jon Voight (the actor was assistant coach of a soccer team a student played on), and Monte Hall (his son was editor of the school newspaper).”

MORE FROM 90210: Awhile back when Frank Sinatra was in ill health, Chesterton told me he received a classic tardy explanation from a student.

.”She said she couldn’t get out of her driveway and down the street because of the mob of press surrounding Sinatra’s home,”

Chesterton related. “She said, ‘It was that way when Ringo lived on my street too.’ ”

ODDSMAKERS TAKE NOTE: Neil Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” just finished a run at the Huntington Beach Playhouse--but did manage to make a prediction of sorts in time for this Saturday’s USC-Notre Dame football game.

There’s a line in the play about one notable in ancient Rome saying to another in disbelief: “Nostradamus defeated Southern Californius?”

And by how many points?

EVERYONE’S A FILM CRITIC: An item here about the vacuum cleaner salesman who spoke of a competing machine’s “planned adolescence” brought a note from Suzanne Marlowe of Burbank. She was amused recently when a young man recommended that she see a movie in the Cineplex “Odious.”

miscelLAny:

Peering into an empty downtown L.A. courtroom on Friday, Greg Horbachevsky of Glendale spotted a bailiff and two other employees watching a TV show.

Which one?

“Judge Judy,” of course.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (800) LATIMES (Ext. 77083), by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.