Rather Than Just Grinn and Barrett, Try Looking Thisa Way and Thata Way

For commuters who don’t get enough laughs, State Farm Insurance has released a list of the intersections with the funniest names in the nation.

No. 4 is Santa Margarita’s ANTONIO Parkway/Avenida de las BANDERAS (see accompanying), which, like GREGORY Way/PECK Drive in Beverly Hills, honors an actor only coincidentally. Alas, GREGORY/PECK was snubbed.

In fact, just five intersections received mentions (No. 1 was GRINN and BARRETT drives in West Chester, Ohio).

I could be accused of regional bias, but I think the list should have been lengthened to include several other Southland intersections.

Pictured here, for instance, is one signpost in Oceanside that offers some philosophy about the directions life can take. And another, in Covina, suggests how you can learn those directions in advance (see accompanying).

Incidentally: Also omitted was a road called THISA WAY in Orange County’s Silverado Canyon. It leads to THATA WAY and BYTHA WAY.

Intersecting laughs (cont.):

The others on State Farm’s list, in reverse order, were:

5. HICKORY and DICKORY avenues, which intersect with DOCK Street in Harahan, La.

3. HO and HUM roads in Carefree, Ariz.

And, in a bit of political satire:

2. BLAND Street and GORE Road in Pueblo, Colo.

OK, enough with the roadside humor: Let’s move on to roadside annoyances.

“As if morning traffic isn’t hard enough to deal with, on the way to work I passed a guy who takes the cake,” writes Marc Jacobs of Burbank.

“No, he wasn’t eating, chatting on his cell phone, shaving, shooting hoops or any of the like.

“He had his left foot stretched out through his open window with his shoe off, his left arm lazily hung over the wheel, his seat reclined all the way back, his right arm across the back of the passenger seat holding his cigarette.

“Super ‘Joe Cool’ with shades. He wasn’t commuting to work, he thought he was still home on his couch! What is this city coming to?”

Try to GRINN and BARRETT drives.

The prize for dumbest interview . . . : The media Web site ronfineman.com says that during the last episode of Lotto fever one local broadcast journalist asked a man in line at a liquor store how long he had been waiting to buy tickets.

“Two hours,” was the reply.

Then the journalist turned to a second man, who was standing behind the first man, and asked: “And how long have you been waiting in line?”

Apparently not sure he had heard correctly, the second man hesitated, then answered: “Uh, two hours.”

Ho and hum.

miscelLAny: Cliff Dektar reports that an episode of Huell Howser’s “California Gold” on KCET (Channel 28) mentioned that L.A. Swim Stadium in Exposition Park was the site of the first use of an underwater camera for a swim event in 1962.

The camera operator, from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” wore a frogman outfit. Event officials were so concerned that the cameraman would frighten or distract the swimmers that they made him go underwater an hour before the first event.

TV folks could be ordered around like that by sports officials--in 1962.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.