How to Commemorate the Precipitous Tumble of the Once-Great Lakers?

After the Lakers won their third straight NBA title earlier this year -- hailed as a “Three-peat” -- I got carried away. I asked readers to submit phrases to describe the fourth consecutive title that the team would surely win this season. Submissions included “U-4-ia,” “Four Peat’s Sake,” “Four Score” and “Quat-Row” (a little bilingual touch there).

Alas, the Lakers have opened the season by losing nine of their first 12 games while displaying the worst shooting percentage in the NBA. They obviously are not going to win the title, even if Shaquille O’Neal and his sore toesy return. Anyone got an idea for a phrase to commemorate the fall of this once-great team?

Four-gone, I guess, is a good beginning.

Home furnishings for the daring (see accompanying):

* A piece of meat that you can read by (from M. Wright of Pasadena).

* Some vegetable-flavored furniture (Susan Felice of Manhattan Beach).

* An offer that might give you pause, depending on what “fairly new” means (Jolene Collins of Tujunga).

* An unusual chair-bed combination (Randi Hutchinson of Santa Monica).

* And, finally a speedy sofa set (John Strawway of Encino).

Actors and other waiters: I mentioned that I don’t mind being served by would-be actors in restaurants as long as they’re playing the part of good waiters.

In “Dream Palaces,” a study of star mansions, author Charles Lockwood recalls a joke that comedy star Fatty Arbuckle played on Paramount Pictures boss Adolph Zukor during a dinner party in 1919. Arbuckle hired funnyman Buster Keaton, then an unknown actor, to play a clumsy server at Arbuckle’s West Adams Boulevard estate in 1919.

Keaton began by delivering shrimp to the men first, then to the women. Upbraided by Arbuckle, Keaton simply scooped up all the men’s shrimp -- even half-eaten pieces -- and gave them to the women. Then Keaton repaired to the kitchen, where he made clattering noises indicating that he had dropped the soup tureen on the floor. His uniform drenched, he emerged to remove all the soup bowls from the dinner table without saying a word.

For his coup de grace, Keaton dropped a roast turkey on the dining room floor, at which point the screaming Arbuckle chased him out of the house. Zukor was later let in on the joke and the guests were given a real meal.

miscelLAny: Laker fans are in a bad mood these days. During the postgame show on KLAC-AM (570) radio Wednesday night, a grumbling caller was told that if he correctly answered a trivia question, he would win two free tickets to the team’s game Sunday. “I don’t want to go to the game,” he snapped.

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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.