Dodgers win it all? It’s no miracle

John Hendry of Van Nuys noticed that “Damn Yankees” opens next month at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse with a plot change. This version has a Dodgers fan, instead of a Washington Senators fan, making a pact with the Devil to help the team win the World Series.

So the Dodgers get Barry Bonds?

The typical Southern California driver: While heading home in the Los Feliz area, John Shinn of Covina snapped a shot of a multitasker who was driving, text messaging and getting a left-foot tan, all at the same time (see photo).

Multitasker (cont.): I know what some of you are going to ask: Wasn’t Shinn himself a distracted driver while taking the photo? Shinn says no, explaining that he’s a professional photographer and that he merely balanced his camera on his passenger-side window. “I was looking straight ahead,” he said.

And he certainly wasn’t getting a foot tan.

Urban mysteries: Other motorists aren’t, of course, the only annoying things on commutes. Sometimes, trivial matters nag at you.

A Costa Mesa reader wrote the local newspaper: “If you are traveling south on Fairview Street coming into Costa Mesa and you cross over the I-405, there is a chain-link fence on the right-hand side (with) between 10 and 20 padlocks.”

The number of locks on the fence varies, the reader said, and “every now and then the locks are completely gone. Then, slowly, over the course of the next couple of months, the number begins to increase again. Why the locks come and go, I don’t have a clue. Is it a prank by kids?”

It could be a plot to drive adults crazy. Anyone out there have the key to this mystery?

Guide to adventurous dining: I mentioned a reader who thought he had ordered a Waldorf salad in Pakistan but was served coleslaw. It reminded my colleague, Monte Morin, of a menu item at the Hamra Hotel in Baghdad -- “Katyusha salad.”

Said Morin: “It’s a little creepy/funny because everyone always describes those random rockets fired around Baghdad and the rest of Iraq as ‘Katyusha rockets’ (some are also Chinese or Brazilian, but since the Russians spent so much time in Iraq, the name ‘Katyusha’ has stuck with Iraqis). Anyway, I ordered the ‘Katyusha salad’ one night just to see what it was. All I got was a dish of lettuce. It was very anticlimactic.”

More food for thought: Avram Yu spotted a restaurant in Lake Forest that evidently really has “it” (see photo).

Covering all the bases: In Palm Springs, Mary Lou Canaday as well as Mardi and Ray Carl found a one-stop shopping opportunity for the bride-to-be who is perhaps starting a family a bit sooner than planned (see photo).

MiscelLAny: Writer David Allen saw “Blade Runner: the Final Cut” and, knowing it’s set in 2019, thought I’d be assured by one aspect of the film: “Harrison Ford’s character is twice seen reading actual newspapers,” Allen said. So there are still newspapers in 2019 -- splendid!

Allen also remarked that Southern California could sure use some of that steady drizzle that falls throughout the movie.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, 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