DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION WANTED: A LITTLE ENTERTAINMENT IN TRAFFIC JAMS.

Byline: Kimit A. Muston

I give up. I surrender. I quit. I fought the 405, and the 405 won. I have been making trips over the Sepulveda Pass in the last few weeks. I now know the workmen on the sound wall by name.

I can construct 153 different words using only the letters found in ``Skirball Center, Next Exit.'' And the man who owns my local gas station sent me a thank-you card for putting his daughter over the top on her college fund. She's going to Harvard.

I now officially hate the 405 Freeway.

Actually, I've been stuck on most of the Los Angeles freeways at one time or another. The Interstate 5 is only a fond memory now, but I've spent a few weeks there over the last 20 reading the license plates of the cars and trucks around me.

And the 10 - ahh, the 10, famous in legend. Being stuck on the Interstate 10 is like being eaten by a giant anaconda. You die such a slow death that when it finally comes it's an anticlimax. It takes so long that your life not only flashes before your eyes but then goes into reruns.

The 101 Freeway was my home away from home for about two years. I spent more time parked on that stretch of concrete than kissing my wife. I should have taken her to work with me. Hey, kissing is about the only thing I haven't seen people doing in their cars while stuck in traffic. I wish more people would do it. Carpooling might finally catch on.

Watching kissing would be more entertaining than watching men pick their noses and comb their hair. Have you noticed that it's usually men who are combing their hair when driving, while women are more likely to be applying makeup? I wonder how many eye-liner pencils have been removed from women's corneas over the last 50 years? It doesn't matter. All we have to look forward to is 50 more years of the same - traffic, traffic and more traffic.

About the only freeway I haven't been stuck on is the Glendale Freeway, Highway 2. There never seems to be a backup on the 2. Even when they had a brush fire out there last year, cars just kept driving right through the flames. You know why the 2 is the only unjammed freeway? Because the 2 doesn't go anywhere. Have you ever been to Montrose? Somebody wake those people up! They missed their alarm for 1900.

But the 2 is the exception. And those endless hours spent on every other freeway in town, watching Jaguars and Porsches and Corvettes all moving at under five miles an hour, has sucked the spirit out of me. I can no longer fight the freeways.

Henceforth I shall rather embrace them and their congestion. And the rest of Los Angeles had better do the same.

I was thinking that perhaps the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is horribly short of classroom space, might benefit its students stuck on their buses, as well as the rest of us stuck in our cars, by putting famous novels on signs along the freeways - a new chapter every week, a page on every sign. Like the Burma Shave ads of my youth.

I'm sure we could get corporate backing to fund this project. ``Call me Ishmael,'' ``There she blows,'' ``the great white whale'' - and ``Shop at Joe's.''

Inside of a year, every driver in town would be literate. It certainly won't improve traffic, but it might make the road ragers more erudite. ``You cut me off, you scoundrel!'' ``Fie, you, sir. May you and your motor car rot in the depths of hell!''

Now, that would be entertaining, wouldn't it?

And that's all drivers want, really, jammed in together like lemmings looking for a convenient cliff: a little entertainment to make the time pass. I mean, if our lives can't be productive, at least we can have some entertainment.

And maybe a nosh. Why not sell hot dogs in the break-down lane? It isn't like there is any danger from speeding traffic. And when was the last time you saw a car broken down actually in the breakdown lane? No, they break down in the middle lane, a mile in front of you. And then they sit there for three hours, blocking traffic while your life slips away as you creep forward, an inch at a time, and the seconds of your existence on this planet slowly ebb away. You might as well be watching ``Big Brother'' on CBS.

There is one structure that, placed in a breakdown lane, would please even the most frustrated freeway speed demon: a Porta Potti. If the people who build freeways want to help those of us stuck there, it's that simple: Put in Porta Potties. Well, that's why we're all on the freeway in the first place, isn't it? Because we're all looking for someplace to go?

Listen, if this guy Caltrans, whoever he is, ever installed Porta Potties on the freeways, I think he could be the next governor.

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drawing

Drawing: (color) no caption (Traffic jam)

Bradford Mar/Staff Artist