GR8PL8S TELL A DRIVER'S STORY WITHOUT REALLY SAYING A WORD THOUSANDS PICK PERSONAL MESSAGE FOR LICENSE PLATE.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem

Staff Writer

They met in the '60s, cruising Van Nuys Boulevard, the strip where teens and hot rods mixed on Wednesday nights.

Today, Hal and Nancy Janzen -- he's 60 and she's nearly there -- still celebrate youth and fast cars. The vanity license plate on their bright yellow Corvette reads 25AGAIN.

"When I was 21, before I was married, I had an orange '69 Corvette," Nancy said. "We couldn't keep it after we were married because the insurance was way too much money. When we got this one, we wanted 21AGAIN, but it was taken, so we settled for 25."

Like hundreds of thousands of drivers in the GLDN ST8, the Granada Hills couple gives anonymous motorists on the road a hint into the hearts and souls of who's inside the car ahead.

The Janzens were among the Daily News readers who responded to a request to share their GR8 PL8S. Some were SREBRL, some FNOMNL and some JST4FUN.

Gladys Solomon of Woodland Hills has had the same plate -- HPYBOTM -- since the state of California first offered personalized plates in 1970. She let the motoring world in on a little secret shared by women named Gladys, the butts of a long-standing joke, so to speak.

"My first name is Gladys, so what's a 'glad ass' -- but a happy bottom, and everyone knows that," Solomon wrote in an e-mail. "I'm very, very often asked if I have ever been called 'happy bottom' when they hear my name, and I always reply -- yes!"

In an interview, the retired escrow officer said many people see the tags on her dark-green Ford Thunderbird and ask if she's named Gladys.

"People have said, 'My aunt's name is Gladys, and everyone calls her Happy Bottom,'" she said.

Martin Fiebert, professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, said he couldn't find any scientific studies of motorists with vanity plates, but he might consider having his students create plates of their own and analyze them.

"I wonder how many personalized plates are chosen by men versus women," Fiebert said. "It would also be interesting to study by social class, ethnicity."

His take?

"In some way, this person wants to be noticed," Fiebert said. "They're willing to pay a little extra money to promote their business -- real estate or home-care products. Or maybe it has something to do with their values or hobbies or political beliefs.

"They're probably more extroverted than introverted, and there's a certain amount of attention-seeking behavior. They're giving information about themselves when they're driving, when they're parked."

Army veteran Neil Gafney's plate reads COLONEL, but his wife -- COLS GEN -- is the boss, as noted when he received his promotion in 1997.

"The promoting officer, a three-star general, took the stars off his shoulder and pinned them on her dress at the ceremony to remind me who was in charge," Gafney wrote. "She continues to remind me every day that she's the colonel's general."

At latest count, there were 784,405 vanity plates on the road, said Steve Haskins, spokesman for the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The plates cost $25 when they were introduced in the 1970s to raise money for environmental agencies.

Today, standard vanity plates cost $41, plus a $30-a-year renewal fee.

The DMV also offers specialty plates that run up to $90 for registration and $45 to renew yearly. They support causes including the arts, veterans, prisoners of war and firefighters.

Applications are available online at dmv.ca.gov, where applicants can check to see whether their choices are available. Restrictions also are noted, Haskins said.

"They'll be rejected if there's a sexual connotation or term of lust or depravity, a vulgar term, a term of contempt, prejudice or hostility, or an insulting or degrading term, or a racial or ethnically degrading term."

Swear words are a no-no as is anything considered profane. If a clever person sneaks one through -- like using PH to disguise the word that starts with that sound -- it can be recalled, Haskins said.

There's a whole crew in Sacramento with desks covered with dictionaries of foreign-language slang that checks things out.

"If there are any questions, they take it to a manager," he said. "If the manager has a question, it can go as high as the director of the DMV."

If it happens that a person's name is a foreign swear word, there's a chance the driver can keep the plate.

Chris and Liz Broskoff have fun with their plate -- LASTXIT. It's not about a freeway off-ramp, though. It's a favorite song -- Pearl Jam's "Last Exit."

Fiebert noted that drivers often use their license plates to advertise their jobs.

VDO4FUN is the plate on the car owned by Maury Gomber, a Northridge videographer.

"My license, which is 'video for fun,' was created to share my enthusiasm for my work," Gomber wrote. "A couple of times people have come up to me and said, 'Do you really do that?' I said, 'Sure.' "They said, 'You do voodoo for fun?"'

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STORIES BEHIND THE VANITIES

Here's a key to the stories behind the vanity plates on the cover of Drive:

1 (ARCTEC): A gift from his wife helped Tomyjo Johnson mark the fifth anniversary of his company, ArcTech Architectural Services.

2 (VOUTY): When Michelle Mobley bought her new Ford Vibe, a local musician declared, "That's a very vouty Vibe!," voicing a hipster word for "cool" first coined by performer Slim Gaillard.

3 (LASTXIT): It's not a freeway direction but a song by Pearl Jam that graces the tag owned by Chris and Liz Broskoff of Lancaster.

4 (AQT4MOM): Ann Morgan, a 65-year-old grandma from the South Bay, had a contest at work to help her find just the tag for her '57 Chevy convertible. Now, she's "a cutie for mom."

5 (TUC+CUT), 6 (CUT+TUC): Plastic surgeon Linda Swanson of Torrance is upfront about the services she performs.

7 (VDO4FUN): Maury Gomberg created his "video for fun" tag to share his enthusiasm for his work as a videographer in Northridge. He might need to buy some more vowels because some motorists interpret it as "voodoo for fun."

8 (COLONEL), 9 (COLS GEN): Neil Gafney got his "colonel" tag in honor of his Army promotion in 1997. But we know who's boss in his Manhattan Beach household. Wife Sandra is the "colonel's general."

10 (ILABYZ): Thomas Johnson of North Hills is the handler for the North Hills Mountaineers Canine Patrol Group. When he loads his search-and-rescue team into his truck, he wants everyone to know he loves Labrador retrievers.

11 (HI IT): Using the Whale Tail plate sponsored by the California Coastal Commission, Jim and Renee McIntyre of Canyon Country manage to "hi tail it" to their destination.

12 (321FIRE): For Bill Daly, owner of Daly Special Effects in Lancaster, "321 Fire" is a frequent order in his filming work.

13 (FN4KNGS): Hockey fan Maria Moss wants everyone to know her love for the Los Angeles Kings.

14 (KNEWBUG): Michael Levy of Thousand Oaks wanted the world to know he got a new Volkswagen Beetle in 1998. He transferred the tag when he traded his hardtop in for a convertible after four years.

15 (IRN BUT): Patrick Coulter's Harley Hog touring bike touts his membership in the Iron Butt Society, an international organization for ultra-long-distance motorcycle riders.

CAPTION(S):

18 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Hal and Nancy Janzen of Granada Hills, who met while cruising Van Nuys Boulevard in the '60s, have a personalized license plate that tells people they're forever young. To learn the stories behind each of the plates on this page, see Page B3.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

(2 -- 18 -- color) no caption (different license plates)

Box:

STORIES BEHIND THE VANITIES (see text)