The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 59

E2 MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2000 LOS ANGELES TIMES Page 2 IDEAS, TRENDS, STYLE AND BUZZ At the launch party for his Web site, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman pals around with drag queen Elaine Lancaster. i e- UlTMMWlr llillll YllIiifM'l'lllM'rll 1BMlMjhlUMJI UjljgrljJillJ I I He Labored to Help Us Out of That Jam By STEVE CARNEY, special to the times The first SigAlert was declared 45 years ago on Labor Day 1955 and the backup that inspired it may be just about clear. Traffic reporting in 1950s Los Angeles involved radio stations constantly monitoring police frequencies for crashes or mishaps, or randomly calling the LAPD in hopes of catching an incident, or even asking police dispatchers to call in whenever something came up. Good luck. Then came Loyd Sigmon, a local radio executive who devised a system to make it easy for the police to alert stations.

The system gave each radio station a special receiver tuned to a specific frequency and attached to a tape recorder. A dispatcher at LAPD headquarters could press one button to activate all the machines and announce the nature of the problem. The stations then either replayed or restated the message to warn the public. A case of a man devoting his talents and expertise to the greater common Photos by ANN JOHANSSON For The Times good? Sort of. "What I had in mind was to get more lis- The Worm and His Roadies Party Hardy Sans Celebs If honest with you," said Sig- mnn.

92. who now lives far I I from the mechanized madness, having retired to northeastern Oklahoma in May after living in Sherman Oaks since 1946. "The air is clean, the traffic is good," added Sigmon, who has given up driving his Lincoln Continental with the "SI-GALRT" vanity plate. Sigmon, a co-owner of KM PC-AM (710) at the time of his invention, didn't get the one-up on his competitors that he had hoped. Los BOB CAREY LA.

Times Sigmon: "What I had in mind was to get more listeners for KMPC." If cr 1 SoCal Confidential BOOTH MOORE Expectations were high at the launch party for Dennis Rodman's 24-hour Web site, http:www.rodmantv. com, Thursday at the El Rey Theatre. After all, the NBA-star-turned-limelight-hog is by all accounts a party pro. His Newport Beach house, dubbed "Club 4809," hosts a bash nearly every night, and the police have had to drop by more than 70 times in the last two years. So, naturally, guests and passersby were hoping for a night to remember.

Folks at the Electric Lotus, the restaurant adjoining the theater, were standing outside, searching for a famous face. At the check-in table, a crasher tried his rap: "I'm with the woman in gold who just went inside," he said desperately. "I'm her roadie." (Whatever that is.) As a white stretch limo slowed to a stop, camera lenses ABC, Fox and "Extra" sprang into action. The micro-miniskirted co-host of RodmanTV.com, Keri Windsor, teetered toward the car. Cameraman in tow, she was ready to welcome Carmen Electra, Jenny McCarthy, Vince Vaughn or any of the other dozen or so celebrity guests promised by party organizers.

The driver got out, sidled over to a woman gripping a guest list and whispered in her ear. After scoring four invitations for his passengers, he returned to the car, and suddenly I knew what a roadie does. Out from the limo strutted several studies in silicone and blond streaks. Nobodies. Fittingly, in the night sky above them was a billboard for the upcoming film "Almost Famous." A second limo pulled up.

Couldn't be him, a photographer sniffed. "Too rundown." It wasn't. Next, a tour bus. Out spilled Dennis' entourage, rowdy regulars from his O.C. pad such as Chris Gerra, 22, whose uncle trained the basketball shock jock.

A college student visiting from New York, Gerra has spent nearly every night at 4809 for the last week. Rodman's Party-goers shake their booties and other body parts on the dance floor. Below, an entourage of little people surveys the scene. well-heeled transvesutes brought up the rear of the Rodman show, clawing through the crowd. Inside, stereo pumping, Rodman thanked the 200 or so guests for coming, as red and blue balloons rained down on the mostly empty theater.

A 1970s cover band took the stage, and the silicone set started to bump and grind. By 10 p.m., the news crews were gone and the paparazzi were cranky there would be no celebs this night. Many guests left, tired of the cash bar and so-so scene. Onstage, top-heavy women played peek-a-boo with their halter tops to the pleasure of the smallish crowd that remained mostly tongue-wagging men. Rodman was subdued.

He'd seen wilder times, and there would be plenty more served up on his Web site. Eight cameras have been installed around his house (minus the bedroom area) to transmit live streaming video 247 for Internet voyeurs willing to pay a $29.95 monthly fee. "I'm not hurting anyone," he said, sipping a cocktail through a straw. "The cops just need to leave me alone." I Angeles Police Chief William Parker didn't want to play favorites. "He knew me very well," Sigmon said.

"He said, 'Sig, you can't have this system all to yourself. You have to make it available to But Parker did give credit where it was due, coining the term SigAlert. When the LAPD broadcast the first SigAlert on Sept. 5, 1955, the announcement caused even more trouble than the accident that had precipitated it. A train en route from Union Station to Long Beach had derailed downtown, rolling onto its side.

When the LAPD sent out a plea for doctors and nurses in the area through the new system, so many responded that they created a traffic jam themselves. The early SigAlerts warned residents of more than just traffic jams there were rabid-dog reports, a warning about the impending collapse of the Baldwin Hills Dam in 1963, and a potentially fatal case of a druggist mistakenly giving out the wrong prescription. One even announced the collision of two ships in Los Angeles Harbor. That was enough for Parker. "We're not going to run the traffic for the harbor," he said.

The California Highway Patrol took over responsibility for the freeways in 1969, and with that the SigAlert system as well. And though most radio stations now get information about SigAlerts from the CHP Web site (http:cad.chp.ca.gov), the name has remainedstriking terror and dread in LA drivers. Like first-graders on a playground, they know it's a bad word, but probably aren't exactly sure what it means. Unlike its wide-ranging early days, a SigAlert now designates only any unscheduled freeway problem that closes one or more traffic lanes for at least 30 minutes. Traffic alerts exist in all major cities, said Matt Roth, archivist for the Automobile Club of Southern California.

It's just that the Los Angeles media have popularized the term for home-grown troubles. In 1994, SigAlert became an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, so motorists nationwide know what it is, even if they've never been caught in the Orange Crush or stuck in Grapevine traffic after a holiday weekend. And last year Arizona State University's art museum sponsored an exhibition called 'Sig-alert." Of the LA artists featured in the show, it said, "Instead of waiting in traffic, they find new routes around the roadblocks of the art world." The show also appeared at Cal State Fullerton. But while LA will always have traffic tie-ups, it almost didn't have Sigmon. In 1941, he was working as an engineer in Kansas City, at a station owned by MacMillan Petroleum which asked him to move to its station, KMPC, in Los Angeles.

He told them he had no interest in leaving Kansas City. So they offered him a free trip, just to see what he thought. "They gave me a convertible and put me up at the Beverly WUshire Hotel I'm just about 30 then they took me to the Brown Derby with all the movie stars. I swallowed hook, line and sinker." parties "aren't Hollywood," he said. "They're real world." Next in the cavalcade of freaks was a Humvee with naked ladies painted on it, carrying the Rodman girls powder-puff pink princesses, dressed in cotton panties and marabou-trimmed baby dolls.

At long last, a white Lincoln Navigator pulled up, and out slithered the Worm, dressed in a red tie-dyed suit and black cowboy hat, white bug-eyed sunglasses, nose and lip rings. His "bodyguards," four tuxedoed little people, were lost in the media crush as Rodman worked the red carpet, telling reporters he's sworn off basketball for a life of partying. Three RirHs Tin Tt. TWs Do Tt. hut WWH Wp SavTW? Birds Bees By KATHLEEN KELLEHER SPECIAL TO THE TIMES When parents engage in the big sex talk with their children, it's likely that more than a few still call it the story of "the birds and the bees." It's a safe, comfortable way to get into a potentially embarrassing discussion, safe enough even for the name of a column in a family newspaper.

But where did the phrase come from, and when did it crystallize among the masses into a euphemism for sex? "The coupling of the birds and the bees in a phrase has been around for a while," said Ed Finegan, a USC professor of linguistics and law. It appears likely that the phrase as a euphemism for sex was inspired by at least two writers. One being Samuel Coleridge Taylor, whose verses in "Work Without Hope" (composed in 1825) refer to birds and bees separately, according to "The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins," (HarperCollins, 1988). All nature seems at work The bees are stirring birds are on the wing. and I the while, the sole un-busy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Poor Sam is feeling left out of the love connection. The verses, said Finegan, are an unmistakable reference to sex. "In the past, when schools touched on such matters at all sex was usually handled in classes with titles such as 'Hygiene and The facts of reproduction were "presented by analogy-telling how birds do it and trusting that youngsters would get the message by indirection," write the Morrises. Finegan found "birds and bees" used together in a 1644 entry in the "Evelyn Diary." The diary, considered one of the principal literary sources for life and manners in 17th century England, was published about 100 years after the death of its author, John Evelyn. The entry, said Finegan, is a reference to the elaborately decorated interior of St.

Peter's in Rome: That stupendous canopy of Corinthian brasse; it consists of 4 wreath'd columns incircVd with vines, on which hang little putti cherubs, birds and bees. Interestingly, Finegan speculated, human sexuality is represented by the innocent cherubs coupled with images of birds and bees. The diary was published when romantic poets began writing, and "it might be that that was when 'birds and bees' was picked up by other poets," said Finegan, and crystallized as a euphemism. At some point, "the birds and the bees" made their way into songs (62 of them to be exact), ushering the phrase securely into popular culture. That's OK by Tamara Kreinin, president of the Sexuality Information and Education Counsel of the United States based in New York, if it gives people who would otherwise go apoplectic on matters of human sexuality a way to talk about it "There still is a general level of discomfort among parents when talking about sex with their children," she points out.

The birds-and-bees euphemism appears to have made it easier for one person to query Cecil Adams, who writes "The Straight Dope," question-and-answer column, published online and in the Chicago Reader. "I recently celebrated my 30th birthday, and am in the initial stages of what I hope will be a serious and long-lasting relationship," the questioner explains. "My dilemma is this: I've never been told the story of 'the birds and the Please give me the straight dope on the origin of the phrase and the details of the act(s) as it (or they) relate to man." Adams responds: "Don't feel bad. Nobody explained it to me either, and I must say I made quite an impression the first night with the honey and the feathers. The significance of the birds and bees isn't what they do, it's simply that they do it, naturally, being a tussle in the tumbleweeds, or wherever it is that the lower orders engage in sex.

"Luckily for the perpetuation of species, there's always been Louie in the schoolyard to explain how things really worked." Birds Bees is a weekly column on relationships and sexuality. CARLOS CHAVEZ Los Angeles Times A jackknifed big rig ties up traffic on the 101. It's time to call a SigAlert, which turns 45 on Tuesday. I'i'l'il 1116 SUthrn California Uvin section: Phone: (213) 237-7707 Fax: (213) 237-4712 Web site: http:www.latimes.comliving E-mail: tocallivinglatimes.com U.S. mail: SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, 202 W.

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