Steve Harvey's Only in L.A. column in today's Times points to a new website for rants, discussions and tips about traffic. The forums at The I Hate LA Traffic Homepage are off to a slow start, but then again it's summer and congestion seems to ease up a bit. Here's my mini-rant, and it's not a new one. The Daily News today abuses the word "Gridlock" in a headline and lede for the umpteenth time. Once again they mean it as a synonym for routine bad traffic. Not just a cliche, but wrong.

Also: Yesterday's Harvey column told a tale on Laura Miller, now the mayor of Dallas, but in the 1980s a Times reporting intern with a gullible streak. Working the weekend police beat, she called the Van Nuys station, let the phone ring, and got no answer -- not a surprise to anyone who has made cop calls. Harvey writes that Miller then called Parker Center, told an officer there was no one home at the Van Nuys Division, and got this response: "Little lady, if that's true, you have yourself a whale of a story."