Amoeba

WONDERFUL as it is, L.A. can drive you crazy sometimes -- like when you want to meet someone for a drink, go to a movie and get a bite to eat afterward. In practically any other city, all of the above would be easy to negotiate by taxi, subway or even on foot. But here, in order to meet first for a drink, you have to valet park. In order to catch a movie, you have to cruise a parking garage in search of a space until you almost miss the opening credits.

My name is Elijah Dittersdorf and you used me in a large color picture for your article about Virgin Megastore and other music stores in L.A. ("Where do you buy?" Dec. 19). The caption read: "Elijah Dittersdorf, a Virgin employee who wears his love of music on his arm, arranges stock at the store." You failed to mention that the majority of employees at these stores are paid minimum wage, are given no benefits and have one of the highest turnover rates in retail. These "super-size" companies do not like to keep employees very long, as the help then might want a slight wage increase and maybe a shot at some health care.

Henry Rollins flexes at the edge of the tiny stage as his Rollins Band attacks a 20-year-old Black Flag tune. "We're tired of your abuse!" "Try to stop us, it's no use!" Rollins is glaring, sweating, crouching leonine before the bombastic sound, and as a fan jumps on stage to share the mic, punk's hardest softie flicks him back into the mosh pit like a gnat. Hundreds of heads bounce in unison, some sporting crimson mohawks; others, in contrast, are close-cropped and gray.

They came in droves. Hipsters with carefully orchestrated facial hair, dog-collared punks, bed-headed hippies and loosely clothed DJs with crates to fill--music fans of all sorts hoping to get first crack at what was rumored to be the best collection of pristine vinyl in the country. When Amoeba Music opened its doors on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood on Saturday, it may have been the most eagerly anticipated record store in L.A. history. The line outside began forming at 4:30 a.m.

Giving birth is never easy, and potential mothers often need help from a midwife. New research suggests that rule extends even to amoebas, single-celled creatures that reproduce by splitting apart into mother and daughter cells. Researchers have previously noted that, in at least one species, this process often stalls while the two cells are still connected by a slender thread--and they were unsure how the cells completed the process.

The Great Amoeba Invasion of L.A. was broadcast by KFWB four decades ago, but Chuck Blore remembers it well. After all, he staged it. Blore, the program director in the station's Top 40 music days, got the idea for the gag when he tuned in to KFWB one morning and discovered that his deejay had a case of the blahs. "I called him on the hotline and I said, 'You're on the radio, jerk!

It ranks up there with the world's other great unanswerable questions: Will Madonna's career ever get back on track? Are Roseanne and Tom going to reunite? When will Susan Lucci ever get her Emmy? And now we have (drum roll, please): Why bother with sex? OK, we guys know why.

Husband-and-wife team Louis Schwartzberg and Jan Ross didn't know when they graduated from UCLA's film school nearly 20 years ago and began shooting time-lapse nature scenes that they were planting the seeds for an unusual specialty. Today, the pair's Energy Productions in Studio City is the owner of Timescape Image Library, an impressive collection of cinematography that includes scenes of waterfalls, skylines, solar eclipses, babies being born and even amoebas.

Do you know what ambidextrous means or what antlers are made of? For the answers, tune in "Encyclopedia," a slick new series on Home Box Office from the Children's Television Workshop. Volume A debuts tonight at 7:30; other letters will follow in weekly succession.