Now that the U.S. Postal Service has...

Now that the U.S. Postal Service has decided to issue a stamp honoring Laurel and Hardy, the daughter of Moe Howard doesn’t see why one can’t be issued honoring her late father and the other members of the Three Stooges.

“Believe it or not,” says Joan Howard Maurer of Culver City, “I am bent on getting their silly faces on a United States commemorative postage stamp.” She concedes that if the energetic campaign waged by the fans of Laurel and Hardy had not finally persuaded the feds, “I would never have thought of this.”

There are, she contends, people out there who remain “absolutely mad” about the Stooges. The fans are not all “just characters,” she says, but include “doctors and lawyers.” Consequently, she is spearheading a crusade to persuade the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee in Washington with letters and petitions.

The slapstick trio made more than 400 films and are still on television throughout the world. Curly Howard (Moe’s kid brother) died in January of 1952 (to be replaced first by one comic and then another). Larry Fine died in January, 1975, and Moe died in May of that year.

The 60th anniversary of the beginning of their movie career will in the fall in 1990, Maurer points out, so the stamp should be issued then.

By which time it may cost a dollar to mail a letter.

The prankster who called and identified himself as a San Diego Police Department dispatcher was, said Hollenbeck Division Lt. Lupe Delagarza, “pretty convincing.”

He must have been. In response to the caller’s request for help in capturing some robbery suspects purportedly wanted by San Diego, three Hollenbeck patrol cars converged on an El Sereno neighborhood about 2 a.m. Friday while a police helicopter clattered around overhead.

It wasn’t long before the cops concluded that the call was a fake and decided to forget it. But the exercise wasn’t a total loss.

As they were leaving the area, they spotted a pickup truck containing three boys who looked a little young to be driving around at that hour.

The kids probably were astonished to have attracted so much official attention. Not anxious to be interviewed, they led the police on a 20-minute chase around Dodger Stadium, into the Silver Lake area, back to El Sereno and into the Monterey Hills--where they finally bailed out of the truck and ran.

A K-9 unit dog sniffed them out of the bushes, biting one of them. They turned out to be 13, 16 and 17. Police said the truck was stolen.

As parks go, it’s no big thing. Just about the size of a tennis court and without any apparent purpose--at least as far as motorists on the northbound Santa Ana Freeway can see.

More than a few of them approaching downtown Los Angeles at 4th Street have been mildly perplexed by the sight of workers rolling out blankets of sod and installing plants on the tiny plot of ground inside a 12-foot-high chain-link fence.

The miniature project is for the benefit of low-income tenants of the 35-unit apartment complex just up the hill on Boyle Avenue. An orphanage once stood on the apartment house site and the little park was atumble with orphans. Then the orphanage was razed and the postage-stamp recreation area went to weed.

American Development Corp., which operates the apartments, decided to restore the park for the tenants’ use. It is expected to be ready for an early July dedication ceremony and will include slides, a merry-go-round, barbecues, picnic tables and sprinklers for the kids to play in.

“It’s gonna be real nice,” said Arthur Rordriguez, foreman of the lawn-sod crew.

You remember, of course, when candidates just shook hands and kissed babies.

County supervisor candidate Peter A. O’Neil decided to whip up a little campaign enthusiasm Friday with a street corner press conference in Hollywood on the “breakdown of the county health care system.”

To make the cheese more binding, his people gave away about 200 kits containing AIDS information in English and Spanish--as well as three condoms. They also had bleach kits with instructions on how to clean syringes.

Passers-by at Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard “in general did a double-take,” O’Neil aide Tim Brick said, but most accepted the kits. No one seemed “too uptight” at being handed free condoms on the street.

“Some real good discussions went on,” Brick reported.