Can’t get enough of the Triforium? Counting...

Can’t get enough of the Triforium? Counting the days until “Clouds of Steel” gets built? Here’s a new Los Angeles symbol to tide you over--Photon, a hippy-zippy “spokescharacter,” carrying a little bag of “sparkle dust,” the captain of the campaign for a cleaner, more beautiful city.

More vivacious than Redi Kilowatt, cuter than the Pillsbury Doughboy, Photon--all business in his little Erik Estrada helmet--is on a mission for “LA Sparkle.” Mayor Tom Bradley unveiled the animated little guy Monday, so he can lead the city’s half-billion-dollar sprucing-up effort against graffiti, litter, potholes and hazardous waste.

In a way, Photon is the perfect Angeleno. He has zero mass, no electrical charge and an indefinite lifetime.

The pit and the preposterous:

The trash can was just asking for it. It bore a tag saying it could survive a 3,000-foot drop from a helicopter. Why a trash can should promise such a thing is problematic, since the usual abuse they must stand up to are coyotes, trash men and spouses peeved at being asked to escort them curbside.

But in one of his “show me” tests, TV consumer reporter David Horowitz took up Sears on its pledge that not only could the $12.99 can survive the fall intact, but could carry 25 pounds of kitty litter with it.

And so on Monday, from a helicopter hovering above the Irwindale gravel pit--the same place they want the Raiders to play, with a few refinements--Horowitz’s people put it to the test.

The result: the can can’t. Kitty litter shrapnel all over. “Fortunately,” says Horowitz, “we used clean kitty litter.”

Here in Sequel City, once is never enough. Last week it was the little white Volkswagen that crept on a low-speed chase through four counties just at the speed limit, until it ran out of gas. This week it was a black Camaro, allegedly stolen by a man who hopped in as it idled on a Long Beach street. The Camaro led a conga line of lawmen through four counties with the speedometer bouncing off 105 m.p.h., say Long Beach police. The Camaro’s fast-forward progress ended with a burned-out transmission in Riverside about an hour after the car was stolen. As in Part I, the driver was arrested.

Under the circumstances, you’re almost afraid to call it a shoot.

A Los Angeles film company putting together a TV movie, “Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North,” found that a tiny gray songbird came close to doing what the Vietcong and Congress couldn’t: stopping Ollie North in his half-tracks (at least the actor playing North).

Papazian-Hirsch Production Co. had scouted a splendid stretch of the Prado Basin, near the Riverside County-Orange County border. The versatile marshes, says producer Bob Papazian, could do triple duty on film, as Vietnam, Nicaragua and parts of Okinawa.

But the area is also nesting ground for the endangered least Bell’s vireo, a rara avis indeed, measuring less than 5 inches tip to tail.

On the stipulation that they tread lightly, the company can soon begin filming. “We’re being extremely careful,” assures Papazian. “We’re being told what areas (to watch), what the habitat is . . . we don’t want to disturb the ecological system.”

To date, the bird has not demanded gross points or billing.