The state’s 2-year-old Task Force to Promote...

The state’s 2-year-old Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility, lampooned by many as just another kooky California innovation, got some cheering up from a group of Long Beach fourth-grade students Tuesday. It made up for some of those sarcastic columns by Chicagoan Mike Royko.

The Esteem Force was presented songs, poems and cheers by six Abraham Lincoln School students and teacher Christine Lungren Maddalone at a public hearing in Sacramento.

Esteem member Susan Lange asked the children--Sophal Prak, Kaophuey Saephan, Maribel Marcelli, Martha Zuniga, Kemi Role and Santiago Banuelos--what qualities they had that other children should develop.

“I believe in myself to do better,” responded Kemi Role. “I say I think I can.”

Such an attitude may come in useful eight months from now, when the task force is disbanded and its members appeal to the state Legislature to finance programs aimed at increasing self-esteem.

For awhile on Election Day, Los Angeles somewhat conjured up visions of Dixville Notch, N.H., the little town famed for being the first to report its 35 or so votes each presidential election.

By 5 p.m. Tuesday, an estimated 13.2% of Los Angeles’ electorate had cast ballots.

Claire Sarradet allowed precinct judges to set up a polling station in the front of her Sherman Oaks beauty salon, but she won’t know the results for a few days--that is, she won’t know whether she gained any new customers.

The last time Sarradet’s salon was used in an election, she gained two clients. Waiting in line to cast ballots, they had evidently gotten a good look at themselves in the shop’s mirrors.

“They came back another day,” Sarradet noted. “They didn’t want the voters to see them with their hair wet.”

The visitor was described by an official of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service at a press conference as “a rather strange-looking guy.”

It was an accurate description, if strange-looking covers a robot with a green border-patrol hat and blinking lights on its head, a smile made out of rivets and a television set in its midsection.

The visitor was “K.C.”--short for “Kids Count”--a remote-controlled creature who visits schools as part of the INS’ anti-drug effort.

Fortunately, K.C. doesn’t have to worry about those height-weight charts that determine physical fitness. The bucket of bolts is 5-foot-2 and weighs 180 pounds.

What he thought would be a simple modification of the county dress code turned into something of a knotty issue for County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Taking note of last week’s heat wave, Hahn proposed a policy whereby “employees need not wear a tie . . . when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees.”

But colleague Edmund Edelman pointed out: “That’s for the males. What about females?”

Colleague Pete Schabarum complimented the dress of the female attorneys in the county counsel’s office and voiced the fear that if the male attorneys started “to look crummy,” their female counterparts might follow suit.

County administrators pointed out that no official dress code exists, anyway.

No vote was taken on the proposal. But the other supervisors invited Hahn to establish a dress code for his own office.

In a sense, Southern California is the ideal setting for this weekend’s Long Beach Grand Prix. After all, the average speed posted by winner Al Unser Jr. last year--83 miles per hour--is nearly comparable to what commuters achieve on local freeways in the middle of the night.