No wonder the Los Angeles City Council...

No wonder the Los Angeles City Council decided Wednesday to postpone a vote on a bill to restrict the movement of horses here.

The background information supplied to the council by the city attorney’s office said the ordinance would prohibit horses “on the medians of any road in the city of Los Angeles, except in areas where bridal paths currently exist.”

Does the city attorney really want to make it illegal for a horse to walk down the aisle of a church?

Actor Kevin Dobson, who was Telly Savalas’ sidekick in the detective series, “Kojak,” still can’t get over his initial reaction at being accosted outside the downtown Midnight Mission while making a donation of clothing.

Dobson, who was unhurt, told Mission director Clancy Imislund that he had appeared in so many cinematic violence scenes “that when the guy came at me with the knife, I felt like saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be more believable if you took it out from under your coat?’ ”

Yorba Linda’s decision to designate the Jan. 9 birthday of ex-President Richard M. Nixon, the Orange County city’s most famous native, as a civic holiday raised the question of what famous people--if any--were born in Los Angeles.

Mickey Mouse, born in Walt Disney’s brain in a Hollywood studio in 1928, was nominated as L.A.’s most famous product recently in this space.

But there are a few others, as it turns out.

Richard Ohlin of Twentynine Palms points out that movie choreographer Busby Berkeley and actor-pioneer descendant Leo Carrillo were native Angelenos, as was Norma Jean Baker, better known as Marilyn Monroe.

L.A. also gave the world a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court--the late Earl Warren--as well as an unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate in Adlai Stevenson.

There’s still a chance that the city could produce another presidential contender. Jack Kemp, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was born here and played football at Occidental College.

No telling when a native Angeleno will be elected mayor of L.A., though.

If the Hollywood Freeway seemed noisier than usual near Cahuenga Pass on Wednesday morning, it might have been the additional din at nearby Universal Studios created by dozens of amateur yodelers who were trying out for parts in the amusement park’s Oktoberfest Celebration.

Ah, the perils of celebrity-hood. County Supervisor Ed Edelman was recently invited by NBC’s Today Show to discuss his part in persuading one winery to temporarily stop distributing its cheap, fortified brands to Skid Row liquor stores.

But there was a catch: He would have to rise at 3:30 a.m. to make it to the NBC studio in Burbank in time to be interviewed by the New York-based show.

Edelman checked into a hotel in Universal City the night before and rose promptly at the appointed time, only to learn that he had been preempted by Hurricane Hugo.

The supervisor was asked to come back another day, but sent a county health official rather than go through the pre-show ordeal again.

“I walked around like a zombie for two days,” he said later.

Gone are the days when local boosters attributed astonishing curative powers to the climate of Southern California.

“The purity of the air in Los Angeles is remarkable,” author Charles Nordhoff wrote in a typical endorsement a century ago. He guaranteed that just a few inhalations would give “the individual a stimulus and vital force which only an atmosphere so pure can ever communicate.”

Now, marketing ploys are taking a reverse approach, offering cures from the effects of Southern California’s fumes.

In a new series of local radio ads, one vitamin company actually claims that its products can aid in the battle of “defending your lungs against air pollution.”