Only in L.A. People and Events

Some alarmed USC students phoned campus security the other night to report what they thought was a rumble involving gang members dressed in blue, the color favored by the Crips.

Fortunately, the gang-bangers turned out to be nothing more than frat men.

About 20 students pledging Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, their faces and arms blackened camouflage-style, were attempting to attack the active members with tomatoes and eggs in a World War II commando-style attack.

“They got into a kind of wrestling match, and from a distance it looked serious,” USC Security Chief Steven Ward said. “They were dressed in blue because that’s their fraternity color. They said they never thought they’d be identified the way they were.”

Ward said the pranksters were given a lecture and advised that if they stage any more mock-commando attacks, they should “give up the blue and wear something identifying them as students, or just plain camouflage clothing.” The chief pointed out that the frat attack could have encountered some serious opposition.

“Fortunately,” he added, “no gang members saw it.”

“Down these mean streets a man must go,” wrote novelist Raymond Chandler, the late Lyricist of L.A.

You can find some pretty hard-boiled parking lots around here, too, judging from the accompanying photos.

Literary L.A. (cont.):

The recent news that an unfinished Chandler novel had been found, and completed by mystery writer Robert Parker, inevitably raised hopes for more memorable ruminations on L.A.

Passages that might match this one, from Chandler’s “Little Sister” (1949):

“I used to like this town. There were trees along Wilshire Boulevard. Beverly Hills was a country town. Westwood was bare hills and lots offering at $1,100 and no takers. Hollywood was a bunch of frame houses on the inter-urban line. Los Angeles was just a big, dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but good hearted and peaceful.”

Alas, the new work offers few such meditations, unless you count this crack about a security guard’s shack at a Bel-Air mansion: “In Thousand Oaks it would have been a two-bedroom ranch with a garden.”

The book’s most memorable line, in fact, may be the title, which refers to a resort 100 miles east of L.A.: “Poodle Springs.”

It was your standard Southern California media event: A politician, state Controller Gray Davis, announcing his support for a pro-choice “Freedom Bus” at a Hollywood press conference that featured a famous lawyer, Gloria Allred, as well as a television actress from “Knot’s Landing.” And there was a second feature! A news advisory said that Davis was also “available to respond to recent reports of financial mismanagement of California’s recycling program.”

On her last day of work, Los Angeles Police Officer Gayleen Hays arrived at Parker Center in a limousine while clad in a fur coat and black sequined evening gown.

Hays, 47, a 22-year veteran, explained:

“My mother told me, ‘Gayleen, if you’re going to do something, do it in style.’ ” (Photos on B1.)

Succotash on the 605:

After a truck-trailer carrying 864,000 cans of food tumbled off an overpass of the San Gabriel River Freeway, California Highway Patrol Officer David Boyland commented: “There was green beans all over the road.”

“Shock” comedian Andrew Dice Clay, recently banned from MTV because of off-color remarks he made during a telecast, apparently forgot he isn’t welcome at the Ben Frank coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard, either.

Clay, 32, was refused service there Thursday night because he had reportedly caused a ruckus in the cafe on a previous visit. He refused to leave this time, so sheriff’s deputies were summoned and arrested him for trespassing. He’s due to be arraigned in Beverly Hills Municipal Court Nov. 3, unless Zsa Zsa’s using it that day.