One of the reasons why L.A. City...

One of the reasons why L.A. City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky dropped out of the mayoral race last year was a staff survey that revealed that many residents were unfamiliar with his name.

Not so in Moscow.

Members of a Soviet skating team, who visited the City Council chamber Friday, told the councilman that in their country “Yaroslavsky” is the name of a popular brand of cheese.

The California Nurses Assn. opposes a plan that would enable Registered Care Technologists (RCTs)--students with less training than registered nurses--to be used in medical facilities to ease the nursing shortage.

The RCT proposal inspired some nursing students at Santa Monica College to put their objections into forceful rhyme in a CNA publication. Their poem reads, in part:

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Nine months of school Makes the RCT. Then out on the floor --

That’s where they’ll be. Doing procedures and Passing out meds; But guess who gets it If the patient falls dead? (PAUSE FOR DRUM ROLL) It’s the nurse in charge Who’s gonna take the fall . . . .

Which naturally leads us to the film, “Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.”

Members of the L.A. Alliance for Survival, protesting its opening, gathered outside the Bruin Theater in Westwood Friday with their own power tools.

But passers-by may have been confused over whether the Alliance members were pro- or anti-Leatherface.

The protesters chain-sawed through a banner that said, “Responsibility, Integrity and Creativity.”

The L.A. City Council’s Rules and Elections Committee was supposed to consider a proposal on Friday to give the 15 members a summer recess. After all, the council now meets a back-breaking three (3) mornings a week.

But the recess proposal was put off. The committee couldn’t muster enough members to form a quorum.

Good thing Leatherface isn’t sergeant-of-arms.

Elvis-Head Sightings (cont.):

The flowery bust of the King seems to have found a new career in Ridgeland, Miss., where it’s on display outside the Northland shopping mall. After an “All-Shook-Up” promotion this weekend, mall director Becky Orsi says there are plans to auction off the noble noggin. Proceeds would offset some of the Mississippi Rose Parade Committee’s debt resulting from the float’s appearance in Pasadena.

Orsi is hopeful that a local company will buy the Elvis Head, then enter it in nearby Jackson’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade March 17.

From there, who knows? It would only be eight months more until the Doo Dah Parade.

An old gunfighter died peacefully in his sleep here 61 years ago today one of the few of his breed to go out with his boots off.

A lawman, gambler and miner, he made his name in places like Dodge City, Tombstone and the Klondike. Old-timers say he was still vigorous in his later years, picking up a little extra money by working as a lifeguard at Los Angeles beaches.

Mostly, he lived out his final days quietly in a house on 17th Street, near the corner of Venice and Crenshaw boulevards. Perhaps that’s why The Times relegated his death, at the age of 80, to the B Section--below a story about a downtown fire that damaged three buildings.

An understated exit for Wyatt Earp.