For several months, Father Maurice Chase has...

For several months, Father Maurice Chase has been dispensing a dollar bill and kind words to each of the hundreds of poor people who line up near the Union Rescue Mission on Sunday afternoons.

But on the Skid Row priest’s last visit, it was the street people who helped him out.

“I had just gotten some money out of my car when a man with a knife rushed toward me,” said Chase, 59. “The people yelled for me to go into the mission. And a couple hundred of them surrounded the man and subdued him.”

Police arrested the suspect, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, among other offenses, Officer Bob Goeckner said.

Chase, the chaplain at Notre Dame Academy girls’ school on the Westside, resumed handing out money on Main Street after the arrest.

His bravery--and the greenbacks--were duly noted.

“There was a big round of applause,” he said.

“LA Harbor Through the Porthole” by Miguel Martinez of Banning High and “LA Harbor With Lobster” by Reiko Masukawa of San Pedro High are two of the artworks adorning the 1990 calendar “Worldport LA . . . As Seen Through the Eyes of Our Youth.”

Maybe young Masukawa’s vision will inspire a film thriller--”Claws!”

Rewriting the script:

Two years ago, Sylvia Cunliffe agreed to retire as boss of L.A.’s General Services Department after Mayor Tom Bradley leveled a series of charges against her, including nepotism.

Nowadays, she is making use of her expertise as an executive consultant on the TV show, “City,” which features Valerie Harper as City Manager Liz Gianni.

Funny thing. In an episode the other night, Gianni was accused of nepotism after she put her daughter on the payroll.

Gianni didn’t resign. Fortunately, for a TV officeholder, the only unforgiveable offense is a low Nielsen rating.

To L.A. City Councilwoman Joy Picus, it would be “as American as apple pie” to expand the county Board of Supervisors from five members to nine in order to provide better representation for 8.7 million residents.

To illustrate the point, Picus and other community leaders delivered apple pies, each gerrymandered into nine pieces, to the board members Tuesday.

Some of the supervisors had their pie and ate it, too.

“The pie was good but the plan was too tart,” said Supervisor Deane Dana.

Supervisor Ed Edelman, however, was spotted rushing out of his office carrying the pie in a box under his arm. A staff member lamented, “We didn’t get a piece.”

When someone posted a for-sale notice for a fur coat (complete with photo) on the bulletin board of a Manhattan Beach health club, it started a small graffiti war.

“It’s dead,” someone scrawled across the notice.

Then, someone else wrote beneath that: “So are your shoes and dinner.”

It’s a jungle in those health clubs.