Can life go on in L.A. without...

Can life go on in L.A. without the men in Silver and Black? Well, some Raiders fans called on other faithful to gather outside the Coliseum on Thursday to dramatize their love for the team.

No crowd-control measures were needed.

Thirteen people showed up--more than enough to field a new football team.

One of the few institutions that gets less respect than the Coliseum is the dusty L.A. River.

Jokes about the river date back at least as far as 1928, when a Glendale High School student wrote in the yearbook of a classmate: “Yours until the Los Angeles River wets its bed.”

(How does Only in L.A. know this? The classmate was Only in L.A.’s mother, that’s how.)

In the 1974 movie, “Chinatown,” private eye Jake Gittes laughs off a coroner’s ruling that one character drowned in the L.A. River with the observation: “It’s as dry as a bone.”

The latest indignity for the cement waterway comes in the form of a blurb playing almost nightly on the radio show of mischievous KMPC sportscaster Jim Healy. It’s a taped blunder made on a rival program by KABC’s Ed (Superfan) Bieler:

“The San Antonio River goes right through the heart of downtown Los Angeles,” Bieler can be heard saying.

Come to think of it, that’s no compliment to San Antonio, either.

The commercial may have won an award from the L.A. Advertising Club the other day, but Don Fawcett of Brentwood is no fan of “that annoying, drum-beating, battery-operated bunny,” as he describes it. And he notes, there’s something strange about the battery company’s mail-in offer to send you “an Energizer-brand battery bunny” for “$14.95, plus three proofs of purchase.”

The punch line of the ad: “This bunny is not battery-operated.”

From our Only-in-West-L.A. bureau:

What may be the nation’s first 24-hour pet shop has opened on Wilshire Boulevard.

“This is kind of an experiment to see if there are enough people out there in the middle of the night who suddenly realize they’re out of pet food,” said Sandy Reeves, manager of Petco. “Business has been a bit slow after midnight, but we’ve had a few stragglers come in just to see if we were really open.”

The shop recently unveiled a Doggie-Kittie Deli.

“We had a little party at the opening,” said Reeves, “and we set some food out for people’s pets to sample. I saw a little boy lick what he thought was a chocolate cupcake. You should have seen his frown.”

The delicacy turned out to be a liver cupcake.

Is Malibu’s cityhood drive really the work of a concessionaire?

Malibuites have been spotted in a variety of hats and T-shirts that carry pro-cityhood markings.

The movement’s latest T-shirt asks on the front: “What’s the difference between Malibu and America?”

The answer, on the back: “In America you can vote.”

Also, in America, unlike in Malibu, you can find carwashes and coin-operated Laundromats.