Woodpeckers can be a problem for cities--their...

Woodpeckers can be a problem for cities--their penchant for boring holes in telephone poles is especially destructive--so it seems curious that the County Board of Supervisors would name Woody Woodpecker as the mascot of the county’s recycling program.

You can almost hear Woody’s malicious laugh . . .

Heh, heh, heh, hee, hah. Heh, heh, heh, hee, hah. Hah, hah, hah . . .

Obviously, he was approved without a confirmation hearing.

L.A.’s in no danger of losing its title as the capital of dual-purpose, unmarried groups, offering such combinations as the Millionaire Singles Club, the Atheist Dating Service, the Southern California Freeway Singles and Vege-Match of Redondo Beach (vegetarian sunbather singles).

Now comes another variation: Comedy Singles Night in Century City.

No joke.

Unmarried quipsters who’ve resisted trying out their best lines in singles’ bars are invited to the Twenty/20 Club on Nov. 8.

“We’re going to have single amateurs do comedy routines,” said Robert Kohn, chairman of the nonprofit event, which is being sponsored by the Century City Chamber of Commerce. Tickets go for $5 per funnyman or funnywoman.

Not everyone will get to perform. But Kohn said that, as a get-acquainted gimmick, each attendee will be given a name tag of a partner of a famous comedy team and asked to match up with the other member.

“We’ll have tags for Burns and Allen, Lucy and Ricky, and others,” Kohn explained.

Don’t forget Zsa Zsa and The Cop.

State Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) shocked some people with his proposal to turn the L.A. River into a roadway. But as you can see in the accompanying photo, some bicyclists aren’t waiting for enabling legislation.

Most everyone favors a crackdown on rowdies at the Coliseum, but Art Grandy of Gardena wonders if some gendarmes are overreacting.

Grandy said that at the Raiders-Seattle game Sunday, an L.A. policeman warned him not to stand up and cheer or wave his Seahawks hat.

“I was in a section of Raiders’ fans and it was a fine group of people,” said Grandy, whose godson plays for Seattle. “No one had been doing any drinking or anything like that. And I hadn’t had much chance to stand up because it was early on when the Seahawks were really getting beat. Raiders fans were doing a lot more standing up. I asked the officer what I was doing wrong and he said, ‘You’re making a lot of noise and you’re going to cause a problem. . . . If you wave that hat again, I’m gonna take you to jail.’ ”

Grandy added: “I’m 57. How much noise can I make?”

The show never stops in L.A., notes Steve Holley of West L.A.

“As I left the Royal Theater after viewing ‘Jesus of Montreal,’ a film in which an avant-garde Passion Play is censored by the Catholic Church and closed down by the police, I was greeted by eight protesters kneeling on the sidewalk,” he wrote.

“In unison, they participated in a droning chant, indicting the film as blasphemous and sure to send us all to Hades. Funny, that’s the same thing the antagonists in the movie were saying.”

Which reminds us:

During the recent spate of 90-plus degree days, the marquee of the Venice Baptist Church said:

“If you think it’s hot here. . . .”

miscelLAny:

The 1990 Thomas Bros. map guide lists 139 “points of interest” in L.A. County, compared to 37 in Orange County. Orange Countyites may take some comfort in the fact that two of the L.A. attractions, Venice Pier and Olympic Auditorium, were shut down months ago.