Can we draft him for President? Scott...

Can we draft him for President? Scott Kaufer of Hollywood saw a sign in a Beverly Hills gas station that said:

“Reelect Bernie Hecht, Beverly Hills City Council. Vision. Integrity. Shorter Speeches.”

No checks, please: The Van Nuys apartment building in today’s photo offers an unintentional--but perceptive--commentary on Washington.

Filched home videos: Art and Val, stars of a home video found in a stolen camcorder, have been located.

Two TV stations, following up the original item in Saturday’s Only in L.A., played the tape of the couple’s Hanukkah celebration on the air. The Hawthorne couple was alerted and phoned LAPD Lt. Mike Melton Tuesday morning.

Not only did Art and Val Romkey get their camcorder back, but Melton was able to arrest the man who was found in possession of the machine after the theft.

“He (the suspect) saw the program (on TV) too,” said Melton, “so he wasn’t completely surprised when we showed up.”

Fowl script: Our mention of the Hollywood Freeway Chickens brought back “a very special time” for actress/writer Jodie Mann, who helped save many of the survivors of a 1960s poultry truck crash.

Mann and a 90-ish woman named Minnie Blumfield, who fed the chickens for more than five years, prevailed upon the Department of Animal Regulation to round up the fowls near the Vineland Avenue off-ramp. Nearly 100 of the critters were shipped to a ranch in Simi Valley, where they pecked out the rest of their existence.

Mann has written a screenplay about the saga but so far hasn’t been able to find a buyer. “I’d like to have Jessica Tandy play Minnie,” she said.

Whatever, she has her memories, some humorous. “We got a call from a man who wanted to do a study,” she said. “He couldn’t understand how the chickens could be so healthy after all those years of living in the exhaust fumes.”

Lost in space: We’ve been careening out of control ever since we mistakenly said that Jerry Brown traveled around California in a Pontiac Satellite as governor. More than a dozen car buffs chastised us. Unfortunately, in correcting the error, we quoted a reader who wrote, “For your penance, you will listen 200 times to the B-52’s ‘On Planet X.’ ” The reader said that song included a lyric about a Plymouth Satellite.

That lit up the Only in L.A. switchboard again. Now, it was the turn of rock music buffs to chastise us. The song in question was actually “Planet Claire.” OK? Now we’re going to crawl into our Yugo Celica and go home.

miscelLAny:

Echo Park, just northwest of the Civic Center, contains one of the nation’s largest growths of Oriental lotuses. They are said to have been the gift of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who preached at the nearby Angelus Temple earlier this century.