Air Force One salute: As President Bush’s...

Air Force One salute: As President Bush’s motorcade cruised along La Cienega Boulevard the other morning, rush-hour traffic was ordered over to the side. One driver, who was caught in the jam ahead of the procession, rolled down his window and gave a one-fingered salute. So did the next motorist, and another, and another, and another, a witness told writer Susan Vaughn.

And Bush’s reaction to the chain reaction of fingers? As he passed, he appeared to be engrossed in a newspaper.

Splitting the Gov. Moonbeam vote: Out-of-this-world bumper sticker spotted on the Ventura Freeway--”Kirk/Spock ’92.” (And “Bones” for surgeon general, no doubt.) Kirk’s birth date--it’s March 22, 2228--could be a hindrance, however. At negative 236 years of age, he might be considered too young for the job.

No one ever called the FBI hip: Jeff Wald, executive director of news

programming at KCOP-TV, on the federal subpoena for the station’s outtakes of the L.A. riots: “It asks for all the film. It says film . We haven’t used film since, like, 1980 . . . 12 years.”

It intersects Scooper Road: Perusing a community newspaper, Edna Kunze of L.A. found a street in a real estate ad that would seem to be the ideal spot to walk one’s pets. Its name was given as “Poopy Peak Drive.”

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.: Tom Mills of Sun Valley spotted a 10-hour-parking sign--a remarkable sight in itself in L.A.--on Hewitt Street, east of the Civic Center. What Mills found even more intriguing, though, was the number of hours during which the restriction applies.

Leftovers: Aude Pace noticed that one L.A. restaurant was advertising its “Easter Brunch” in the May 1 issue of a weekly newspaper.

Let’s hope Bob Hope doesn’t do his Christmas show from L.A. too: A National Guard unit stationed near the Coliseum was entertained on Tuesday by a group of Playboy Playmates, who signed autographs and posed for photos with the troops.

Did you hear the one about the looter, the arsonist and the National Guardsman?: The Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard was not victimized during the riots, perhaps because its marquee pleaded: “All Jokes Stolen, Please Don’t Break In.”

miscelLAny:

In a national handwriting competition, St. Joseph School of La Puente produced two of the six champions: Veronica Jimenez (fifth grade) and Denise Alvarez (eighth grade). The 13,000 entries were judged on formation of letters, forward slope, proportionate size, spacing, control and softness of writing. Only 800 were judged outstanding.