Across the concrete and into the trees:...

Across the concrete and into the trees: Political consultant Steve Afriat takes issue with our statement Wednesday that the plight of the L.A. River has been ignored over the years. He points out that when Dick Tuck ran for the state Legislature in the 1960s, one of Tuck’s campaign promises was to paint the river blue.

Tuck, of course, lost, which is why it remains concrete-white.

Let’s hope they held the mustard: A miniature Oscar Mayer Wienermobile recently underwent an aerodynamics test in a wind tunnel at Caltech, where scientists generated a “120-m.p.h. airflow over their one-seventh-scale weenie wagon.” Where did we find this? Why, the September issue of Hot Rod magazine, naturally.

Read my initials: It wasn’t just that the first letter of each word in the sign was enlarged and painted red. It was the resulting acronym--for a West L.A. car dealer--that really caught Leslie Goldenburg’s eye (see photo).

Sales manager Oscar Aldridge admitted that the sign is designed to “get a little attention with some reverse psychology. Our clients trust us, so we can have some fun.”

Aldridge proudly added that callers frequently ask him: “Are you SCAM motors?”

The Joe Friday era: You knew it was a long-ago rerun of the late “Hunter” TV series when ex-L.A. Police Chief Daryl F. Gates (playing himself) made a reference the other night to the department’s “friends in the media.”

But roar is also a four-letter word: The complaints about airport noise grew so heated at a Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council meeting the other night that the council chairman announced that any speaker using curse words would be cut off.

Channel 2 follies: KCBS news, the operation responsible for such hokey policies as ordering its reporters to stand in the rain without umbrellas, aired what it repeatedly called an “exclusive” interview Tuesday with LAPD Officer Theodore Briseno. Anchor Bree Walker asked reporter Harvey Levin afterward why Briseno, one of the four defendants in the Rodney G. King case, was only now “breaking his silence.”

Silence? Several days before KCBS talked to him, Briseno was interviewed at length by NBC’s “Today” show, the Los Angeles Times, the London Daily Mail and a Philadelphia TV station.

But Levin did get to him before Larry King.

Leave the presiding to him: A reader with the exciting name of Danger Weston found a free plug for George Bush on Vine Street (see photo). This time, Bush seems to have a four-legged running mate.

The new cruelty: Ordering in a West L.A. deli, Toni Sparano idly asked the waitress whether she should get the home fries or the tomatoes with her scrambled eggs.

Snapped the waitress: “I can’t manage your life for you.”

miscelLAny:

The Calabasas Chamber of Commerce is looking for pumpkin-themed floats, pumpkin-costumed participants and “bizarre pumpkin vehicles” for its first Calabasas Days Parade Oct. 17. It may have something to do with the fact that calabasas is Spanish for pumpkin.