And Now for a Laugh . . . the Mayoral Race : Comedy: With its large field of candidates, the L.A. campaign has become a fertile ground for jokesters.

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Woo.”

“Woo who?”

“Don’t cry, he isn’t mayor yet.”

Ba-da-boom!

So it isn’t Steve Martin at the Universal Amphitheatre. But something is emerging from this mess we call a mayoral race--a sense of humor. And just in time. With 24 candidates slugging it out to be our first new leader in 20 years, the Rodney G. King case on the verge of a second verdict, and the city still in emotional shards over the last one, Los Angeles could use a few laughs.

The knock-knock joke belongs to “Saturday Night Live’s” Dana Carvey, who murdered ‘em in the national election with his impressions of Ross Perot and George Bush. Now he’s backing mayoral hopeful Richard Katz and struggling for material. Can you blame him? Would you stand in line to watch an impersonation of former Deputy Mayor Tom Houston? And even if you saw one, how would you know?

Ba-da-boom!

And speaking of Katz. . . . Attempting to portray this powerful Sylmar assemblyman as an outsider who had nothing to do with the city’s decline over the past two decades, his handlers released their Top 10 List of Stupid Council Tricks: (We mercifully spare you Nos. 10, 7, 6, and 2):

9--Arranged for special buses to shuttle Century City lawyers into downtown.

8--Commissioned a task force to study whether speakers at drive-through restaurants are too noisy.

5--Outlawed smog in 1947.

4--Spent half a million dollars to repave Hollywood Boulevard with “Glassphalt.”

3--Bought a yacht equipped with a $350 coffee maker, a $450 toaster and $64 can opener.

And the No. 1 Stupid Council Trick (drum roll):

While cutting the budget and freezing police staffing in 1991, the council pigged out on a catered buffet topped off with three different kinds of cheesecake.

And now, from the Everybody’s-a-Comedian file:

Katz and his wife were recently shopping at a Sears in North Hollywood when a salesclerk spotted them giggling at a loud pair of men’s boxer shorts. “You can’t wear those if you’re running for mayor,” the clerk said.

Ba da boom!

The mayoral race hit the big time Monday when Academy Awards emcee Billy Crystal asked his bare-shouldered and bow-tied audience for a show of hands. “How many of you are running for mayor?”

We thought it would have been much funnier, considering the record number of candidates, had he asked how many were not running for mayor.

Crystal’s publicist, Arnold Lipsman, did not concur.

“It was hysterical,” he said.

We couldn’t ask Crystal, a Los Angeles resident, whom he likes in this race or even if he’s following it; he was leaving town for a “much-needed vacation.”

“He’s not very political, actually,” Lipsman said.

Perhaps this overcrowded field has left you feeling apolitical, overwhelmed, depressed. Check out the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where topical comedian Argus Hamilton has them rolling in the aisles with these:

* “Richard Riordan claims he’s a self-made man. That’s what happens when you use unskilled labor.”

* “L.A. should elect whichever candidate agrees to force the Japanese to make lighter TV sets. They are making them way too heavy to carry down the street at full speed. The last thing we need is a town full of looters with back problems.”

* “We need a mayor who can respond constructively to a crisis. Mayor Bradley didn’t help last year after the Rodney King verdict was announced. For the second time in eight years, he held up a torch and said, ‘Let the Games begin!”

* “Michael Woo refuses to take a stand. Back when he was a little boy, his father asked him: ‘Michael, was that you who chopped down the family orange tree?’

“Michael looked up at his father and said: ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie. Perhaps.’ ”

Ba da boom.

SNAPSHOTS:

You’d think in L.A., you could find the real stuff: Candidate Katz appears before a wall of graffiti in a recent television commercial plugging his proposed crackdown on crime. What he fails to mention is that the graffiti are fake. We asked Sgt. Joseph Guzman, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department gang expert, to examine the ad, and he said the wall looks contrived to him. He has never seen a skull and crossbones and a spray-painted plea of “help me” on his East L.A. turf. Katz said the scrawlings were manufactured for a reason: “We did not want to highlight any gang or tagger,” he said.

When the race hands you lemons: Seeking to prove you can run for mayor of Los Angeles without accepting contributions from developers, lobbyists and other special interests, 21-year-old contender Adam Bregman will be selling lemonade for 25 cents a cup outside City Hall at 2 p.m. Monday.