Vote for Zev, and Vote for Laura Too : <i> Introducing a weekly, none-too-reverent report on politics and government. </i>

Thanks a lot, senator: News item No. 1: California Sen. Barbara Boxer endorses Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. News item No. 2: California Sen. Barbara Boxer endorses Yaroslavsky’s 5th District rival, Laura Lake.

What gives?

“The senator thinks they’re both excellent candidates and has chosen to endorse both of them,” explains Raquel Koenigsberg, who heads the Los Angeles office of Friends of Barbara Boxer, the Democrat’s campaign arm.

But--surprise!--there’s more.

When Lake announced her Boxer endorsement last month, she said the senator’s campaign office had told her that Boxer did not know Lake was running when the senator endorsed Yaroslavsky.

Yaroslavsky said Boxer assured him of support in January, when the two met briefly in Washington at the Clinton inauguration. And a source close to the councilman’s campaign said that upon first requesting the endorsement last December, Yaroslavsky informed Boxer that he fully expected a challenge from Lake.

(A bit of background here: Lake supported Boxer from the start of her successful Senate campaign; Yaroslavsky, however, backed a Boxer rival in the Democratic primary, former Rep. Mel Levine of Santa Monica.)

Asked to respond to Boxer’s endorsement of Lake, Yaroslavsky would say only that he was surprised.

No word yet on whether the senator may also give a plug to Mike Rosenberg, the third candidate in the race.

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Incumbent power: In her quest to unseat Yaroslavsky, one of Lake’s most frequent jabs is that the councilman hasn’t done enough to alleviate the critical parking shortage on the Westside.

Rarely does she miss the chance to accuse Yaroslavsky of sitting on up to $25 million in a special parking meter fund earmarked for parking improvements in the district’s commercial areas.

But wait.

Last month, at Yaroslavsky’s request, the City Council appropriated $4.9 million from the fund to build a multilevel parking garage for at least 300 vehicles at Robertson Boulevard and Alden Drive. The garage is to be completed in two years.

You say there’s an election coming up?

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Hooray for Hollywood: While the ACLU is raising judicial challenges to Santa Monica’s new law aimed at limiting feeding programs for the homeless in city parks, actor Martin Sheen and former City Atty. Robert Myers, among others, have been attacking the law with protests in the parks. At a recent event in Palisades Park, Sheen had just finished making a pitch about feeding the homeless when he was approached by a man clutching a sheaf of neatly typed paper.

Could it be? You bet your sweet screenwriting class, it could. The man was hawking his screenplay.

The wanna-be movie maker declined to give his name.

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Malibu blues: Malibu gained its independence from Los Angeles County government in 1991, and Cher--whose plans to build a mega-mansion overlooking the ocean have been held up--says it was a mistake.

“Cityhood screwed me up,” the entertainer told the Malibu Times. “I’ve had to hire expensive facilitators and have spent $60,000 to redo my plans. . . . There are couples who want to build their dream house and they’re being denied. At the same time, I look in the hills and see Taco Bells.”

City Council meetings this week:

* Beverly Hills: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. City Hall, 450 N. Crescent Drive. (310) 285-2400.

* Culver City: no meeting this week. Interim City Hall, Trailer No. 1, 4095 Overland Ave. (310) 202-5851.

* Los Angeles: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. City Hall, 200 N. Spring St. (213) 485-3126.

* Malibu: 6:30 p.m. Monday. Hughes Laboratory, 3011 Malibu Canyon Road. (310) 456-2489.

* Santa Monica: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. City Hall, 1685 Main St. (310) 393- 9975.

* West Hollywood: no meeting. West Hollywood Auditorium, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd. (310) 854-7460.

Staff writers Ron Russell and Nancy Hill-Holtzman contributed to this report.