The verdict: Lawyer jokes are so common...

The verdict: Lawyer jokes are so common that Lee Soble, publisher of Beverly Hills Today and five other local papers, thought it was time for someone--anyone--to present a defense for the profession. So he appealed to readers to write in about any reputed “great deeds” by attorneys.

Response was slow, as you can see from the accompanying box.

But since the box was unveiled, empty, the newspaper chain has received a “couple” of letters about good-hearted lawyers. And it has received something more.

“For every story we received about a good one,” Soble said, “we got about 20 horror stories.”

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Hair Force One (cont.): Just when you thought President Clinton’s haircut at LAX had passed into aeronautical history, the Motel 6 chain takes us back to Runway 2 in a new commercial. Announcer Tom Bodett, in asking Clinton to help shrink the national budget by vacationing at Motel 6, says: “Oh sure, you’d have to do without a shower cap and that fancy guava jelly conditioner shampoo. But, all in all, Mr. President I figure you’ve spent enough money on your hair anyway.”

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Lost in space: Sara Meric came across the following guideline for mailing a script to the TV show, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”:

“We cannot process a change of address after you have submitted your script. We have no means of tracking your script once it enters the process of consideration.”

Commented Meric: “C’mon, guys! The Galaxy, yes; the mail room, no?”

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Guess who was chosen as L.A.’s stand-in?Earlier this year we mentioned that a computer game company had hired Daryl F. Gates, KFI radio’s talk-show host, to design a product called “Police Quest IV.” The object of the game is to track down a serial killer on L.A.’s streets. Gates, as some of you may recall, was L.A.’s police chief before he got into radio.

Anyway, the game’s creator, a central California company called Sierra-on-Line, recently visited L.A. and took more than 100 photographs, which will be scanned into the game (due out in October). Some of the L.A. sites that will appear on the computer screen won’t really be L.A, however. “We also took some photos in Fresno,” a spokesman admitted.

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Correction of the day: The following advisory was sent to the media by PRNewswire: “In . . . ‘Department of Transportation Secretary Federico Pena to Present $49.6 Million in Federal Funding for Continuation of Red Line Construction,’ released earlier today, we have been advised by the organization that the Secretary of Transportation’s name should read ‘Pena’ throughout the release, instead of ‘Pea,’ as originally issued.”

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The mother’s milk of politics?The Times received a fax with a cover sheet that summarized the subject matter this way: “Organizations Call on Pres. Clinton to Purchase Recycled Pap”

The next page revealed that the subject was actually paper, which would appear to be more recyclable.

miscelLAny:

After the 1916 death of her father, Grigori Rasputin--sometimes known as the Mad Monk--Maria Rasputin moved to the United States, where she lived for a time in Echo Park.