Mural, Mural on the Wall, What’s the Safest Sex of All?

In a town flooded10 glossies, one head shot in Hollywood is, uh, turning a lot of heads.

A 100-foot-tall vinyl canvas mural depicting a gorgeous blonde was draped last week from the roof of the 9000 Building on the Sunset Strip with the heading “No Glove, No Love.”

Artist Mike McNeilly says he hopes his work, which cost about $50,000 and took 30 days to produce, will spread AIDS awareness among teen-agers.

“There’s such a resurgence of comic book, cartoon characters and I felt this was the best way to send a message to young people,” McNeilly said.

The bottom of the mural lists the toll-free number of one of the project’s sponsors, AIDS Project Los Angeles, a nonprofit health organization.

The organization and McNeilly say they have received dozens of calls complimenting the mural.

The woman’s expression, McNeilly said, is meant to convey a mixture of passion and doubt at that moment when fateful decisions on sexual relations are made.

“We (the public) are her lover, and when faced with such a situation we have to decide before going any further.”

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DEJA VU: Talk about a stroll down memory lane. There was state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), front row center at the Odyssey Theatre, watching a stage actor portray him as a criminal defendant.

A politician’s worst nightmare?

Not exactly. It was a special performance Monday of “The Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial”--presented as a fund-raiser for Hayden’s gubernatorial campaign. Another former Chicago Eight defendant--UCLA professor John Froines--was also there.

The cast was duly impressed.

Afterward, the actor who portrays Hayden was heard to ask the senator, “Was I OK?”

A prosecutor, whose role was particularly convincing, said: “I’m really a Democrat, you know.”

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NAME FROM THE PAST: Venice attorney Mike Sidley, who is running against state Sen. Ralph Dills (D-Gardena) in the June 7 primary, got a recent endorsement from a familiar name: Ford Roosevelt, grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The endorsement helps the candidate bring up the Sacramento tenure of Dills, whose district includes Venice, Westchester and Marina del Rey. Ford Roosevelt “pointed out that Dills was first elected to the California state Legislature in 1938, during his grandfather’s second term in office,” according to a press release from Sidley’s office.

But the endorsement does not seem to ruffle any feathers in the Dills campaign.

“So?” responded Tim Mock, Dills’ campaign manager. “I don’t get the point.”

Mock added that Dills’ 50-plus years of experience in politics is “a benefit to the South Bay.”

Dills, in fact, met FDR as a young state lawmaker.

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LOCKYER’S HELP: And speaking of Dills, state Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) has thrown his support behind the Gardena Democrat in the June 7 primary.

Lockyer criticized another of Dills’ opponents, Torrance Councilman George Nakano, a Japanese American, for running against Dills in the primary. Dills has long been personally and politically allied with Japanese Americans.

“Everything I have heard is that council member Nakano is a very fine person,” Lockyer said. But he noted that Dills was vilified by colleagues in 1943 when he was a state assemblyman for opposing Japanese internment camps.

“There’s something wrong about terminating” Dills’ career when it is “about to end anyway because of term limits--by someone who is from the (Japanese American) community,” Lockyer said. “People’s memories should not be so short.”

Nakano, who was in a relocation camp for four years during World War II, called Lockyer’s comment “a very condescending remark.”

“If someone took a strong stand against women’s rights, does that mean a woman shouldn’t be able to run against them?” Nakano asked.