Partygoers vote for DJ Pedro

ASK any of the zealots who made “Napoleon Dynamite” the surprise hit of 2004 (and surpassed Trekkies as fandom’s most fanatical nerds): The film’s teenage mouth-breather character, Pedro Sanchez, possesses many enviable “skills.” Among them: owning a “sweet” bike, displaying a talent for “hooking up with chicks” and being the only kid in the school with a mustache.

Now, add to that list DJ skills.

Turns out Efren Ramirez, 22, the actor who brought the character to life -- and who is partly responsible for the fanboy must-have “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt -- is making a name for himself as a nightclub turntablist. He’s rocked packed houses from Hollywood to Boise, Idaho, and in the coming weeks he’ll hit cities in Texas, Pennsylvania, Washington, Florida, Michigan and Kentucky on his self-backed “Pedro Tour.”

“I go up on stage and say” -- in the character’s laconic Mexican accent -- ‘I hope you voted for me,’ ” says Ramirez. “ ‘Now I’m going to show you my DJ skills.’ Then I start mixing hip-hop, house, ‘80s rock and early techno. Everybody’s tripping out.”

At a rave organized by Ramirez’s event planning company, Nocturnal Rampage, last month, the actor-DJ ascended to the booth of Hollywood’s Arena Nightclub to spin selections from Bell Biv DeVoe, Cypress Hill and James Brown Is Dead, among other eclectic picks.

“Everybody was chanting, ‘Pedro! Pedro!’ ” Ramirez recalls. “They’re surprised. They don’t know what I can do.”

Turns out the Lincoln Heights native -- who ultimately caved in to what his fans are going to call him anyway: DJ Pedro -- first cultivated his turntable talent by lugging record crates for his older brother Julio, a former club DJ. But soon, little brother had built a sizable record collection of his own and started Nocturnal Rampage, which threw raves that drew up to 3,000 people, Ramirez says.

This fall finds him in two movies: September’s “Crank,” in which he plays the transvestite confrere of Jason Statham’s adrenalized action hero character, and the comedy “Employee of the Month,” in which Ramirez portrays a box boy at a Costco-like store opposite Jessica Simpson and Dane Cook.

While Ramirez’s turn as a triumphal nerd in “Napoleon Dynamite” remains his defining achievement, he sees DJ’ing as a way to distinguish himself from the character.

“You don’t want to be typecast as Pedro forever,” he says. “You want to do something totally different.*

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Beach cleanup and concert

ACTRESS Rosanna Arquette will host “Re-Boot and Rock the Beach” in Venice today, an event co-organized by nonprofit environmental advocate Heal the Bay to help tidy California coastal waters.

The first 500 people who attend the free public event win prizes. For everyone else, the instant karma is simple: Beach garbage clean-up duty begins at 10 a.m., followed by a free concert featuring backpacker rappers Jurassic 5 and guitar phenom Johnny Lang in Venice’s Windward Plaza at 12:30.

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Alternative score for ‘80s cop flick

THROUGH some fluke of stoner synchronicity, Pink Floyd’s seminal “Dark Side of the Moon” album was discovered to parallel “The Wizard of Oz” almost perfectly. (Hint: Start the album during the MGM lion’s third roar.)

And now the San Francisco-Vermont duo Dark Side of the Cop has applied the Floyd-meets-Oz idea to another unlikely intersection of the pop culture universe: electro-synth pop meets “Beverly Hills Cop.”

Conceived by songwriter Marco Panella as an “alternate soundtrack” to that 1984 Eddie Murphy action comedy, Dark Side of the Cop “narrates the story of a badge from Detroit, lovesick and lonely, and follows him to Los Angeles in search of his childhood love,” according to Dark Side’s website. The disc (titled “Shaky Little Rules”) has already earned four stars on the notoriously snarky music website www.pitchforkmedia.com. And on Friday, Cop will make an in-studio appearance on KXLU FM and will perform Saturday at the Lava Lounge in Hollywood.

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Kweli gets his message out online

Add Brooklyn conscious rapper Talib Kweli to the slim ranks of blog-writing hip-hop heads (others include Amir of the Philadelphia rap collective the Roots and Phonte of North Carolina’s Little Brother). Kweli’s can be found at www.talibkweliblog.com.

“I turned my computer on for the first time in February,” the rapper says. “I had never used it before. But a lot of my fan base is online. And nowadays, that’s what kids tap into.”

The blog, he adds, “allowed me to bypass all the stupid meetings I had where record executives sitting in Santa Monica are wondering how to get my music directly to my fanbase.”

Kweli performs in Cabazon tonight and will play dates in Anaheim, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara this week. His new album, “Eardrum,” reaches stores in November.