The L.A. City Council is always the...

The L.A. City Council is always the last to know: Item No. 13 on Friday’s Council agenda is a recommendation to “receive and file� a motion to have “Police Chief Daryl Gates announce a definite retirement date of April, 1992. . . .�

In other words, clear it from the books.

After all, Gates has made it clear he’ll retire when he’s ready, no matter what Mayor Bradley says.

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No hurry: The council’s decisive action in the Gates case is not unusual--for the council. In 1991, a Times study found that 1,200 of that august body’s motions were pending, dozens more than a decade old. Many had been made by three council members who had since died. Any day now we expect action on the late John Gibson’s 1975 motion to have the city Board of Public Works abolished.

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Thought for the day: While organizing an archives for the Auto Club of Southern California, Jeffrey Wilensky came upon this appeal to motorists in the organization’s 1905 booklet, “Automobile Law of California�:

“It is your duty to be kind and considerate and to display the characteristics of a gentleman, no matter what the other fellow is or does.�

Got that, guys?

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Recognition for Only in L.A.: A few weeks ago, we published an item about a teen-ager who bought a blouse and noticed that the washing instructions said:

“Hand wash cold. No chlorine. Bleach. Dry flat. Use a condom.�

Well, we were delighted to learn the item has been reprinted by another publication--Western Cleaner and Launderer.

Not that it was a cover story. It ran on page 46.

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Don’t forget to wear your galoshes: Don Fawcett of Brentwood wonders whether any unsuspecting tourists will attempt a Westside publication’s idea for a different kind of getaway trip.

Great turning points: Rollen Frederick Stewart, the religious zealot sentenced to three concurrent life prison terms for holding a hotel maid hostage and making terrorist threats, often appeared at sporting events with a multicolored wig and a sign that said: “John 3:16.�

But in the 1970s, he displayed no religious messages. In those days, he merely sought to use his headdress to catch the attention of TV cameras at championship games. For him, everything changed a few days before the 1981 Super Bowl game at the Rose Bowl.

As he later told reporters: “I discovered God in Pasadena. He was in my hotel room.�

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And he can do it all without cue cards: Malibu Comics has designed a comic-strip hero named Tom Hawke, “an actor who suddenly found himself capable of much more than role-playing before the camera� and, so, began a “fight for justice.� Malibu Comics describes Hawke as “handsome, superhumanly strong, and nearly invulnerable to injury . . . “ So strong he can even read a bad review without breaking down.

miscelLAny:

John Gregory of Pasadena has begun a monthly newsletter ($95 per year) called the Anti-Graffiti News, which features stories from around the nation on legal and technological means of dealing with the problem.