Here in Los Angeles, a Wanted Skyjacker Is Just One More Pop-Culture Icon

Angelenos are famous for personalizing their cars. Some motorists decorate them with simple Jack in the Box antenna balls or Laker flags, others smatter them with graffiti, and one Silver Lake resident has festooned his compact with computer keyboard buttons.

Cruising Beverly Boulevard the other night, I noticed a white Mini Cooper with a D.B. Cooper license plate and a “D.B. Cooper Lives� bumper sticker. D.B. Cooper is the mysterious skyjacker who collected $200,000 in ransom in 1971 and bailed out of a Boeing 727 somewhere over Washington and into legend.

The case, which remains unsolved, has sparked a Cooper cult following--especially on the Internet. The car could belong to a Cooper groupie or be a joke about the car’s name--but maybe, just maybe, it belongs to the real D.B. Cooper.

After all, how better to hide than in plain view?

*

Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore has been struggling to change his image from predictable and wooden to spontaneous and fun-loving. On Tuesday’s “Today Show,� he even stooped (on bended knee) to serving muffins to Judge Judy Sheindlin after she complained he was hogging the green room.

When the veep comes to L.A. for his party’s convention next month, he ought to take a lesson from his comic doppelganger in “Groundlings vs. the State of California.� Kevin Ruf does a hilarious impersonation of Gore being interviewed on TV. He improvises answers to questions from audience members, such as, “Why do you want to change the national symbol from the bald eagle to the Sasquatch?� As he explains that there are eagles in other countries but that Sasquatch is a uniquely American figure, Ruf manages to capture Gore’s painful attempt at being cool, which, unfortunately, makes him seem like an even bigger dork.

In another of the show’s political sketches, Steven Pierce is James Carville--bald head, snake eyes and all. He defends his dog Snickers to a neighbor, who’s complaining that the mutt pooped in his yard. The rhetoric builds in Carville fashion until he shrilly drawls, “Snickers’ business is America’s business!�

“Groundlings vs. the State of California� runs Fridays and Saturdays indefinitely.

*

Daily Variety reports that celebs are hoping to dispel nasty rumors and take control of their identities online through a new portal, CelebSites.com. The portal will create “official� Web sites for stars such as John Travolta and Denzel Washington, where they can control the content.

Booooring.

*

Los Angeles attorney Johnnie Cochran pokes fun at himself in two new anti-gun television spots running in Milwaukee.

“If you’ve got a prior felony conviction and get caught with a gun, not even I can get you off,� he says in an ad that hit airwaves Monday.

The commercials are part of a $1-million, two-year media campaign for Operation Ceasefire, a joint federal-local-state gun-control program. U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) recruited Cochran for the ads, according to Cochran’s publicist, Rachel Nordlinger.

The ads may air in other markets later this year. If he makes you sick, point your remote and go click.

*

Booth Moore can be reached at [email protected].