For Wilmington students, a firsthand lesson in moonwalking.

REAL THRILLER: Twenty-four students from the Hawaiian Avenue School in Wilmington will join a supporting cast of thousands onstage with pop star Michael Jackson during today’s Super Bowl halftime performance.

The students, members of the after-school program called LA’s BEST, will be among 3,500 participants who--halftime officials point out--really, truly get to be onstage at the same time as The Gloved One.

Created in 1988, LA’s BEST program provides free after-school educational and recreational activities to 3,800 elementary students at 19 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The event will be the largest halftime show in the history of the Super Bowl. And proceeds from the show will benefit Jackson’s Heal the World Foundation established last year to . . . well, heal the world.

And who knows, it might work. Being in the same stadium as Michael Jackson, breathing the same air, it just might bring us all one step closer to universal understanding.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: The Planning Commission tried to stop it. City staff members weren’t pleased. But a bank in Rolling Hills Estates will nevertheless be allowed to add three Chinese characters to its business sign, now that it has won the City Council’s approval.

Planning commissioners had voted against allowing the change at the East-West Federal Bank’s Peninsula Center branch, despite an explanation from manager Phoebe Yu that many of the bank’s customers do not read or speak English.

The Planning Commission ruled that since no other businesses in the upscale shopping center had a bilingual sign, the Chinese lettering would be incompatible with the area. But bank officials appealed the decision to the City Council, warning that a denial could violate the bank’s First Amendment free speech protections.

City staff recommended the council stick with the commission’s decision and gave council members copies of a letter from a local couple opposed to “conspicuous foreign language signs” because most residents can’t read “these Oriental languages.”

Council members who voted Tuesday to allow the lettering ignored the complaint but set one condition on the Chinese characters: They must be displayed horizontally across the top of the sign, not vertically as is traditional.

HARBOR PLUG: It’s beginning to look a lot like Election Time.

Last week, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores shed her often combative attitude about the Harbor Department and stood alone among her colleagues in voting against a transfer of $44 million in port revenues to the city’s financially troubled treasury.

Flores, who is seeking a fourth term in office, took the floor and argued briefly but fiercely that the transfer would imperil the stability of the nation’s busiest commercial port.

“Only through promoting commerce and making it welcome in the city of Los Angeles can we hope to stimulate the economy . . . and provide those jobs that are so badly needed,” Flores told colleagues. “When we deprive the Harbor Department of those necessary funds to develop commerce, we undermine the very industry that’s going to help us solve our economic problems in the city.”

Despite Flores’ plea, the council voted for the transfer.

No matter. Flores, a frequent critic of the port, seemed certain to win points both with the port’s tenants and with Harbor-area voters interested in local jobs.

Said one longtime City Hall official and Flores ally after her speech: “Hey. She’s running for reelection.”

AND IN THIS CORNER: Speaking of the port and Flores’ City Council seat, don’t forget Warren Furutani, a Los Angeles School Board member and a candidate for Flores’ 15th District seat. There he was last week, facing off with a bevy of news cameras and reporters, waving a .38-caliber handgun and calling on fellow citizens to turn in their weapons.

The occasion was a news conference by Furutani to call on school district and Los Angeles Police Department officials to find ways to beef up security at city schools in the wake of the recent fatal shooting of a student at Fairfax High School.

But the event, at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, quickly took on the flavor of a sideshow, as Furutani dramatically pulled from a leather case an unloaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun, held it aloft while the cameras rolled, then handed it over to a school district police officer to be given to the LAPD.

“We need to challenge the adults of our community to get rid of handguns,” he told the assembled reporters, some of them barely stifling smiles. Furutani said he has owned the $400 pistol for 20 years. “But when I found out that the young man who had the gun at Fairfax High School took it from his home (where) it was owned by his grandfather, that sort of clicked it for me,” he said.

Furutani denied that his news conference was related to his council candidacy. Still, he said he does plan to make issues related to children one of the cornerstones of his campaign.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I’m not ready to divulge that yet.”

--Inglewood City Council candidate Barbara Anne Seymore when a reporter asked her how old she is.

THIS WEEK’S CITY HALL HIGHLIGHTS

Carson: The City Council will review the wording it had approved for the June ballot asking voters if the city should form its own school district. The change could spell the end of the ballot question since the city already is studying secession from the Los Angeles school system.

LAST WEEK’S CITY HALL HIGHLIGHTS

Torrance: The City Council has tentatively approved hiring a Sacramento lobbying firm, Joe A. Gonsalves & Son, to represent the city on state legislative matters. Gonsalves & Son would be paid $2,500 a month to keep the city abreast of issues, including state budget deliberations, that could affect Torrance and other municipalities. The firm assumes responsibilities that were formerly handled by Treasurer Thomas C. Rupert.

Redondo Beach: Southern California Edison agreed this week to spend $5.5 million to develop a marine education center to teach inner-city youths about the environment. The center is part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by an environmental group that charged Edison with damaging wetlands near its San Onofre nuclear power plant.