MILITARY COUP: Talk about weird traffic stops....

MILITARY COUP: Talk about weird traffic stops. . . . Glendale police on Wednesday arrested a man driving a military vehicle allegedly stolen from the local National Guard Armory. When police asked where he got the jeep, driver Ener Henson reportedly replied: “President Clinton gave it to me.” (B4).

ACADEMY KUDOS: And the winners are . . . Valley companies, who received nine of the 25 scientific and technical achievement awards given this week by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Stephen Goldsmith of Avid Technologies in Burbank, which worked on “True Lies,” says the Valley “doesn’t have the name of Hollywood, but it’s always been the bread-and-butter area for the technology.”

ELECTION ‘96: Jack Herer (above) is an optimistic kind of guy. . . . The founder of the California Hemp Initiative in Sherman Oaks will try again to collect 389,000 signatures for a 1996 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. It is Herer’s fifth attempt, but he is not discouraged. He said it took Prop. 13 author Howard Jarvis numerous tries before he succeeded.

RHINO FLAP: L.A. City Councilman Joel Wachs is taking aim at Black Rhino bullets. . . . Wachs has called for a citywide ban on the rounds, which can reportedly pierce bulletproof vests worn by police. Recent uproar over the bullets forced the Alabama manufacturer to delay production of the bullet. But Tim Barker of B & B Sales, a North Hollywood gunsmith, says there’s a better deterrent: “The stuff doesn’t work.”

STARSTRUCK: Israel Bick can’t wait to get his hands on Marilyn Monroe. . . . The sultry star, who once attended Van Nuys High School, will be unveiled today as the latest Hollywood legend to grace a first-class U. S. postage stamp. Bick, who runs the International Stamp Collectors Society in Van Nuys, says screen stars are the future stamp trend--to a point: “I can’t imagine that anybody from X-rated films might make it.”