It’s probably too late to send Los...

It’s probably too late to send Los Angeles’ 500 meter maids (and meter misters) to penmanship classes. But they do need help. About 50,000 parking tickets were dismissed last year because of the curbside cops’ illegible handwriting.

So, the city Department of Transportation is considering impounding their pens and giving them hand-held computers instead. The agency has asked the City Council to authorize a study of the feasibility of punching violations into the battery-operated machines, which would spit out the tickets.

The computers could also determine whether the owner of a ticketed car is a scofflaw. There are about 140,000 unpaid tickets at present (or 139,999, if you finally paid yours ). A BMW owner in the Wilshire District is the city champ with 86 unpaids.

City Parking Administrator Robert Yates points out that his officers expect to write an all-time high 4 million tickets this year and that considerable money could be saved if the handwriting problem is eliminated.

Now, if the computer batteries don’t go dead from all the work. . . .

The party was over for the Mets by the second inning Wednesday night when they trailed the Dodgers, 6-0. The party was over for Dodger Stadium beer-drinkers soon afterward, too.

Beer sales were cut off during the fourth inning to cut down on the partying. In a field-level section where Frank Sinatra sometimes sits, one thirsty fan went up to a closed stand and said, “Let me have two beers. . . . It’s for Frank!” No soap.

However, Dodger concessionaire Tom Arthur said that during the World Series the Dodgers plan to return to the customary policy of serving through the seventh inning.

Wednesday’s game was a special case, he said: “There were some fans there who weren’t for the Dodgers, and we were afraid they might cause a problem.”

You know how that translates:

NEW YORKERS ON THE RAMPAGE!

Now, don’t get overwrought but . . . a new survey ranks Los Angeles-Long Beach as the 10th most stressful area in the nation. Reno is No. 1. State College, Pa., is rated the most relaxing.

Suicide, divorce and crime (if not the numbers of neon signs) were used as the indicators, says the survey author, Richard Levine of Cal State Fresno.

Ah, Fresno. That’s the city, you may recall, that gained fame a few years ago when it was ranked as the 277th and worst metropolis in another study. Is Fresno trying to beat up on other burgs now?

N ext on Oprah Winfrey: Guests Who Lie to Me About Their Businesses!

It was rerun time Thursday in Courtroom 4 of the federal building: A 2-year-old

segment of the Winfrey show was shown, featuring “some of the hottest young entrepreneurs in the country.”

The star was Barry Minkow, then 20, now on trial on 57 counts of bank fraud and other charges in connection with his Reseda-based carpet-cleaning company.

“I could sell frozen yogurt in a snowstorm,” the court heard Minkow boast. Winfrey added: “In the 11th grade, this whiz kid was making more than his school principal.”

Actually, both sides now agree that 90% of his ZZZZ Best company’s purported sales were faked. (The difference is that Minkow says the mob made him do it.)

But there was no such hint of his problems on the rerun.

When closet-designing czar Neil Balter tried to get in a few words, Minkow interjected: “Excuse me, Neil. Your sales are $17 million; mine are 50 (million). End of story.”

Not quite.

As a part-time screenwriter, Al Martinez knows how tough it is to fight for credits on one’s work. But he never thought he’d see his name left off his new column in the Metro section, as it was Thursday. It was an oversight, his editors say.

Martinez vows that his name will be on the column Saturday. He says: “This is not a new game, like ‘Tanglecolumns: Guess who wrote this column?’ ”