Melissa Grant of Pacific Palisades admits she...

Melissa Grant of Pacific Palisades admits she shouldn’t have tried to throw her chewing gum out the window that night on the Santa Monica Freeway. “I almost littered, and I am sorry,” she wrote.

What happened made her sorrier: A sterling silver ring flew off her finger and onto the median.

She and a girlfriend returned early the next day and began searching on foot. CHP Officers Richard Sigler and Joseph Dixon drove up, ordered them over to the right shoulder and lectured them about the dangers of walking on the freeway.

Then the officers themselves found the ring, still in the median. You’d think it would have been in the Diamond Lane.

Donald Lehti of Midtown L.A. was awakened early one morning by the disembodied voice of a car voice alarm. “STEP BACK,” the machine commanded. “YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. OTHERWISE THE ALARM WILL SOUND.”

Lehti looked out his apartment window and spotted the intruder--a cat sitting on the vehicle’s roof. The animal leaped to a nearby wall and studied the talking car. The machine said: “THANK YOU.” The cat was still staring at it when Lehti went back to bed.

Inasmuch as Bellflower has voted to become a no-smoking city, this might only rate a footnote. But that’s what Only in L.A.’s all about, isn’t it? Anyway, a joint called Father’s Office of Santa Monica will become a no-smoking bar next month.

Owner Lou Moench, who currently bans the butts on Wednesday nights, says that he’s making the prohibition full-time “because we serve pure, microbrewery-draft beers.” Needless to say, his pub’s on trendy Montana Avenue.

After purchasing a home in the Hollywood Hills last year, rock singer Axl Rose suffered a particularly severe case of buyer’s remorse, breaking several windows and shoving a piano through a wall, according to one magazine.

The outburst wasn’t enough to cause the shrub elephants in his front yard (see photo) to stampede, though.

List of the Day:

Consider the inconsistencies of geographic terms in the Southland. That’s one, right there. Why is there a Southland but no Northland or Eastland? Some other places that don’t rate capital letters:

1--There’s a West L.A., East L.A. and South L.A, but no North L.A.

2--West Hollywood and North Hollywood are entities, but not South Hollywood. (We’re not even going to mention the tiny community of Hollywood Riviera in Redondo Beach.)

3--South Pasadena’s a city, but not so South Covina.

4--West Covina’s a city, but not so West Pasadena.

5--And we’re still waiting for a North Coast Plaza shopping center.

Easterners suspect that most major events in Angelenos’ lives occur on freeways. Absolutely untrue. Then again . . . a driver seen on the Pasadena Freeway has a message framing his BB MD2B license plate that is directed at very pregnant women. The message says:

“Breathe, push it out. Push that baby out!!”

miscelLAny:

Celebrity animals buried in the Save Our Pets’ History in Eternity Memorial Park in Calabasas include Rudolf Valentino’s dog Kabar, Charlie Chaplin’s cat Boots, Humphrey Bogart’s dog Droopy, Hopalong Cassidy’s horse Topper, and Mae West’s monkey, whose name seems lost to history.