Hi, my name is Phil and I’ll...

Hi, my name is Phil and I’ll be writing your parking ticket today: The city Transportation Department is requesting about $150,000 for a sort of charm school for its 520 parking cops.

“We want to improve the image of the traffic officer,” said city Parking Administrator Bob Yates. “It’s one of the more thankless jobs we have throughout the city.”

Yates, who receives about 12 complaints a week, said the funds would be used to improve officers’ communications skills, as well as for brochures that could be handed out to explain ticket procedures.

“Some of our own officers have asked for this,” Yates said. “People (who receive tickets) can become irate.”

The department might also hire personnel to observe parking cops, Yates said, somewhat in the manner of markets that send shills through the shopping lines to test customer service.

The charm school may never open, however. Funds have been held up in the city Transportation Committee, headed by Councilman Nate Holden, who believes that it isn’t the parking officers’ behavior that angers motorists, but the tickets themselves.

If so, there could be a lot of anger out there. L.A.’s parking cops wrote about 3.7 million tickets last year.

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Valley and the cruisers: If any residents of North Hollywood pass the accompanying sign on the way to the store, they had better return on another street--unless they spend all day shopping--or they could get into big trouble with the authorities.

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At least the place was biodegradable: Just around the corner from the Westside Pavilion, Brad Johnson noticed that a business that advertised products “that save the environment” is now an empty storefront.

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Topping the list of tonight’s fiction: In a report on the police questioning of actor James Caan about a man who fell to his death from a Westwood apartment, one local TV station showed footage of Caan with one arm in a sling and his face partially disfigured. Not that Caan had taken a fall or anything. The sensational--and irrelevant--footage was from the movie “Misery” in which Caan’s character is held hostage and beaten.

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But they did hold the anchovies: In their recently published novel, “Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of America,” authors Nan and Ivan Lyons concoct a plot in which “a famous Hollywood chef (has) his head cut off and rearranged on a pizza.” They add, if you need more details, that the chef’s noggin is “slathered with a sloppy red sauce that he’d sooner die than serve.”

miscelLAny:

Harrumph for Hollywood! Broadcasting & Cable, which had been one of the last entertainment publications with offices in Hollywood, has moved to the Miracle Mile area of Wilshire Boulevard--where both Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter also now dwell.