A different type of court interpreter: Ever...

A different type of court interpreter: Ever since two witnesses described a white Akita that led them to the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, the district attorney’s office has been deluged with calls about the animal.

Some callers wanted to know if the dog--which was apparently Nicole Simpson’s--”could be called as a witness so it could pick out the killer” in the O.J. Simpson case, spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said. “That makes for great TV, but you can’t do that in court.”

Gibbons said one caller suggested a translator of sorts--”an expert who knew how to talk to dogs.”

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We can hear that spooky music in the background: While a “Twilight Zone” marathon was playing on Channel 5, Bill Cohen of West Covina drove past the Sterling Bank in Encino. “The letter ‘t’ had burned out of the large sign on top of the building,” Cohen reports, “so it said ‘Serling’--as in Rod.”

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Speaking of spooky: Dawna Kaufmann of L.A. was tuned in to HBO, watching “Jagged Edge,” a courtroom movie “about a wealthy man (Jeff Bridges) accused of slashing his beautiful wife and another person to death with a hunting knife.” Although she wouldn’t rate it “a great film, I found it interesting that the murders in the movie occurred on June 12, the same day as the Simpson/Goldman killings.”

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Computer hooters: “Quite a stunt--even for Hollywood,” says Charles Johnson, who found a not-so-personalized pitch in his P.O. box in Tinseltown (see excerpt).

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View from the street: Lars Eighner’s book “Travels With Lizbeth” is a touching and frequently humorous account of three years of homelessness, including one hitchhiking trip he and his dog made from Austin, Tex., to L.A.

Some of his impressions of the Southland:

* “I expected to find cultural differences in Southern California and among the first I detected was . . . the practice of passing on the right by jumping the curb and driving on the sidewalks. This was impossible in Texas, where the blocks were short and the sidewalks narrow.”

* While Eighner and Lizbeth were hitchhiking in Hollywood, “a prostitute came along, tears streaking her makeup and forced $2 on me. She said her little dog had been lost or stolen and she wanted me to buy Lizbeth something to eat.”

* “I explained (to a driver who had picked him up) that I was planning to camp in the national forest while I wrote a script for an adult video. This my driver took in stride. To write adult videos in Southern California is rather analogous to being a bankruptcy lawyer in Austin or an undertaker elsewhere. It was an essential line of work, even if not everyone would desire it as an occupation.”

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Ask anyone in Northridge: Scott Meselson wonders if the long arm of Mother Nature was responsible for a tiny mishap in a Lexus factory in Japan several months ago. A Newsweek ad shows a photo of a Lexus, with a piece of stripping that was found to be .004 inches too wide “during inspection No. 756.” The company adds, in a superior tone, that “the remaining 1,062 inspections went flawlessly.”

But, back to that flaw. It was “found on Jan. 17.”

miscelLAny:

Forget about wasting money on vacation togs! The current Journal of the Senses, the publication of the Elysium Institute nudist colony in Topanga, contains a list of “Nude Bed & Breakfast Inns” in Southern California and beyond.