Steve Harvey will be on vacation until...

Steve Harvey will be on vacation until Tuesday. While he’s gone, this space will be filled with excerpts from his book “The Best of Only in L.A.,” just published by the L.A. Times Syndicate. Here are some items from the “Driving” chapter.

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MAMA MIA! The gray-haired man was grimly hunched over the wheel as he puttered along at 35 mph in 65 mph traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. A woman sat next to him. In the back window a sign begged for understanding: “Italy. We are tourists. Sorry!!!”

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THE DEVIL, HE SAID: Police arrested a man dressed as the devil and brandishing a 6-foot-long pitchfork at passing cars on the Santa Monica Freeway. He turned out to be an actor in a UCLA student film.

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PARKING TICKETS ANONYMOUS: Andrew Burg finally figured out why he was receiving parking tickets from California cities he hadn’t visited. It was all because the license plate on his Honda said: MISSING.

In each case, a police officer ticketing a motorist for driving without plates had written “Missing” in the space provided for the plate number.

A computer dutifully matched each ticket with Burg’s personalized plate.

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PARKING TICKETS ANONYMOUS, PART II: Another motorist, Robert Barbour, said he felt somewhat responsible for Burg’s dilemma. His vanity plate read NO PLATE. He had been getting tickets from cities where officers had written “No Plate” on citations for plateless cars. The DMV then stepped in to help.

Said Barbour: “They told me that they had advised officers to either write down the car’s identification number or the word MISSING.”

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FREEWAY PRISONER: A Northridge woman was locked in a traffic jam on the Golden State Freeway when she heard disc jockey Charlie Tuna declare her the winner of a drawing for several hundred dollars worth of stereo equipment.

All she had to do to claim her prize was phone the station within 30 minutes. Alas, she couldn’t get off the freeway in time.

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CONFERENCE CALL: Former Councilwoman Joy Picus, stalled in traffic on the Hollywood Freeway, was asked by a motorist in the next lane: “Would you mind calling my office and telling them I’m going to be late for the deposition?” Picus cheerfully obliged.

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HE CLAIMED HE WAS PART OF THE ACT: A motorist was arrested in L.A. after his car plowed through two doors and a wall and entered . . . the Total Experience nightclub.

miscelLAny:

The car on the Santa Monica Freeway carried a vanity plate that said: DEB’N’ART. On the plate frame was this rhyming update. “Are Now Apart.” Deb appeared to have won custody of the automobile.