Police Get a Call After a Customer Gets Snippy in a Mission Viejo Salon

The Saddleback Valley News reported that an employee of a Mission Viejo salon “called police to report an irate customer who was upset with her son’s haircut and started throwing the stylist’s combs and scissors.” Sounds like shear madness.

Unclear on the concept: In Sherman Oaks, Michael Conley spotted a store that has a maximum price on items and won’t charge more than that price -- except in those cases where it charges more than that price (see photo).

It’s a rush-rush world: Suzanne French of Redondo Beach noticed a listing for a pharmacist who must be in a hurry (see accompanying).

One-stop shopping: In La Puente, Donald Bentley came upon an area that would be ideal for fans of sweets (see photo).

Speaking of dental health: It’s bad enough that everywhere you shop the cashier is under orders to try to make a deal with you.

Would you like a bookstore discount card? A grocery store discount card?

How about the super-size special at a fast-food stand? Or a second set of prints at the photo shop?

But I always thought I was safe at a movie theater until I was asked the other day by the teenage counter person at the snack stand: “Would you like the Skittles Combo?”

I’m not sure how many 57-year-olds buy large bags of candy, but I wasn’t one of them. Besides, at my age, I can’t even bring myself to say “Skittles” or “Twix” or “Jujubes” in the presence of other adults.

Are Jujubes still around?

L.A. underground: Once I got past the snack stand, I saw “The Italian Job,” the first caper movie, I believe, ever to offer chase scenes through both the Venice (Italy) canals and the L.A. River. Let me say that the cement banks of the L.A. River never looked lovelier.

In addition, “The Italian Job” and another recent film, “S.W.A.T.,” both have shootouts in L.A.’s Red Line subway tunnels.

They join a roster of Metro Rail nail-biters including “Speed” (where a Red Line car bursts onto Hollywood Boulevard) and “Volcano” (where the subway has a hot time on the old town, to put it mildly).

And then there was “Independence Day,” where a survivor of an aerial attack by flying saucers in the Civic Center remarks, “Today was the first day I used the subway. Thank God for the Metro Rail.”

miscelLAny: Incidentally, a current gubernatorial candidate receives a bit of exposure in “Volcano.” When the lava begins to spread across Los Angeles, a billboard of Angelyne loses its head. A fitting symbol for the recall election?

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.