Dog Owner Bugs Out Over Infestation

Marilyn Stein of Pacific Palisades was in a local veterinary clinic when a tall, elegantly dressed woman burst in. “My dog has fleas!” the woman exclaimed. “My house has fleas! What can I do?” The receptionist calmly told her to bring her dog in for a bath.

“But what about my house?” the woman moaned. “I was on my yoga mat, and a flea jumped on me!”

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Palisades’ problems (cont.): “Your Two Cents Worth,” a column that appears in the Palisadian-Post, is a weekly collection of anonymous comments from readers, many of them enumerating pet peeves about the Westside community.

One of the latest targets of criticism is an allegedly noisy carwash. There’s talk of organizing a committee to discuss what to do about it.

However, the business did have a defender in a woman who wrote: “When my son was a baby, the only thing that would stop him from crying and put him to sleep was a stroll past the carwash. Please don’t make it quieter or I can’t have another child.”

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Speaking of carwashes: Nine-year-old Erin Cavanaugh of Costa Mesa found one such business whose sign seemed to refer to unique money-laundering possibilities (see photo).

Downright spacey: While I was away, Nat Read, Nick Steers and Roger Vaughn were among several readers who wrote to point out that the 99 Cents Only chain seemed to have confused this year’s Tour de France with the 1969 Tour de Moon (see accompanying). And, yes, here on Earth, Lance Armstrong has won his specialty six (not nine) times.

Talk about a scary ride: Gerry Abbott of Hawthorne noticed that a shuttle business seemed to be looking for drivers with less-than-spotless records (see accompanying).

Still on the police beat: “Only in low-crime, wealthy Palos Verdes would this make the police blotter,” wrote Beverly Antel of Torrance.

She enclosed a local item about an individual who “wrote a check to the store on an account with insufficient funds.” The SWAT team was not called to the scene.

Unclear on the concept: Jerry Clark recently spotted this in the Glendale News-Press: “A 61-year-old transient man and a 34-year-old Glendale man were arrested Monday on suspicion of drinking from open beer bottles in front of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting hall.”

miscelLAny: The Dodgers’ announcement that free lunch boxes would be given away to kids 14 and under at the team’s game this Sunday brought a groan from the 11-year-old kid in my household. “I don’t want to think about school,” he said.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800)LATimes, 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.