The Naked Truth About Windshield Washer Tale

One of the latest hoaxes unearthed by the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society (snopes.com) is an e-mail that warns of an unusual street hazard.

“What happens is that when you stop for a red light, a young nude woman comes up and pretends to be washing your windshield,” the e-mail said.

“While she is doing this, another person opens your back door and steals anything in the car.”

The society’s Barbara Mikkelson points out that if anyone took the first part of the message seriously, its tagline should relieve all fears.

The car-washing conspirators “are very good at this,” the e-mail goes on to say. “They got me 7 times Friday and 5 times Saturday. I wasn’t able to find them on Sunday.”

Red-light washes (cont.): By coincidence, the last person who tried to clean my windshield at an intersection -- the corner of 4th and Los Angeles streets -- was topless. But it was a guy. A not-so sober guy.

Thirty days hath what? Billy Weber sent me a shot of a street construction sign in Silver Lake that speaks of a record leap year next February.

Nothing out of the ordinary there. Highway crews in this area seem to be in their own time zone, judging from photos that readers have sent me over the years.

June (Robin Swartz discovered) and September have had 31 days. And July, Ken Brock once found, had 32 days, starting with July the 0.

Dog daze: A new “Lassie” move has been released, and I’m reminded of an anecdote I just read in “Remember to Laugh,” a memoir by ex-Times staffer Maggie Kilgore.

It seems there was an opening for a forest ranger in the “Lassie” TV series of the 1950s, but a special type of acting was required for that show.

“If Lassie didn’t like the person, the cast member was dropped from the show,” Kilgore was told by series co-star June Lockhart.

And Lassie was in reality a male.

So a desperate out-of-work actor borrowed a friend’s female dog who was in heat and played with the animal all afternoon.

“He had her dog hair all over his clothes,” Kilgore said.

Then he went for his audition.

“Lassie went crazy ... couldn’t stay away from the actor,” she wrote.

“The fellow got the job.”

miscelLAny: I caught the new movie “Crank,” about a poisoned man who is searching for an antidote and can stay alive only by racing through the streets. It’s set in L.A. You guessed it: He stays off the freeways.

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