Root, Root, Root for the Home Team (and Ethical Treatment of Animals)

Rumor had it that among the personalized bricks purchased by folks at San Diego’s new Petco Park, one contained a subtle criticism from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

True, says snopes.com, investigator of urban myths.

PETA, which has long complained about conditions at Petco stores, first tried to display a message directly condemning the pet chain but was rebuffed. So, snopes.com said, the group reverted to an acrostic -- a message spelled out by the first letters of a series of words.

In this case it was: “Break Open Your Cold Ones! Toast The Padres!

Enjoy This Championship Organization!”

(Translation: Boycott you-know-what.)

Petco saw nothing to whimper about. A company spokesman told snopes.com, “If you walked by and read their message, you wouldn’t know it had anything to do with PETA.”

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Oldies time: “Only in Beverly Hills,” wrote Paula Van Gelder, “would you find used entertainers at a garage sale” (see accompanying).

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Speaking of recycling: There’s no typo here. Wendy Flick of Long Beach never knew that used tongue cleaners had a second life (see accompanying).

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Fessing up? Charles Vorsanger of Pasadena saw an ad for a sailplane that is apologetic about something (see accompanying). If I were the buyer, I’d want to know what.

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Unclear on the concept: I guess Starbucks makes decent coffee but I’m not sure I’d want to buy the dessert in the company ad that Mrs. Harold Moffatt of West L.A. noticed -- especially during this heat wave (see accompanying).

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Food for thought: On the eve of “10.5,” NBC’s quackish quake miniseries, Mike Roush had this to say about disasters: “During a Cold War flare-up in the early Reagan years, I had a college physics professor who said, ‘I don’t understand what all the fuss is about the nuclear issue. It’s the Chinese who have us over a barrel. If every Chinese man, woman and child were to jump from a table 47 inches high at precisely the same moment, they’d push the Earth out of its orbit.’ ”

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Mondegreen of the Day: “When I was about 4, my uncle explained to me how Beethoven was deaf when he composed his music,” recalled Stephanie Savage of Westchester, delivering today’s ode to miscommunication.

“However, I thought I heard the word ‘dead.’ I pictured Beethoven coming back to life, jotting down some notes, then dropping dead again -- over and over. Now that’s dedication to your art!”

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Cultural notes: “And speaking of Beethoven,” said Savage, “many years later, when my mother and I moved to Mar Vista, my mother told a clerk that we lived on Beethoven Street. The clerk replied, ‘Oh, you mean like the dog?’ ”

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miscelLAny: Since I threw both “acrostic” and “mondegreen” at you in the column today, I’m giving you the rest of the weekend off.

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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.