BETTER SAILING? When the Los Angeles Clippers...

BETTER SAILING? When the Los Angeles Clippers played an exhibition game at the Anaheim Arena Saturday night, you would have thought it was before hometown fans. . . . Nearly 17,000 paid up to $49.50 to watch them beat the Golden State Warriors. The next night, back home at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, the Clippers barely drew 10,000, at $5 per ticket. . . . Anaheim officials long to lure the Clippers to move, of course. Says Arena spokesman John Nicoletti: “I think Orange County proved itself, that it can support an NBA team.”

OLYMPIC TASTES: For years, Bill Barber was a chef at some of the county’s nicer dining rooms--Pirets, Bubbles Balboa Club. But it wasn’t until he took over culinary classes at Orange Coast College three years ago that he had the time to delve into the art of cooking in detail. “When you’re teaching, you’re learning too,” he says. . . . It’s paid off for him. Barber has been named to California’s team of chefs for the 1996 International Culinary Olympics, in Frankfurt, Germany. Says Barber: “I hope to pass on a lot to my students.”

STAR RATS: There are five UC Irvine-related rats now flying around the world in space aboard the shuttle Columbia (A4). The white rodents were launched Monday from Cape Canaveral--part of elaborate testing for the effects of weightlessness. No Mickey or Minnie among them. UCI researchers Kenneth Baldwin and Vincent Caiozzo designed muscle tests for the rats but gave no names to the animals. Says Baldwin: “We just gave them numbers; we don’t get personal.”