<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Lungren Scores Zip With His Stand on Video Games

Law-and-order guys like Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren are proud of having guts--and there his were, spilling gruesomely across a page of VideoGames magazine, whose February issue expressed its opinion of Lungren’s campaign against violent and graphic video games by illustrating its open letter with a video image of Lungren, decapitated and fileted.

From Lungren’s response (after finding out about the article from his 10-year-old nephew): “Why not explore new ways to challenge, educate and entertain our youth rather than resorting to the cheap, mindless, misleading and dangerous thrill of video game violence.”

Editor in Chief Chris Gore wrote: “It’s a foregone conclusion that in 30 or 40 years there will be someone in the White House who played video games. Hopefully, he or she will have honed his or her problem-solving skills from those challenging games.”

Fast-forward to the Nobel Peace Prize awards, 2028, and a grateful, humble President of the United States: “Everything I am, I owe to ‘Samurai Shodown.’ ”

California’s Mayberry RFDs

Amid urban fears of high crime, the 10 counties listed below recorded the state’s lowest violent crime figures in 1992 (the latest year for which figures are available). Believe it or not, five of these counties had no murders that year:

COUNTY *VIOLENT CRIMES Alpine **7 Sierra **7 Trinity **26 Amador 42 Modoc 50

COUNTY *VIOLENT CRIMES Plumas 59 Inyo **66 Mono 70 Glenn **76 Lassen 96

*Murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

**No murders in 1992. Also in this category were Mariposa, Mono and San Benito counties.

Source: State Department of Justice

Compiled by Times researcher TRACY THOMAS

Zs update: That Davis woman accused of unlawful snoring by a REM-less neighbor is evidently off the hook. A chagrined City Council ruled that snoring is not a willful violation of an ordinance that had in mind the suppression of raucous fraternity parties.

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“You really like me!” California Journal’s biennial awards now have a name--the Minnies, for Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom on the state seal.

Only 17% of 1,779 questionnaires were completed by selected Capitol reporters, lobbyists, staffers and legislators, rating the solons by intelligence, integrity, effectiveness, potential, energy, problem-solving and overall qualities.

The publication admits right off that it’s non-scientific, which is small consolation to last-place finishers Sen. Milton Marks (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Willard H. Murray Jr. (D-Paramount).

Back-to-back 1992 and 1993 sweepstakes winners: Democrats Phillip Isenberg, the Sacramento assemblyman, and Sen. Pat Johnston of Stockton. Top-rated Republicans, both in fourth-place: Assembly leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga and Sen. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach. Bergeson was also the Senate’s highest-rated woman; in the Assembly, Jackie Speier of Burlingame made that cut.

Of note: Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown ranked high in everything but integrity, where he came in 74th, two ahead of recent felon Pat Nolan. And gubernatorial Democratic candidate Sen. Tom “No Retreat, No Surrender” Hayden ranked next to last in effectiveness.

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One is not enough: Until they absolutely, positively have to choose on the Ides of March minus four, several officeholders are in the running for at least two offices at once.

Democratic Sen. David Roberti, facing a recall election April 12, is considering the state treasurer’s job and District 4 of the State Board of Equalization. Ditto Democrat Gwen Moore for her own Los Angeles Assembly seat and secretary of state. Republican Dean Andal has a foot in his own Assembly race in Stockton and in Board of Equalization District 2.

Most spectacularly, Board of Equalization Chairman Brad Sherman, whose old district, like Gaul, was divided into three new ones, has declared his intentions in all three (one of them the same one Roberti has since cast his eyes upon) and for the state controller’s job.

“I felt I provided the political world with enough entertainment (opposing) the snack tax a few years ago and haven’t done so since then,” Sherman says, “so I thought filing for a record number of offices would do the trick.”

All four will have until 5 p.m. on March 11 to weigh the odds and the opposition and then . . . take a Sherman on all but one campaign.

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Sweet Sue: Yet another memorably acronymed group: CALA, Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, hopes to educate people to what people probably already suspect, that “lawsuit abuse costs us jobs, raises the price of products and services like health care, and discourages companies from developing new products,” says CALA Chairman Bill Bloomfield, who is not an attorney.

Coincidence? CALA made its debut a mere fortnight after Los Angeles radio station KBIG settled a lawsuit by entertainer Barry Manilow, who took exception to the station’s using his name without authorization in a “falsely disparaging” ad pointing out that KBIG does not play Manilow songs. Are you paying attention, Murphy Brown?

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Tick tick tick: California Journal’s 1994 directory of the state’s elected officials has the usual smiling pictures . . . and the date when term limits says each of them has to get out of town.

EXIT LINE

“What they did has a long chemical name, but having it is not against the law.”

--Jim Webster, attorney for a Northern California couple accused of possessing a hallucinogenic venom milked from the backs of desert toads.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.