Snapshots of life in the Golden State. : Looking for Immortality at Arizona Convergence

Neighbors out of town this weekend? Maybe they’re on vacation . . . and maybe they’re off in search of immortality. As many as 200 Californians make up one of the biggest contingents of People Forever International, which is convening in Scottsdale, Ariz., this weekend for the International Physical Immortality Convergence. Formerly the Eternal Flame Foundation, the group “doesn’t accept the inevitability of death,” says a spokesman, holding rather that a fully conscious brain-state can stimulate in each individually intelligent cell a perpetual “cellular regeneration.”

What can these people be thinking of? Living forever? Do they know how many presidential campaigns they’d have to sit through?

On the other hand, think of the equity they could build.

Watermelon Time

California was second only to Florida in watermelon production last year, growing 735 million pounds of the sweet summertime fruit. Texas watermelons, however, fetched more pennies per pound at the shipping point than did California’s. Here are the top five watermelon-producing states ranked by millions of pounds grown last year, along with the price per pound.

MILLIONS CENTS PER STATE OF POUNDS POUND 1. Florida 832.5 8 2. California 735 7.8 3. Texas 504 8.4 4. Georgia 420 4.5 5. Arizona 201.5 7.3

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture

Research by TRACY THOMAS

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Coin age: Campus police netted more scofflaws than they had expected from video cameras set up to catch the thief who had been plundering the vending machines at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

The video did help them to arrest a man who later rescued his truck from impound by paying most of the fine with 924 quarters.

But the bonanza was the unmistakable images of 16 Cal Poly students who found the door of one soft drink vending machine left ajar. Within 2 1/2 minutes, they had stripped the machine dry.

Only one young woman “kept trying to shut the door and lock it . . . putting her dollar bill in” before she “gave up and left without taking anything,” said investigator Ray Berrett. “We haven’t been able to ID the one good Samaritan there.”

The Soft Drink 16, however, have all been identified, by themselves or others.

The vending machine is in the business administration building. The class was a final exam. The students were business students.

Maybe they didn’t know the snack tax has been repealed.

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Water works: If you think some of those sleek new CHP cars are sneaky, watch your speedometer on Bullards Bar Reservoir in Yuba County, where the fuzz have taken to the foam on Wave Runners.

Manufacturers of so-called “personal watercraft” have begun lending machines to the deputies. A small white-and-purple Water Runner marked simply “Sheriff”--no lights or sirens--still has an element of surprise: Deputy Ray Kodani says the usual scofflaw response is: “When did you get those?”

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Word perfect: The Bear Valley Voice has taken the role of the press-as-watchdog one step further, chastising local officials for polluting public meetings with inept-speak. The paper rolled its eyes editorially at a politician who employed the word “fortuitous”--meaning by chance--instead of “fortunate,” and it faulted the same man for being enamored of using the phrase “enamored to” instead of “enamored of.”

The local tourist trade has generated official references to “visitation,” the paper says, which means an infestation, as of rats, or, religiously speaking, a miraculous apparition. What “visitation” does not refer to is out-of-towners in thongs and T-shirts, however much they may seem to overrun the restaurants.

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Don’t shoot, we’re Democrats: Wilson campaign cameramen who showed up to videotape Kathleen Brown newsconferences about Pete Wilson’s parole policies ended up dancing a little sidewalk minuet with the Brown campaign folk.

Cameramen found themselves outflanked by Brown people blocking the shots, using their signs and themselves.

The shooters were “totally up front” about who hired them, says Wilson spokesman Dan Schnur. And each time the cameramen moved to a new position, Brownfolk moved in front of it.

“You hold a press conference on a public sidewalk with a candidate for public office, and you’d think that means it’s public,” says Schnur.

Public or no, counters Brown spokesman John Whitehurst, “we refuse to be a stage for their negative commercials,” characterizing the videotaping as “Nixonian.”

“If it’s within their purview for them to tape press conferences for the purposes of making negative commercials, certainly we’re within our rights to stand there (in front of them) with signs.”

Finally, in Clovis, the treasurer herself interrupted the Alphonse-Gaston struggle and said, “Go ahead, let them shoot.”

Not until we can see the whites of their eyes.

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Your Pentagon at work: A congressional newsletter mailed to Inland Empire-builders in the 40th Congressional District included an item about the ongoing “What do we do with our leftover military bases?” debate. Its headline began: “Temporary Army Airhead at George AFB . . . “ This came as no surprise to constituent Andi Marshall. “After all, my congressman is Jerry Lewis.”

EXIT LINE

“If I could get the attention of the world for one minute, I guess what I’d tell people is to be gentle in the manner in which they deal with reptiles in general and snakes specifically.”

--Big dreamer and herpetophile Donn Moyer, who operated a snake-themed sideshow at Solano County Fair, quoted in Contra Costa Times.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.