<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Still Huffing, Puffing Over His Election Loss

Mike was back, and they didn’t mean Tyson.

Republican conventioneers at Sacramento’s Hyatt Regency hotel were atwitter: Seldom Seen Since the Election Mike Huffington had called a news conference to launch a recall of his November foe, Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

But the press conference was canceled a few hours later.

Here’s why: Someone thought to ask whether Huffington was sure that a federal official can be recalled. Apparently, no one had checked that technicality before. In fact, state law has no provision for recalling either a member of the U.S. House or the Senate.

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In re Elvis: Attorney Melvin Belli was too sick to undertake the cross-examination as he had promised, but jurors in a mock hearing declared the man in question to be alive and probably living under federal protection in Hawaii or Kalamazoo, Mich.

The editor of the law review at the Monterey College of Law thought it would be a great fund-raiser and a bit of a lark, but the chairman of the Presley Commission solemnly agreed to defend his conclusion that Le Roi de Rock et Roll is still extant. Law review editor Paul Sanford invited Presley Commission Chairman Phil Aitcheson to defend his thesis in the dock against Belli. When the 80-something Belli came down with a bug, third-year law student Sanford stepped in.

Aitcheson was unshakable; Elvis was alive, but not in the audience of about 200, who each paid $10 to be there.

After about two hours of arguments, and a handwriting expert’s testimony that Elvis had signed his own death certificate, the audience voted. The verdict: 75% said Elvis is alive, 24% chose dead and 1% think O.J. Simpson is not guilty.

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Pachydermatitis: Mindful of attacks by elephants confined to spaces that would drive a cocker spaniel berserk, a certain member of the state Assembly has introduced a measure to make it illegal to chain an elephant for more than two hours at a time.

“When elephants are kept on chains for long periods of time, their behavior is radically altered and they become dangerous,” the bill says.

The kicker is that the man who sponsored it has turned his back on a different kind of elephant; Assemblyman Paul Horcher bolted the GOP and voted for Democratic Speaker Willie Brown--another at-risk species some consider a lion, others a dinosaur.

Cable Able

Palm Springs is the nation’s top cable television user, ranking first in the share of homes connected to cable. Here is a list of how some other California media markets rank nationally in cable penetration:

Market Area TV Households Penetration Rank Palm Springs 100,990 88.4% 1 Santa Barbara 211,150 83.3% 4 San Diego 915,150 79.3% 8 Monterey/Salinas 206,880 76.5% 19 Eureka 56,530 73.1% 35 Bakersfield 170,590 71.8% 43 San Francisco 2,250,600 68.0% 70 Sacramento 1,109,140 62.0% 127 Los Angeles 4,936,180 59.6% 152

Note: Areas listed include surrounding cities.

Source: Nielsen Media Research

Researched by NONA YATES/Los Angeles Times

Air fair: The all-conservative radio format was called Hot Talk, but some San Franciscans found it hot air., and said so. Six weeks into a 26-week contract, KSFO host J. Paul Emerson was canned. Calling homosexual acts “repulsive,” homosexuals “pathetic” and contending that AIDS can be spread by coughing or sneezing went over like a lead condom in a city with a large gay population and high HIV rate.

Two sponsors had already canceled in the wake of Emerson’s “ad hominem homilies,” which labeled county supervisors “stinking buttheads” and suggested shooting illegal aliens.

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Double billing: Write it off as an excess of good intentions.

With each legislator allowed to introduce only so many bills in a two-year term, two lawmakers cut into their totals by presenting the same bill twice.

“Quite honestly, it is embarrassing,” said Chris Reynolds, chief of staff for freshman Assemblyman Steven T. Kuykendall. “It’s one of those things that happens in the hectic final days.”

Los Angeles County asked Kuykendall to carry the measure to shift a portion of the pool of money for safety and boating programs to help Los Angeles maintain its deep-water rescues, and L.A., we know, is almost as broke as Barings Bank.

This gets far too technical, but in the confusion both Kuykendall’s “backed” copy and L.A. County’s “unbacked” copy were sent into the legislative hopper on the same day. (The average cost of processing a bill from gestation to birth is $13,733.)

And Sen. Raymond N. Haynes “inadvertently” introduced SB 635 and identical SB747; the latter “will not be pursued.”

(Nostalgia note: a onetime Orange County legislator was nicknamed “Chet Wray Chet” because he once delivered a speech, finished it, got back to the first page and just kept on reading.)

EXIT LINE

“No. That would be like signing an endorsement for Bill Clinton, for Christ’s sake.”

--State Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy on whether he--like eight Republican senators and a dozen Assembly members--has endorsed the presidential bid of Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.