GETTING BOOSTED: Despite all the hoopla surrounding...

GETTING BOOSTED: Despite all the hoopla surrounding the Mighty Ducks’ first two seasons in the National Hockey League, Disney owners weren’t able to put together a successful fan booster club. Now it’s been reactivated. . . . This time Disney won’t run it, but instead has turned it over to a group of fans. . . . Its recent letter to initial members began: “We applaud you for your patience.” . . . Its constitutional purpose: “To support and promote the Mighty Ducks.”

NO MORE BEACH BOYS: When J. Craig Venter was 17 in the ‘60s, says People magazine, he lived in Newport Beach, worked as a Sears clerk and “surfed and soaked up the Beach Boy Zeitgeist by day.” Venter’s beach days are long gone. . . . The magazine recently featured him as one of the country’s leading scientists in DNA research. He left Newport Beach for the Navy, Venter says, thinking he’d wind up on the swim team, but “when Lyndon Jonson escalated the war, it had a slight impact on my plans.”

FOR DAD: It will be special for businessman Ching-chih Wong of Irvine to get his doctorate degree today--on Father’s Day--from UCLA. Wong, 62, the oldest male in the ceremonies, says his one regret is that his father, also a Ph.D., died before Wong could complete the work. Wong says he’ll visit the cemetery after the ceremony. . . . With his doctorate, Wong says, “I start a new phase of life”--moving to Hong Kong to teach Chinese history and philosophy.

LOYAL SONS: For a showing of Laurel and Hardy’s “The Sons of the Desert” at the Los Angeles Theatre on Wednesday, Orange County members of the L&H; fan club will join other Sons in wearing red fezzes. But member Randy Skretvedt of Buena Park will do them one better: He’ll be wearing a fez actually worn in the comedy duo’s 1933 film. A friend bought it from Western Costume a decade ago for $85. “There were a half dozen of them sitting in the corner,” says Skretvedt. They now sell for $500.