<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : L.A. County Still on Short List for Trial in Klaas Case

Sonoma County can’t have it--no impartial jurors.

Los Angeles doesn’t want it--no money.

Yet L.A. County is still on the short list to host the Polly Klaas murder trial, and the lawyer defending the man accused of abducting the 12-year-old girl from her Petaluma home says he has done some courtroom shopping--with Judge Lance A. Ito.

Barry Collins says he met with Ito in chambers, saw an empty courtroom suitable for high-profile, high-security cases, and sat in on the Simpson trial, where Collins could recall his days as an L.A. County public defender. Sonoma County prosecutors say Collins’ venue-shopping for his client, Richard Allen Davis, was out of line, and Judge Lawrence Antolini scolded Collins for bringing “the best known judge around the world” into a case that is already on publicity overload.

But Antolini didn’t take L.A. off the relocation list, which it shares with San Diego, Fresno and Santa Clara. Expect a choice next month.

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Go fish: Did the Legislature really know what it was doing when it named the Garibaldi as the official state marine fish?

To the long California mascot list that includes a state rock, a state reptile (no party affiliation) and a state fish, the addition of a state marine fish is hardly remarkable, except for its name.

To ichthyologists, a Garibaldi is a vivid golden fish, territorial and tetchy by nature. To historians, a Garibaldi is the dashing radical guerrilla leader who raised an army of “Redshirts” to liberate and unite 19th-Century Italy--and a man who had neither liking nor trust for legislative bodies, considering them inept and corrupt.

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Pantsed: Levi’s are supposed to fade--but not this fast. And advertising is intended to tempt people to buy--not to steal.

So Dockers pants ads have vanished from bus shelters in San Francisco, pulled out by the maker, Levi Strauss & Co.

The ads encased real $55 jeans in plastic with the legend, “Nice pants.” If they went missing or stolen, the outline remained, and the wistful words, “Apparently they were very nice pants.”

The device “adds to the talk value of the ads,” said Levi Strauss’ senior marketing specialist, who will probably get a bonus for the well-publicized outrage this has engendered.

For even the mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, railed that the temptation was “exactly the wrong message to be teaching to people.” But only thin people; the display pants were sizes 32 and 34.

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Inside scoop: Art and penal servitude are often solitary pursuits. This program is different: Students at Claremont’s Sycamore Elementary are collaborating at a distance with inmates at Chino Institute for Men. Pupils and prisoners design action whirligigs, the inmates make them, and the children paint them for display.

State prisoners will need another activity now that Prison Life magazine has been banned after an article about escape techniques. So here are highlights from the latest issue: a kind of welcome-wagon hot line for the newly convicted, with advice at $2.50 a minute on topics including reducing your sentence, what to bring to prison, ads on personal growth (“Don’t serve the time, let the time serve you,”) and how to have Santa send a letter to your child. Advertised in its 86 pages is a book on how to become a personal trainer after being sprung: “All that time pumping iron can finally pay off financially.”

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Gray Davis, Shadow Governor

So far this year, Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis has served 96 days as governor. Davis has been serving more often, as the tally for August shows, since Gov. Pete Wilson announced his Republican candidacy for President. *--*

MONTH SERVICE January 16 days February 8 days March 6 days April 5 days May 10 days June 10 days July 5 days August 22 days September 14 days

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Sources: Lieutenant governor’s office; California Journal Weekly

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

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Party on: Lest you think a politician’s life is a happy whirl of fund-raisers, heed the duties of state Sen. Charles M. Calderon (D-Whittier), whose campaign finance report lists the usual dinners, Sacramento trips--and $141.36 for T-shirts for his staffers to take part in the Legislature Bowel Tournament.

After they’ve rolled a few strikes, he can stake them in the Legislater Speling Bee.

EXIT LINE

“See, it’s good to go shopping.”

--Peggy Gill of Modesto to her husband, John. The day after her silver and maroon minivan was stolen, she got it back because she went to a sale, spotted it in the mall parking lot and called police.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.