FAIR’S FAIRIt’s a long way from L.A....

FAIR’S FAIR

It’s a long way from L.A. to Americana, everyone agrees. Well, everyone’s wrong. Right in Lancaster, only an hour up the freeway from the city, is the annual Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival, which has 4-H kids with sheep, midway rides and all that atmosphere you see in “State Fair” on the old movie channel. . . . Yes, it’s hot in the daytime--this is the Mojave Desert in August. But at night, when the locals go, it’s just appropriately sultry. B1

FIXING THE BLAME

TV talk show host Morton Downey Jr. of Sherman Oaks, who recently had lung cancer surgery, denies a report he’s suing the tobacco industry. Downey, after visiting Washington to see President Clinton sign anti-smoking laws, called cigarette makers “terrorists,” but added: “No one forced me to smoke. It was a stupid decision that I made myself . . . The trouble today is that people will not take responsibility for their own actions.”

TOO LIVE BERT

Bert Boeckmann is many things: millionaire San Fernando Valley car dealer, L.A. police commissioner, wheeler-dealer in city politics . . . and alive. In naming finalists for this year’s annual Fernando Award to Valley civic leaders, the organizing committee listed past winners, with asterisks denoting the deceased. Boeckmann, who won in 1976, got a premature asterisk.