Libidinous Laureate Seeks an Intimate Interview : <i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i>

Kary Mullis, that puckish Nobel laureate and surfer from La Jolla, is at it again.

Seems that whenever journalists come around asking questions, Mullis, 49, who shared the 1993 big prize for chemistry for helping unravel the mystery of DNA, has something libidinous to say.

A couple of years ago he told Time magazine that he was partial to women 10,000 days old (or about 28 years) because their bodies are at their height of lusciousness and fecundity, like “ripe avocados.”

Then he told The Times that he loves to shake up grim-faced women scientists at his slide show lectures by slipping in a slide of a naked woman bathed in psychedelic light.

Now he’s gone a step further, possibly where no Nobel winner has gone before.

In the July issue of Esquire magazine (“Is Kary Mullis God? Or Just the Big Kahuna?”), writer Emily Yoffe says Mullis told her the only way she could really get to know him was to sleep with him.

She turned down Mullis’ entreaty to engage in true participatory journalism: “I (told) him it will just have to be a flaw in my understanding.”

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A watched pot never boils: A Southern California suburbanite--no name, no locale, please--thought he’d do his civic duty to keep dangerous drivers off the road. So when he smelled a guy reeking of marijuana in a convenience store and when that guy got into a pickup truck and had a fit of under-the-influence giggles, the suburbanite flagged down a cop and told him everything.

The cop was skeptical: “How do you know about this stuff?”

Suburbanite: “I went to Berkeley in the ‘60s.”

Enough said.

The cop pulled over the guy in the truck and the suburbanite rolled merrily home.

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Domestic Violence Calls

Nearly 239,000 calls for help in domestic violence cases were received by law enforcement agencies and reported to the state Department of Justice last year. These numbers include all calls, whether or not an arrest was made. Here are the counties with the most and the fewest calls reported and their statewide ranking in terms of county population size:

Highest Number of Calls

NUMBER COUNTY POPULATION COUNTY OF CALLS RANKING (STATEWIDE) Los Angeles 67,732 1st San Diego 28,597 2nd Orange 16,158 3rd Sacramento 12,604 8th San Bernardino 11,191 5th

Lowest Number of Calls

NUMBER COUNTY POPULATION COUNTY OF CALLS RANKING (STATEWIDE) Alpine 7 58th Sierra 13 57th Mono 45 55th Trinity 51 54th Modoc 56 56th

Note: Includes reports from police, sheriffs, university police, California Highway Patrol, state police, parks and recreation and railroad agents.

Source: California Department of Justice, Sacramento; population ranking per state Department of Finance figures as of 7/1/93.

Compiled by Times researcher TRACY THOMAS

Witch Americans? The latest group to demand respect in the American polyglot may be those who like to blend a little black magic and a dash of the supernatural with their religious observances.

Spotted on the Golden State Freeway: A mid-sized car with the bumper sticker: “Pagan and Proud.” And a license plate holder that said, “Salem, Mass. 1692. NEVER AGAIN.”

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Malapropriate: Prosecutors in San Diego swear this exchange took place in a recent sex offense case.

Prosecutor: “Did the defendant engage in oral sex?”

Witness: “Nah, he didn’t talk about it, he just did it.”

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Weasel politics: The Assembly’s rejection of a bill to legalize the ownership of ferrets has not dampened the animal spirits of Ferrets Anonymous. The statewide group promises to continue petitioning the Legislature and is buoyed by the fact that it apparently has a celebrity among its believers.

The tabloid Star reports that Michael Jackson has ferrets named Lily and Lester, a gift from Elizabeth Taylor. The paper says Jackson has his ferrets stashed outside California and is just waiting until the law is changed and they can come live with him at Neverland.

“There are rumors of other celebrities with (ferrets),” says the Ferrets Anonymous newsletter, published out of Castro Valley, “but we don’t believe in ‘outing’ them.”

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One man’s art is another’s felony: True to its tradition of tolerance toward idiosyncratic self-expression, San Francisco was home to the beatniks and hippies and let a thousand free verse poems and tie-dye shirts bloom. But officialdom in The City draws the line at graffiti.

Five taggers from Southern California converged on San Francisco after hearing it was an easy touch for their art form. Wrong.

The five--three from Simi Valley and two from Lake Elsinore--got busted at 2 a.m. while adorning downtown walls. “We came here to contribute something to this town, and we end up in jail,” one miscreant told the San Francisco Examiner from the slammer. “It just isn’t right.”

EXIT LINE

“Give estrogen a chance.”

--One of the slogans of the Lesbian Avengers, sponsors of the first lesbian march tomorrow in San Diego.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.