<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Judicial Panel Goes Out With Its Gavel Swinging

In its last act before changing its stripes, the state Commission on Judicial Performance privately counseled judges for conduct ranging from rudeness to keeping a dog in court and publicly rebuked two Southland jurists.

The commission recommended the removal of San Diego Superior Court Judge G. Dennis Adams, who was accused of secretly accepting gifts from lawyers and litigants and lying to the commission’s investigators. It also publicly reproved Alhambra Municipal Judge Michael Kanner for denying bail to people who failed to show up for misdemeanor hearings.

The panel began in 1993 to hold its disciplinary hearings in public, but not soon enough for the voters. In November, they passed Proposition 190 to overhaul the makeup of the commission, replacing the current majority--judges all--with a majority of non-lawyers appointed by the governor and Legislature. The change took effect March 1.

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Tark of the Town: There’s a different kind of March Madness going on in Fresno, where the partisans of Fresno State pray for the day when their Bulldogs, like UCLA this weekend, make it to the Final Four of college basketball. The search is on for a new basketball coach and the town is going crazy over the prospect that it might be Jerry Tarkanian, a Fresno State grad and the controversial former coach at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Interest is so high that the Fresno Bee has trumpeted its daily coverage with a title, “Tark of the Town.” Working against Tark fever, however, is the fact that the successful towel-chewing coach has came under scrutiny for irregularities when he coached at Long Beach State and UNLV. He left Las Vegas, where he won a national title in 1990, in 1993 after a public dispute with then-UNLV President Robert Maxson.

The guy who’ll decide--Fresno State athletic director Gary Cunningham--has resorted to recording phone messages because his office can’t handle the hundreds of calls coming in from fans. By the way, Cunningham was an assistant to UCLA coach John Wooden when the Bruins last won the national title in 1975.

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Lost in Landers: We don’t know if it was fear of earthquakes, but something spooked Mike, the 80-pound police dog at the San Bernardino County sheriff’s office in Yucca Valley. One night recently, Mike, trained at a cost of $15,000, dug out of his pen at his handler’s home in Landers, where the 7.6 earthquake hit in 1992, and escaped.

Since Mike is the only cop hound at the Yucca Valley station, sheriff’s deputies called out the dogs from other sheriff’s stations. A helicopter joined the all-out search for the missing award-winning bouvier des Flandres--a breed that resembles the standard poodle.

After more than 24 hours it was a human, reserve Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Ballinger, who found Mike. He was resting on a yucca tree five miles from his home.

“Mike was found just lying there, panting,” Sgt. Bob Simendich reported.

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Journalistic muscle: With five minutes to spare, a Fresno State journalism professor did 1,006 chin-ups and 1,006 pushups this week--breaking the world record of 1,000 each by fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who set the mark in 1959 in 1 hour, 22 minutes.

John Zelezny, 39, performed the feat while students at Mountain View Elementary School in Clovis cheered him on.

He said he had wanted to break LaLanne’s record ever since reading about it when he was in high school.

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Favorite State Parks

More than 65 million visitors used the state parks system in fiscal 1993-94. Officials expect that popularity to continue into this year, which is State Tourism Year. Here are the five most popular parks:

PARK VISITORS 1. Old Town San Diego 6.4 million 2. Sonoma Coast State Beach 2.7 million 3. Folsom Lake 2.1 million 4. Huntington State Beach 1.8 million 5. Pismo State Beach 1.6 million 6. Bolsa Chica State Beach 1.6 million 7. Carlsbad State Beach 1.5 million 8. Lake Perris 1.4 million 9. Mt. Tamalpais 1.3 million 10. Pismo Dunes 1.1 million

Source: state Department of Parks and Recreation

Researched by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times

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Food tours? A Santa Cruz company that runs shark-viewing tours is endangering surfers and seals with its practice of using bloody animal parts to attract the fish to its boats, according to protesters.

The tours off Ano Nuevo State Park allow divers in protective cages to watch the sharks up close. The sharks are attracted to the cages with chum, a mixture of fish oil and animal blood and parts. Environmentalists, researchers and surfers contend that attracting sharks near popular surfing spots and seal breeding grounds north of Santa Cruz is dangerous.

“When sharks respond to the dinner bells, what they see is a human being in a wet suit as their waiter,” said Tim Loomis, a member of the Surfers’ Environmental Alliance. “They’re learning to associate humans with the main entree.”

EXIT LINE

“Now I have to move back to Toronto, because with the earthquakes in L.A. this is a lethal weapon. You can’t hang this on the wall.”

--Comedian and Toronto native Catherine O’Hara upon being given a hefty plaque at a City Hall ceremony there.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.