Some Tangled Web Sites Woven for Boxer, Lungren

The latest tangled political Webs, Dan Lungren’s and Barbara Boxer’s.

Some anti-Lungren faction has co-opted a “Lungren 98” Web site, a natural address for the Republican attorney general who wants to be governor in 1998. Not only does it put up a picture of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Lungren’s possible Democratic opponent, but it also shows a photo of Lungren that slowly “morphs” a Hitler mustache onto his face.

And over in the Senate race column, wannabe contender Darrell Issa isn’t bothering trying to make Issa a household name yet. Just going after incumbent Barbara Boxer on the Dan Quayle front is enough so far.

Issa’s campaign pointed out that Boxer’s Web site featured an education page headed “Senator Boxer’s Eucation Priorities,” and suggested that spelling ought to be one of them. (By the next day, the error had disappeared from the Web site.)

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Goghing, goghing . . . It may not be a real Van Gogh, but it has fetched a real $220,000 in a Sacramento bankruptcy court auction.

A federal bankruptcy judge threw out earlier bids of $125,000 and $135,000 for the canvas of “Sunflowers and Oleanders,” property of an elderly widow who has fought for 50 years to establish the painting’s provenance and legitimacy.

The secretive buyers, as their attorney, Matt Brady, told the Sacramento Bee, admit “it’s either a Van Gogh or a Van Goof.”

Lesser bidders at an earlier auction may contest the sale as vehemently as others have contested the authenticity of the painting; some of the scientific data indicate it could be, most of the art experts have said it isn’t.

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Get going: That might be the advice of cartographer Mark Monmonier for Californians--or the advice he might get from the same.

In his book, “Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America,” Monmonier’s list of the 10 riskiest places in the United States is topped by “almost any place in California.”

And it’s not just because of earthquakes, he notes. There are also wildfires, landslides and a few active volcanoes--as well as tsunamis, smog, freeway snipers, riots, oil spills and water shortages.

“I don’t suppose I’ll be terribly popular [in California],” acknowledged Monmonier, who teaches map making at Syracuse University in New York.

Syracuse? Where one of Monmonier’s maps might indicate the heart of the Snowbelt? “We can sort of cope with [winters],” Monmonier explained to the Associated Press. “There are plenty of plows.” But even winter can be a problem, he admitted, “for people who have heart trouble and decide to shovel the driveway.” Meanwhile, back in California, there is always the fear of a midwinter sunburn.

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One-offs: State Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer’s clunky new welfare reform verb--”to incent,” meaning to motivate--is sure to incense grammarians. . . . The official millennial champagne being quaffed in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve 1999 will be Korbel, a product of California vineyards. . . . After a challenge from the ACLU, Stockton’s John TV--a plan to televise mugshots of accused prostitutes and their putative patrons--will have to wait until after those ladies and gentlemen have been convicted. . . . Port Hueneme residents are mounting a “Save the Stump” campaign after an effort to rescue a 375-year-old cypress from disease failed. . . . A Mission Viejo woman whose Volvo has for 11 years carried the personalized license plate RAPNJAP--her initials and her husband’s--may have to surrender the plates to the DMV because of complaints from Japanese Americans. . . . The venerable and once-copious San Joaquin soil will soon become the state’s official dirt, once Gov. Pete Wilson is assured that its status as state soil does not elevate it to any special status that would inhibit the plow or the backhoe.

EXIT LINE

“If the farm workers don’t want to sign the union card, go to bed with them. Who cares if you get a little dusty?”

--Instructions allegedly given by a United Farm Workers official to UFW organizer Leticia Maravella. A lawsuit charging that the official urged Maravella and another organizer to offer sex to strawberry workers in exchange for joining the union has been withdrawn after an attorney said one witness did not “work out.” The women also claimed that top union officials ignored their complaints, and that such instructions have been common in the UFW.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.

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Blue Suede Fans

Elvis Presley died 20 years ago Saturday, but in California his fan clubs have increased from 21 to 26 just in the last two years, to tie with the number of clubs each in England and Canada. Here are the Top 10 California clubs:

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Club name City Members The Elvis Special Pacifica 900 Blue Hawaiians For Elvis Los Angeles 400 King of Our Hearts Fan Club San Jose 400 Elvis Now Fan Club San Jose 350 Elvis Presley Photo Club Anaheim 250 of Southern California Jailhouse Rockers Fan Club Irvine 250 Elvis--The Legend Lives On Oakland 160 Rock ‘N’ Rollin’ with Elvis! Victorville 147 The Hard-Headed Women Los Angeles 85 Elvis Friends-Hollywood Burbank 80

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Note: Numbers may include some out-of-state members.

Source: Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc.

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times