Educational AIDS

San Diego — For a while last week, San Diego's own 60-something porn star, Dave Cummings, was sweating blood. Dozens of L.A. porn companies, including the industry's largest, Vivid, shut down their sets after actors Lara Roxx and Darren James, reportedly fresh from a video-making trip to Brazil, turned up HIV-positive in tests required to work in the business. As of early this week, more than 40 "first" and "second" generation actors (those who had sexual contact with the two infected porn stars or who subsequently had sex with those who did) were being asked to stay out of the business indefinitely. "I personally have not been exposed. And, thankfully, I am not one of the 42 actresses/actors on the different levels of quarantine while awaiting retesting of folks they 'worked with' who are on higher-alert quarantine lists," said Cummings (not his real name) in an e-mail. "I almost 'worked with' someone on one of those lists, but thankfully worked with two different girls during a shoot two weeks ago in L.A. -- whew!" The retired U.S. Army officer, decorated Vietnam veteran, Hash House Harrier, and star of such classic porn series as Knee-Pad Nymphos and Sugar Daddy bills himself as "the oldest active porn star in the business." Despite the AIDS scare, he vows not to slow down and is planning to appear with fellow porn actors Ron Jeremy, Angel Cassidy, and Mary Carey, the ex-gubernatorial candidate, at the Pacific Beach Block Party next month. He's also set to teach a class in "Finding models, shooting video, and proper business etiquette" at Cybernet Expo 2004, a big Internet-porn convention scheduled to be held -- where else? -- at Mission Bay's Hyatt Regency Islandia hotel in June. Other offerings on the bill include "Gay Webmaster Crossfire: Is your own sexuality critical to understanding and being successful in this market?" and "How to do business as an amateur model and not get lost in the community."

Honor among alleged thieves It's been a bittersweet year for both John Moores and Michael Blevins. Padres owner Moores, of course, just opened his new taxpayer-financed downtown ballpark to nonstop acclaim from the Union-Tribune. But the occasion was shadowed by some adverse court rulings that kept alive the shareholder fraud case against him and his former company, Peregrine Systems. Blevins, too, has had his high moments. But the onetime methamphetamine-dealing federal felon, who later made his fortune as a cofounder of diet-pill maker Metabolife, got tangled up in a federal tax-evasion dragnet and an illegal weapons indictment in September. He pleaded not guilty and ponied up $1 million in bail. Thus, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the two residents of Rancho Santa Fe have at least one other thing in common. Records show that last year, Moores and his wife Becky sold Blevins an 8.13-acre vacant lot on El Camino Del Norte for $3.25 million. Meantime, neighbors report seeing stalled progress on a structure they say is being built on a couple of lots along the ritzy Del Mar beachfront, which records show are owned by Moores.

Cremains of the day When McDonald's billionaire and philanthropist Joan Kroc died last October, she was cremated and her ashes were quietly laid to rest at El Camino Memorial Park. Well, not exactly all of them. Her death certificate later had to be amended when it came to light that only 4/5 of the cremains were entombed. According to the document, the rest were given to her daughter Linda Kliber, who is keeping them in Rancho Santa Fe ... Union-Tribune publisher David Copley, reportedly suffering from a serious heart condition that has kept him from coming to work for months, resurfaced last week in a Burl Stiff society column that reported Copley threw a "small" opening-night bash in the paper's Petco Park luxury box. The 52-year-old Copley's most recent previous Burl Stiff appearance was in a December column about an adult-literacy fundraiser at his mother's private library in La Jolla. In a related development, newsroom sources report that the silver medal handed out at this year's annual old-timers' recognition event was embossed with a detailed rendering of the ballpark. Meantime, ousted associate editor Neil Morgan's last column in the paper turned out to be a Sunday travel piece he'd written about a trip to South Africa ... Sacramento insiders say that senate confirmation of Anthony Alvarado's appointment by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the state's Community College Board might be held up. The former "Chancellor of Instruction" under San Diego Unified School District head Alan Bersin stirred resentment from local teachers as well as a sizable group of parents, and powerful senate Democrat Denise Ducheny has put out word that she opposes the nomination.

-- Matt Potter