Superior Court Judge Bruce Geernaert sure knows...

Superior Court Judge Bruce Geernaert sure knows how to punctuate a point.

Geernaert was telling lawyers that while he intends to reduce the $21.7-million jury verdict in favor of the late Rock Hudson’s lover, he still agrees that Marc Christian is entitled to damages because Hudson concealed the fact that he had AIDS.

“The fear of AIDS is in reality a fear of death and it is a fear of a miserable, agonizing death,” Geernaert said. “It is not a joke.”

Suddenly, as if on cue, the fifth-floor courtroom began to shake. It was a 4.6-magnitude earthquake centered in Newport Beach. Even a set of scales on the judge’s bench swayed.

Andrew Banks, an attorney for Mark Miller, Hudson’s secretary, couldn’t resist the opportunity.

“Your honor,” Banks said, “the scales of justice are moving.”

The temblor, combined with the triple-digit heat, made it, as the saying goes, a shake-and-bake day.

Weather forecasters have suffered as much as anyone this week.

On Tuesday night, many television and radio stations forecast temperatures in the low to mid-80s for Wednesday, which turned out to be the first 100-degree day.

By Thursday night, one radio station was so cautious that it would say only that mercury readings would range from “80 to 110” on Friday.

Bum forecasts were one thing. But a bank-top thermometer in Beautiful Downtown Burbank actually reported the temperature as 120 Thursday--about 19 degrees higher than the National Weather Service claimed.

Whatever, the three-day siege was intense enough to call to mind a sobering passage from John Fante’s novel about Los Angeles, “Ask the Dust”:

“Here was the endlessly mute placidity of nature, indifferent to the great city. Here was the desert beneath these streets, around these streets, waiting for the city to die, to cover it with timeless sand once more. . . .”

A potential cash prize--and perhaps the heat--lured more than 100 local paranormals, crystal-ball massagers and other other-worldly types to West Hollywood on Friday. They were trying out for a television special, “The $100,000 Psychic Challenge.”

“We had no idea there were so many psychics in L.A.,” said Steve Syatt, a spokesman for LBS Communications, the movie distributor holding the contest. “It was amazing.”

The prize will be awarded to any being who can scientifically prove that he or she (or it) has psychic powers. All but half a dozen were dismissed after the first round of interviews, but the losers left memorable impressions.

“We had an aura person who sees haloes,” Syatt said, “we had another person dressed up like an angel and we had one guy who’d hold up a little flashlight to people’s faces and read their eyes.”

Fashionwise, many of the competitors affected turbans and headbands that bore stars and pyramids.

“What really bothers me,” Syatt said, “is some of the people were wearing a suit and tie and that’s what I was wearing.”