FAT CHANCE: After getting more than 2,000...

FAT CHANCE: After getting more than 2,000 calls last fall when a new drug reduced fat in mice, Amgen wants to make one thing perfectly clear as it prepares to test the drug on humans: Save your dimes. (D2) Don’t pick up that phone. No. Non. Nyet . . . Amgen is not seeking volunteers for the test, spokesman David Kaye could not emphasize enough. The company will contract with obesity clinics to provide test subjects.

SPIRIT LIFT: It sort of makes sense that a ghost would get tired of hauling chains up the stairs after a while . . . Artists creating a gallery atop Ventura’s City Hall (B1) have had several encounters with an elevator-riding spook that supposedly frequents the abandoned third floor. “We were standing up there yesterday and [the elevator doors] just kept opening and closing,” said city staffer Andrea Anderson . . . The lift also gets stuck a lot, always on 3. “We don’t really know why,” Anderson said, “but it’s kind of fun to say it’s haunted.”

SCOUTS HONOR: From Girl Scout to Girl Scout Woman of the Year, Yolanda Benitez is making her mother proud . . . The superintendent of the Rio Elementary School District is being honored this week by the Tres Condados Girl Scout Council for her contributions to young people. Benitez, the county’s first Latina school superintendent, was a scout in her youth . . . “My mother is very ecstatic,” Benitez said. “You know how mothers are.”

BRAVO BRAVO: The New West Symphony wanted a few twins for a TV commercial promoting its season finale, “Double Concerto.” So it put out a casting call inviting twins to Ventura’s Doubletree Inn (get it?) on Monday . . . “We’ve been really surprised by the response,” said spokeswoman Karyl Lynn Burns. About two dozen pairs have already signed up. “I didn’t know there were that many twins in Ventura County,” Burns said. A few, actually, are from Agoura Hills and Calabasas . . . Identical twins of any age are welcome, at noon. Call 684-6035.