Monica’s Traveling in Same Circles

When Monica Lewinsky’s United Airlines flight landed at LAX the other day, newsman Pete Demetriou of KFWB-AM (980) noted that she was ushered into an airport VIP room.

Named the President’s Club.

PICNIC FARE?A special on ant sandwiches failed to whet the appetite of Bernie and Marian Benson of Northridge (see accompanying).

ATTENTION AEROSPACE SHOPPERS! Sources tell me that it was a McDonnell Douglas World Wide Web site that briefly offered a sarcastic parody of a customer survey. The stealth questionnaire, whose author is unknown, was quickly removed after officials spotted it.

Here’s another excerpt:

9. Please check the products that you currently own or intend to purchase in the near future:

[ ] Color TV

[ ] VCR

[ ] ICBM

[ ] Killer Satellite

[ ] CD Player

[ ] Air-to-Air Missiles

[ ] Space Shuttle

[ ] Home Computer

[ ] Nuclear Weapon

GIVE AND TAKE: Carol Fairbairn of Pacific Palisades noticed a fitness shop that can apparently help you lose or gain a few tons (see photo).

GUERRILLA COPYREADER REPORT: Only in L.A.’s ever-vigilant readers report these interesting uses of words in print:

* A reference to “Holy Weed” in a church newsletter (from Sam Russo)

* A restaurant that offers “homemade fish and chips” (from Ronald Kaping)

* An offer of a “free movie rental” (from William Farrell Belliston)

* Food guaranteed to “peak” your taste buds (from Wilma Poe)

* A job opening for someone who does “quick and accurate typesetting.” The ad was headlined: “TOPOGRAPHER” (from Michael Burkhart)

* A pharmacy that assures visitors that all major insurance programs are “excepted here” (from Gene Margoluis)

* A remodeled house priced at $1,175,000 “that won’t last” (from Gordon Dirks, who comments that after all that work you’d think it would hold up a while)

And, finally, Tom Dawson of Pacific Palisades offers “one of the scariest ad headlines I’ve ever seen.”

Placed by a law school, it said:

“Your future as a lawyer is nearer than you think.”

L.A. DRIVING MILESTONES: Ten years ago this week, a young woman took a new Toyota Corolla out of a Hollywood dealership on a test-drive and decided not to give it back, leading authorities on a high-speed chase to the desert town of Hesperia, 80 miles away.

The woman, who had locked the salesman out of the car when she took the wheel, was apprehended after running out of gas.

The dealership saw the bright side.

“It was awesome, incredible. She was going 110, 120 mph, and that’s not even the fastest model we’ve got,” said the general manager. “And she got that far on only a quarter-tank of gas.”

miscelLAny

Parts of the Southwest have been deluged by grasshoppers but I can’t imagine that sort of disaster occurring in L.A.

Then again, Figueroa Street was originally known as Calle de los Chapules--Grasshoppers Street.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 (just a few blocks east of Grasshoppers Street).