SPAM lovers will try to cook up some respect with special recipes.

SPAM IT UP: Look, it’s just canned luncheon meat. Actually, it’s a mixture of spiced pork shoulder and ham cooked in water, salt, sodium nitrate and sugar in a 65-foot tower (no kidding).

But some folks in the South Bay and at food giant Hormel, which has been churning out SPAM since 1937, take this oft-maligned product pretty seriously.

With the Hawaiian Community Center Assn. having its Second Annual SPAM Cook-off next week in Torrance, we asked Hormel for some facts on SPAM. They faxed us 26 pages on their signature product, spelling out everything from how SPAM is made to innovative ways to eat it (SPAM Cheesecake) and comments on it from the likes of Margaret Thatcher (she liked it) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (he didn’t).

Despite popular belief, Hormel tells us, SPAM (a hybrid of “spiced” and “ham”) has “no fillers, no cereals, no meat byproducts.”

The manufacturer insists the product is healthy, and says that Nikita Khrushchev once credited SPAM with keeping the Soviet army alive during World War II--when SPAM gained notoriety as a staple for soldiers.

Now, Hormel says, 3.8 cans of SPAM are eaten every second around the world, and, in 1992, SPAM sales surged on the strength of new SPAM Lite and a SPAMBURGER marketing blitz (we figure the search for inexpensive food in the recession had something to do with it, too).

People may mock SPAM as bland and boring, but the ridicule doesn’t dismay Allan Krejci, the Hormel employee who makes his living promoting--and defending--SPAM.

“We can enjoy good humor as much as anyone else,” he said.

So can the Hawaiian Community Center folks, who are sponsoring the SPAM-fest July 3 partly to raise funds for a building. On the menu: SPAM and cabbage ($3).

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BREAK IT UP: Handling city affairs can bring out the worst in people. A recent scrap between two Hermosa Beach city officials shows how.

Hermosa Beach City Councilman Robert Benz and Planning Commission chair Joseph DiMonda got into a shoving match recently over a conditional-use permit--something known to occasionally breed tension but seldom physical violence.

The fight started at the end of the June 3 budget workshop when DiMonda and Benz began arguing about a proposed conditional-use permit for an oil drilling project in the city (the permit is still pending).

“Benz approached DiMonda and started screaming at him,” said Councilman Robert Essertier, who witnessed the fight. “Rather than back down, DiMonda retaliated with screams. Benz shoved him . . . and then DiMonda hit him in the back and said ‘Don’t you ever do that.’ ”

“They were talking about going outside and finishing this,” Essertier said. “I ran outside and separated the two of them and said ‘Come on guys, grow up. This isn’t why we elected you.’ ”

Since then DiMonda and Benz have made up.

Benz, who later apologized for shoving DiMonda, said DiMonda’s tone of voice and “anti-business approach” on the planning commission made him angry. But, he added, the two remain friends and even had lunch together this week.

“He’s a nice guy,” Benz said. “He’s a big boy. He can handle it.”

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LOOK IT UP: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey) faxed us the news that a House subcommittee has approved $2.2 million to dredge Marina del Rey and perform a navigation study for the area. It goes before the full House for a vote later this month and then on to the Senate.

The dredging and the navigation study, Harman said, “will help the Marina continue to be one of the South Bay’s great recreational areas.”

Marina Del Rey in the South Bay? That struck us as odd. The guy who answered the phone at the Marina information office also thought it was weird.

“When I think of the South Bay I think of Manhattan Beach down to Torrance and maybe as far north as El Segundo,” he said. “Dockweiler Beach is kind of the buffer.”

Folks at the South Bay Cities Assn. agreed.

Maybe some of the funding for the projects could go toward a map for Harman, who lives in Marina del Rey although her district encompasses much of the South Bay.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Why me? There’s a reason and it’s out there. I have to look for it.”

--Graduating senior Martin Hernandez, 19, a Leuzinger High School baseball standout who was shot by a gang member this year. The bullet left Hernandez partially paralyzed, ending his dream of becoming a sheriff’s deputy. He plans to attend college and lecture young people on the dangers of gangs.