Nyah, Nyah, Nyah!

Don’t get mad, get even. And now its just a phone call away. Revenge a la Carte , a business started this month by Allen Pool of Los Angeles, makes telling someone to drop dead easy--and anonymous.

“Things are going unbelievably well,” Pool says. “It’s amazing how many people need something like this.”

What kind of messages can you get across? Well, you can say it with flowers--dead ones of course--for $25. Or how about a personalized voodoo doll ($20) for that person you’d most like to see join the ranks of the undead? There’s also “Not-So-Fresh Fish,” gift wrapped and delivered for $20, for someone who’s thrown you a red herring. Live embarrassments (“Starving actors at your service. Public humiliation made to order.”) go for the market price.

Pool says he’s been getting about three orders a day so far, and about 80% of those ordering request anonymity.

Perhaps the most devious on Pool’s menu of “Just Desserts” is “Mail Box Hell.” You can put someone on the mailing list of 20 religious groups. Now THAT’s getting even!

A Rumor Crumbles

California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s legal challenge to the Alpha Beta-Lucky supermarket merger has raised shoppers’ eyebrows because his last name is the same as that of a well-known manufacturer of baked goods that uses blue windmills on its packages. Some say his motive is revenge.

Various rumors have spread. One has it that Alpha Beta stopped selling goods made by Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakers and that Van de Kamp, the attorney general, sued to get even.

Such speculation is half-baked, according to the attorney general’s office.

Van de Kamp, the attorney general, for years has had no connection with the bakery business that two of his uncles founded about 75 years ago, his aides say. In 1956, his family sold its interest in the company to General Baking Co., later changed to General Host. A General Host executive then bought the bakery operation in 1979. Since then, it has changed hands twice and is now owned by private investors in Los Angeles.

And That’s The Way It Is . . .

It may never compete with the television news show “60 Minutes,” but McDonnell Douglas is producing a new videotaped television program titled “90 Days,” which stars company Chairman John McDonnell.

The St. Louis-based aerospace firm is mailing the new quarterly video show to its 140,000 employees, including the approximately 40,000 workers at its Douglas Aircraft unit in Long Beach, in an effort to improve communications.

A company spokesman said the video and mailing costs “are not as expensive as you might think.” The cost was estimated at $3 to $4 per VHS cassette, including mailing, meaning that the annual cost of the quarterly reports approaches $2 million.

In the “premier edition,” which employees received last week, McDonnell acknowledged that a reorganization at Douglas Aircraft had resulted in “substantial disruption,” but that it was intended to finally fix the “root causes” of problems.

“For years at Douglas Aircraft, we have tried Band Aides for patching outmoded systems and processes that were breaking down under the weight of rapid and sustained expansion,” McDonnell said.

Say It Fast Five Times

Sears last year picked the name “Brand Central” for its new appliance and electronics “superstore within a store,” hoping that it would have a familiar ring--as in Grand Central, New York’s famed train station. But for shoppers in Glendale, it really sounds familiar.

The Glendale Sears--one of 28 in Southern California that opened Brand Centrals this month--is on Central Avenue only two blocks from Brand Boulevard. So Glendale shoppers have the distinction of visiting Sears’ brand new Brand Central on Central, near Brand. Centrally located, no doubt.

Brand Central blends Sears’ central brand, Kenmore, with 70 other nationally known names at 444 Sears stores nationwide.