Nixon’s the One Gift You Need

Some holiday gift suggestions for the person who has everything, courtesy of The Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Birthplace Gift Catalogue in Yorba Linda.

Included in the catalogue is one section called “Elvis Has Been Spotted. He’s at Nixonland!”

It highlights various items featuring a picture from a visit Elvis Presley paid to Nixon at the White House during the early 1970s to receive an anti-drug award.

For $18, one can buy a 22-by-28-inch poster titled “The President and the King.” Note cards sell for $15, while an 8-by-10-inch photo for $5.50, or $35 framed.

For $100, there is a Nixon and Elvis postcard that includes the first-day issue of the Elvis stamp and a Nixon autograph. A Nixon and Elvis T-shirt goes for $14.95. Then there is a Nixon and Elvis watch (in color or black and white) for $45.

In the non-Elvis category, $18.50 will buy a T-shirt showing Nixon giving the a thumbs-up sign. It reads “Nixon in ‘96--Tan, Rested & Ready.”

For $45, there is the Birthplace Birdhouse that resembles Nixon’s boyhood home in Yorba Linda. The catalogue says it is “designed as Presidential quarters for your fine feathered friends.”

All He Needs Is Ed McMahon

Cerrell Associates, a Los Angeles-based political consulting firm headed by Joe Cerrell, is launching the Cerrell Associates Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

Actually, it’s a Christmas party invitation that parodies those Publishers Clearing House-type sweepstakes that show up regularly in everyone’s mailbox.

Included is a “you may be a winner” certificate, a place to affix a sticker so guests can mark where they want to stand during the party and a statement certifying that “generally, unaccepted accounting and actuarial tests” were used to evaluate the offer. It’s signed by the phony accounting firm Bullock & Boesky (as in convicted Wall Street felon Ivan F. Boesky).

One unknown is how many invited guests tossed Cerrell’s invitation thinking it was junk mail.

Reinventing the Buzzword

It may be time for Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to re-cliche.

Riordan’s talk to the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. scheduled this week is titled “Implementing Reinventing Government.”

Reinventing was the term popularized by President Clinton last year during his election bid. This year, however, the term has been supplanted by re-engineering as the hands-down business management cliche of the year.

Briefly . . .

The Thomas Bros. map company is marketing to contractors a map of areas in Laguna Beach damaged by the recent fires. . . . Infomercial Marketing Report says Jane Fonda will star in an upcoming infomercial for a $360 treadmill that includes a cassette player on the handlebars. . . . Onetime Hollywood agent Richard deGrandcourt III claims he’s making a movie on the life of pioneering televangelist Kathyrn Kuhlman.