He doesn’t need to carry a big...

He doesn’t need to carry a big stick: You may recall that actor Jack Nicholson was the grand marshal for last year’s Los Angeles Police-Celebrity Golf Tournament--even though he was facing possible assault charges for some extracurricular activity with a golf club. Nicholson had teed off on the car of a motorist who allegedly cut him off in Studio City. The case was later settled out of court.

This year, for safety’s sake, the organizers chose a grand marshal who has never used a club in his altercations: boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard.

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Jack’s back: Nicholson, by the way, is among the celebrities playing this year, along with actor Joe Pesci, comic Norm Crosby, musician Kenny G, and the actors in TV’s “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.”

Another attraction at the charity tournament, which begins at 10 a.m. Saturday at West L.A.’s Rancho Park, will be a T-shirt that carries a witty response to Alan M. Dershowitz, Simpson defense attorney No. 21. It was Dershowitz who said that police officers are trained to lie on the witness stand.

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Not a bad idea for an Only in L.A. contest: Which Simpson attorney would you most like to attempt to cut off Jack Nicholson on a roadway?

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Committee excitement: L.A.’s snappy new slogan--”Together We’re the Best. Los Angeles.”--was the work of a committee, the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership. We can’t wait for the hit song.

This group, by the way, should not be confused with the city’s Marketing Strategy Task Force of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Image Enhancement, which was established in the 1970s. It was also supposed to come up with ideas to spur tourism, etc. At one point it considered making a formal plea to comics to stop making fun of L.A.

Before it disappeared, the Image Enhancement gang surveyed tourists about what they liked most about Southern California. The answers: Disneyland, San Diego and San Francisco (yes, San Francisco) in that order. And what did they like least about Southern California?

L.A.

Jay Leno couldn’t have been any funnier.

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List of the Day: Some other Southland slogans down through the years:

* “Twenty-Nine Churches, No Jails” (Bellflower)

* “The Aristocrat of the Beaches” (Hermosa Beach)

* “Harbor of the Air” (Inglewood)

* “The Freeway City” (Gardena)

* “The Most on the Coast” (Long Beach)

* “Tan Your Hide in Oceanside” (Oceanside)

* “P.S., I Love You” (Palm Springs)

* “I Love B.S.” (Borrego Springs)

* “L.A.’s the Place” (we forget the city).

miscelLAny The National Enquirer reports that Rei, an insightful orangutan at Florida’s Monkey Jungle, studied videotapes of each attorney in the Simpson case and took a liking to Marcia Clark, Robert Shapiro and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., in that order.