Bill Had Better Beware Of Geeks Bearing Gifts

So what do you take if you’re invited for dinner at the White House, and a bottle of Boone’s Farm seems like it just won’t do?

Better start shopping around. Here are some actual examples from former guests, courtesy of Esquire magazine:

Boris Yeltsin brought an ivory walrus tusk with a carving depicting seven three-dimensional walruses.

Pope John Paul II brought three Vatican coins decorated with his own image.

Tom Hanks brought picture frames (not, presumably, filled with photos of himself).

Philippine President Fidel Ramos twice brought humidors full of cigars, reported by the federal register to have been “destroyed.” (Esquire theorizes that this probably took place “one by one, by fire.”)

Loose talk

Larry King, on his humble self (in Total TV magazine): “I can’t believe the recognition I get. All over the world. I was in Israel, at the Wailing Wall, and this old rabbi is there praying. He looks up at me and says, ‘So what’s with Perot?”’

Big party? Well, he’s used to expensive affairs

Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros turns 48 today.

Maybe he’s decided to turn over a new leaf

Speaking of geeks bearing gifts, conservative talk host G. Gordon Liddy has pledged $30,000 to the fund for victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. Liddy told the Washington Post the cash comes from sales of “Packed and Stacked,” his 1994 calendar featuring “young women in their scantiest underwear holding high-powered weapons.”

To the kids, it was just a giant sucking sound

No mealy-mouthed commencement speeches for Ross Perot. “I’m worried about you,” he told grads at Port Huron (Mich.) Northern High School. “My primary concern is that you haven’t had to sweat in order to achieve things. That you’re not intellectually tough. That you don’t know what it is not to finish first.”

Guess it takes a few bucks out of Buckingham

And speaking of self-made men, Prince Charles, who along with Queen Elizabeth last year volunteered to pay taxes in the wake of royal scandals, will fork over $1.59 million this year. That still leaves him with $2.39 million in income to support Princess Diana and their two boys.

You should have seen the ones that got away

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter must be doing OK in the cash department. Driving back from a fly-fishing trip, the former president and first lady stopped at an outlet mall after spotting a Liz Claiborne sign and proceeded to spend more than $500.

Well, he’s already committed political suicide

Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood, besieged by sexual harassment charges, has a new vanity license plate that reads “MASADA” a reference to the historic Jewish fortress where 900 patriots killed themselves rather than surrender to overwhelming numbers of Roman troops.

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