Mrs. Carter's gift basket from St. Paul's X will include a collectible Nelson Mandela writing instrument.

Beyoncé's "The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour" is scheduled to make a stop here a week from Thursday, and as always, the X's P.R. manager Jora Bart is ready with special gifts with a Minnesota flavor, as she is with all the big stars. This time Bart consulted with Lola Red owner Alexis Walsko about Beyoncé's lovely parting gifts.

Walsko told me Monday that she "went online and researched Beyoncé. Obviously, I'm a fan from afar, but she has on her website — it's awesome — a blog where she has all kinds of pictures of things she loves. Beautiful pictures. From what I could tell she appreciates the written word. For the holidays she wrote a note to all her fans and took a picture of it and posted it. She wrote another note to President Obama and took a picture of it.

"Seeing that, I thought of two of my favorite companies in town. You know Barry Rubin with Ink said, Absolutely I want to give a gift to Beyoncé. So he found a pen in his collection. It is a Nelson Mandela commemorative pen from his 80th birthday. The value is about $1,500. According to Barry, people wouldn't necessarily write with this pen; it's something to add to your collection. I'm not sure if Beyoncé will write with it or not."

Whether she uses the elegant instrument or not, it's something that fans will no doubt see someday in the Beyoncé museum. When you think you're an icon, you will have a museum.

From Lunalux Inc. in Loring Park, Walsko said she had stationery embossed. "They have an old Heidelberg Press and they take these rich papers and print them with deeply embossed printing. Beyoncé's concert tour is called 'The Mrs. Carter Show' and so we had beautiful paper embossed with 'Mrs. Carter.' "

Prince

I thought the cigars from Stogies on Grand were for Mr. Carter, better known as Jay Z, who was recently in Cuba with his wife, but I was wrong.

"When you see her in a lot of photos on her blog she is smoking cigars," said Walsko. "Obviously, that's her thing."

St. Paul's Solo Vino is giving Beyoncé products from Cannon River Winery & Vineyard. For Blue Ivy there's a custom mini-Minnesota Wild jersey blinged-out with her initials BIC by Maple Grove's JNT and Company/Iced T's.

No phone? No big deal

There's nothing shocking about Prince not having a cellphone.

And yet the New York Daily News ran a headline about Symbolina's V Magazine August cover story that, in part, read "Prince ... admits he doesn't own a cell phone and says 'nobody really talks to me.' "

In typically convoluted language, Prince explains his universe to the mag. "This organization is different than most, in the sense that we don't take directions from the outside world. It's like a galaxy. The sun is in the center giving off energy, and everything revolves around it … Nobody really talks to me."

Oh, brother. What Symbolina should've gone on to say is that nobody talks to him because he doesn't really want people presumptuously talking to him. He is a musical genius. He'll decide when he wants to talk to you. (Remember the "Saturday Night Live" sketches.)

Seattle-based Kristi Dyes, who writes the "Beautiful Nights" blog, a Prince fan site that mainly focuses on the associated artists, confirmed my suspicion that there is nothing astounding about Prince not owning a phone. "It wasn't that surprising to me, either. He's a private person and when you have a cellphone it's impossible to maintain any modicum of privacy because people can reach you at any time," said Dyes. (She sounds, by the way, unacquainted with the concept of ignoring a call. Then again, she has better manners than Prince or yours truly.)

Prince's manager du jour does have a phone, however, so he can reach out and touch someone when he chooses to do so.

Now let's talk about these messianic V photos!

I see Dracula, a China doll, Little Richard. I see a much more tanned Prince and makeup job that makes him look like he's aging, rather than ageless (despite suspected air-brushing).

C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on Fox 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count. Attachments are not opened.