This may be my last column. If my lawsuit works, I'll be retiring on a fortune built by the sale of basketballs and footballs.

Spike Lee has inspired me, you see. As you may have heard, he's joining the parade of loony lawsuits that have clogged the courts of late by suing TNN, The National Network, over their impending name change to Spike TV.

Lee is claiming that TNN is using his name without paying him or asking his permission. My cousin, Showtime, tried the same trick years ago.

Putting aside for just a moment the overarching ego required to make such an assertion, let's see if we can divine the motivations behind it.

A quick check of the Internet Movie Database shows that, while Lee's continued to churn out movies both as producer and director, it's been an AWFULLY long time since he had a commercial hit like "Summer of Sam." Last year's "25th Hour" got good reviews but sank without much of a ripple at the box office.

In the world of entertainment, the squeaky wheel often gets the lucrative studio contract. Could it be Spike's trying to remind the big boys that he's still around?

I'll be filing my suit against the Wilson sporting goods folks shortly. I figure a basketball is round, and I'm round, so the violation is plainly obvious and legally actionable.

I guess between now and when the settlement checks start rolling in, though, I'd better earn my keep.

Open Up The Fun!

Summertime is picnic time, and what picnic would be complete without a full spread of condiments? You'll need bottles of ketchup and hot sauce and jars of mustard, mayonnaise and ... ghosts?

A recent auction on eBay, now mysteriously disappeared, offered for sale a "ghost in a jar."

The seller claimed that TWO jars like the one at left were found two decades ago while he was metal detecting in a cemetery. One jar was broken, said the ad, and released a "black thing" that has attacked the owner numerous times. "I will not be held responsible for anything that happens once the transaction is complete," according to the item's description

Now, would the ghost keep the ants away from the picnic, or would it bond with them and create giant demon ants with glowing red eyes and venom-dripping fangs?

I like the latter idea. It'd make for a great movie.

A Hot Breakfast?

An Iowa trucker noticed something amiss with his load recently and pulled into a rest area just in time to watch the cargo go up in smoke.

The true tragedy here is that he was hauling one of my personal favorite breakfast munchies: Reese's Puffs cereal. While I'm sure the fire was amusing, what with all those puffs popping and the smell of roasting peanuts in the air, if it leads to me not being able to get my breakfast properly, I'm going to be put out.

Now, we're all friends here. I've revealed that beneath my gourmet's exterior beats the heart of an 8-year-old kid who pounds down bowls of any sugar-coated hay promising a toy in the box.

What's YOUR secret "kid food" craving? When you're all by yourself, no one around, what brightly colored box leaps to your hand? Is it Twinkies, perhaps? Cap'n Crunch? Moon Pies? Confess here and we'll discuss (anonymously, of course) your preferences in an upcoming issue.

Road To Nowhere Revisited

From Weird Chronicles scout Scott Allen comes the tale of the good folks of Foster, R.I., who were delighted recently to have made the big time: they got their own crosswalk!

There was just one TINY problem: it didn't go anywhere. It crosses a busy country road, from a hedge on one side to a stone wall on the other.

The local authorities HAD been agitating for a traffic light, and apparently the wires got crossed somewhere along the line. Residents now joke about getting jobs as crossing guards or being ticketed for jaywalking if they don't hike the grassy shoulder to the crosswalk.

As misuses of government money go, this one isn't the most grievous in history. But the lack of a definite beginning or ending for the crosswalk is marvellously symbolic of many pork-barrel projects.

Whoa. I just hate those unexpected rushes of political philosophy. I'm going to have to increase my dosage.

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