INSPIRED BY the Great Illinois Corn Flake, I spent part of Thursday night attempting to become rich.
I was searching for a flake of cereal that might be the perfect image of something. I must have looked for two or three minutes before becoming discouraged. Flakes of corn look like nothing to me.
Luckily I had chosen to look at Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, figuring that if nothing else, I could always eat them. They were delicious.
I guess one of my flakes might have kind of looked like a fleur de lis and there was another that vaguely resembled the state of Indiana if you squinched your eyes and looked at it hard enough.
But I'm pretty sure no one would pay money for them. Then again, who could have imagined the hoopla surrounding the corn flake that did sell?
It actually was great advertising for eBay. They couldn't have purchased that kind of publicity. A lot of people were looking at the famous flake and just as many people seemed to have set up their own flake-related auctions.
When I searched for corn flake on www.ebay.com on Thursday, I got 276 responses. On Friday it had dropped to 146. By then, some of the auctions had expired and I couldn't find one of my favorites: the one that offered a sheet of paper shaped like Colorado.
I was suspicious of that one. It must have been a fraud. I thought the sheet looked much more like Wyoming.
Anyway, there also were auctions of flakes that people claimed looked like California, Virginia, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas and Kansas.
In another of my favorite auctions someone was offering a corn flake that looked either like North Carolina -- or Kentucky -- depending on which way you were holding it.
Another person offered a drawing of the Great Illinois Corn Flake. There were buttons, display cases and posters all linked to the flake. There were many auctions of items not even related to the corn flake. They just used the name to draw attention.
One person was offering a Barack Obama cornflake ears portrait. It substituted the Illinois corn flake for Obama's ears. No kidding.
"Hey, they look better than his real ones and smaller," an accompanying blurb said.
Of course, no goofy activity is complete without some kind of Elvis Presley participation.
Someone offered the Great Elvis cornflake, a replica of the King complete with shading and closed eyes that make it look somewhat like a death mask.
"Don't be cruel, to this flake of mine," the auction requests.
Wally Spiers' column runs five days a week. Have a column idea? Call Wally at 239-2506 or (800) 642-3878; or e-mail: wspiers@bnd.com
