Another sacred sighting

	Holy water: A leak in Jeff Rigo's Lawrenceville bathroom produced this image of Jesus beside his shower.

Two weeks ago, Jeff Rigo stepped out of the shower in his Lawrenceville abode and yelled, "Jesus Christ!" This alarmed his girlfriend: "Oh, my God, what is it?" Jeff pointed to the wall and said, "No -- Jesus Christ!" It seems that a water leak had produced interesting results. Like all Americans who come upon the image of a deity or some diety's close relation, Rigo's first thought was: eBay. And so, once again America would prove to be a great country. To eliminate the riff-raff, Jeff started the bidding on the online auction site for "the section of plaster wall depicting the image of Jesus" at $2,000. ("If I had to cut it out of my wall, I wanted to make it worth my while," Rigo told The Morning File.) And $2,000 is what he got Tuesday night from the religious zealots at the Internet casino GoldenPalace.com, the same folks who paid $28,000 for the grilled cheese sandwich with what looked like an image of the Virgin Mary, and hold the pickle.

Eye of the beholder

Not everyone who checked out Rigo's stained plaster saw Jesus. Other nominees: Shakespeare, Kris Kristofferson, Charles Manson, Cat Stevens, Frank Zappa, Johnny Damon, Rasputin, Pete Townshend, Steven Wright and John Lennon. Rigo, a 30-year-old Internet network engineer, plans to use the money for a vacation. At least 75 eBayers wrote in to him during the auction, in search of other priceless images in unlikely places. One exchange:

Q: I'm looking for a piece of fruit (preferably melon) with an image of Carol Channing or Liza Minelli (pre-alcoholic).

A: Would a spanish peanut bearing a resemblance to the late, great Abe Vigoda suffice?

Q: You might want to hold onto the Abe Vigoda peanut for a while longer -- I'm pretty sure he's still alive. I'm sure the guy that wanted it will pay a lot more once he is really dead.

Money to fry

Apparently, Golden Palace will buy anything to get publicity and make it into The Morning File. Other purchases: a pair of denim jeans bearing an uncanny likeness of Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown", $506; a chicken breast resembling the late Pope John Paul II, $232.50; an Australian man's frying pan bearing the likeness of Jesus Christ in burned leftover lemon mustard cream sauce, $100; a Doritos chip that looks like the Pope's mitre, $1,209; a pretzel believed to be shaped like the Virgin Mary holding the Baby Jesus, $10,600.

More memorabilia

You history buffs have a shot at an artifact that would wow your guests, particularly if they include G. Gordon Liddy. The lock that everyone's favorite "third-rate" burglars picked to get the Watergate scandal off the ground is up for auction on the Internet. Bid4Assets will try to get at least $100,000 for the lock to the Democratic National Committee's suite. No word on whether it bears a resemblance to Richard Nixon's dog, Checkers.

Thoughtful mass murderer

From the AP
• Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside • Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear • Man Allegedly Tries to Use 'Blurry' $100 • Police Break Up Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese • Suggestive Card Ruffles Farmer's Feathers • Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women • Toilet to Tap? San Jose Probes Plan • Seattle to Allow Pygmy Goats As Pets • Yankees Rookies Dress Up in Oz Costumes

Robert Hopkins, a cameraman, tells what it was like to spend a few days in claustrophobic luxury with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta on Americanheritage.com. "Since it was about cocktail hour, the President repeated a ritual he regularly performed at the White House: He made a pitcher of dry martinis. As he passed a glass to Stalin, he said apologetically that a good martini really should have a twist of lemon. At six o'clock the following morning, when I came down to the main entrance hall, I was astonished to find, just outside the door to the anteroom, a huge lemon tree -- I counted some 200 pieces of fruit on it--which Stalin had ordered flown in from his native Georgia so the President could serve his martinis with a twist."

Art news

Last month, Ramune Gele, 27, gave birth to her first child in a Berlin art gallery with a dozen or so spectators on hand. Has childbirth become a spectator sport? No, but it is art. So says the father, 29-year-old musician Winfried Witt, who said before the birth "it's a gift to humanity, a once in a lifetime thing" and called the experience "an existential work of art". Easy for him to say. (Source: ananova.com)

Listen up, Winfried

Fiona McCade, columnist for the Scotsman newspaper, Edinburgh: "Very few people's ideal birth plan would feature large, drug-filled needles being stuck into their spinal cord, or having their nether regions sliced up like wafer-thin ham. In fact, I'm guessing that in a perfect world, having eight pounds of humanity dragged out through your most delicate orifice wouldn't be high on anybody's must-do list, yet these are the meagre options we have to conjure with.

"But I've decided to say what I really want. First of all: No pain. If this is absolutely necessary, then at the very least I want a magnum of Dom Perignon to dull the sensation. In fact, forget the measly magnum -- I want to give birth in a vast bath full of the stuff, in the world's first Champagne birth. Then, I'd like Johnny Depp to be my birth partner. He seems like a sensitive kind of guy and he's already a father, so I'm sure he'd be most helpful during the birth.

"Failing Johnny, I'd accept a dozen koalas gently nuzzling me and mopping my brow, while rose petals drift down from the ceiling and Kate Bush performs an acoustic set from the corner of the flower-festooned, velvet-hung birthing suite. I'm also going to stipulate that a great deal of Swiss chocolate be kept on hand and for George Clooney to appear in a white coat and say: "Everything's going perfectly and if you don't mind me saying, I've never seen a woman look more beautiful than you do right now." Then I'll have a short nap and when I wake up, Johnny or George -- or the koalas -- will hand me a gurgling bundle of joy and express amazement that my waist measurement has already snapped back to 22 inches."