Geller, who became famous performing feats of telekinesis such as bending spoons on television, said that one "Pocket Monster" card was directly inspired by him.
Pokemon, mostly rotund pixie-like characters, were originally created for Nintendo Game Boy portable game consoles.
Sales of Pokemon collector`s cards have reached 1.6 billion in Japan and 2.4 billion in the United States.
The pocket monster in question is shown holding two bent spoons. He is desribed as a magician on the card and named "Un-Geller" or "Evil-Geller" in the Japanese version, Geller said. In the West, one of the Pokemon characters is called Alakazam, and is only called Un-Geller in Japan. The other character, Cadabra over here, also holds spoons in his hands.
Geller, who was in Tokyo in December, is reported to have said that he was startled when he was mobbed by kids thrusting Un-Geller cards at him and asking him to put his moniker on them.
"They can`t just make money out of my name and image and try to get away with it by changing the name of the card outside Japan," Geller told The Guardian.
A spokesman for Nintendo in Britain said: "I can`t imagine Uri Geller would have such a following in Japan that they would name a Pokemon card after him."
AOL/Time-Warner Acquires Heaven
by David Plotnikoff
San Jose Mercury News
As I do every month or so, I recently spent a few minutes fishing around in the web's master domain name database at www.networksolutions. I was mildly surprised to see that the three most intuitive domain names associated with the great beyond--heaven.org, heaven.net and heaven.com--are all dormant.
For the record, heaven.org is registered to a Los Angeles resident named John Portaro, who plans to launch an online "memorial park" sometime this year. Heaven.net belongs to NetHeaven, an upstate New York Internet service provider that says it has no plans to use the name as a Web server.
As for Heaven.com, it's the property of --surprise!--Time Warner Cable Broadband Applications. I suppose this means if America Online's pending acquisition of Time Warner goes through, AOL's franchise will now extend beyond this mortal coil. Think about it: One day, souls who reach the Pearly Gates will be greeted not by St. Peter, but by that familiar voice, which will say: "Welcome! You've got halo!"
(See below for a link to Plotnikoff's entire column)
