Rogues' Gallery #7: CLIFFORD "CLIFF" JONES

Once, in his youth, Clifford had dreamed he would someday be famous. He wasn’t sure how or why, he only knew that it was fated.

Being a career celebrity like Paris Hilton or Charles Nelson Reilly would be perfect, but those gigs were hard to get.

At first, he suspected he may find fame through sports… basketball, perhaps. However, his vertical growth stopped at five foot two, foiling that possibility.

Music was his next calling. His music was loud enough that no one really noticed he was tone-deaf, but having the rhythm sense of a sick ferret in a washing machine prevented him from ever having wide appeal. His recording career was abandoned, leaving behind a legacy of one unlabeled half-blank cassette tape.

Acting was the next obvious choice. He moved to Hollywood, and started wearing sunglasses all of the time. Getting into movies he found surprisingly easy (or at least into movie studios), but his tendency to ad-lib during scenes that he wasn’t a part of kept getting him eighty-sixed from sets.

Having exhausted the obvious choices for acquiring fame Clifford considered some less obvious ones. Politics was only for ugly people. He wasn’t smart enough to invent something. He had no talent for art.

His epiphany came to him in the early hours of a warm winter evening. Without hesitation, he grabbed the semi-automatic from the basement closet, gently set it in his Shaquille O’Neal duffle bag, put on his ray-bans and headed for the mall.