The Orange Bowl game may not be what it once was -- can't we get Michael McDonald like the Fiesta Bowl? -- but that's not stopping its mascot. Obie the Orange has finally topped our previous favorite Orange Bowl mascot-related visual (courtesy EDSBS) with a self-styled Twitpic booty call to a chart-topping pop star.

That's right, Obie has a Twitter, if not the proper parts for a mascot-to-human love connection, and he put it to heartfelt use a few days ago.

"I'll be at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach tonight," he wrote to Lady Gaga, who was in town for a couple of sold-out shows. "Care to meet before your concert?" 

Sounds friendly enough, right? Check out what he managed to attached with his (relatively) little gloved hands:

Multiple fonts! Three different colors! Painstaking digital creativity! As if that wasn't forward enough, he'd already "tweeted" at her twice previously, which means one thing: Obie's behavior is escalating dangerously. Next thing you know, he'll be on Fox making Panthers staffers seem like eunuchs by comparision.

(Or, alternately, married to Lady Gaga and adopting children. She has yet to respond, but she just might be into that whole orb-shaped and smooth-like-a-Ken-doll thing.)

So how does Obie type? Draw hearts? Love? Settle on Lady Gaga, instead of someone more species-appropriate? Who knows. But if you cut him, does he not bleed stuffing? Mayn't even a flame-colored blob burn passionately, or have needs? 

Um, maybe. In this case, it's probably best not to ask.

Janie Campbell figures Obie got sick of Sebastian the Ibis' castoffs and figured what the heck. Her work has appeared in irreverent sports sites around the Internet.