Bid low for Thanksgiving dinner with Ozzy Osbourne

For most Americans, Thanksgiving is a chance to reconnect with family and friends, to share some roast bird with aunt Sally and uncle Bert and maybe to get stuck in some airport somewhere.

Some people spend the day having dinner at home, and some with friends. Well, if you're the lowest bidder, you might have a new family to spend Turkey Day with: The (Ozzy) Osbournes.

It's true. It's part of a promotion for SoLow.com, a site that rewards people trying to make the lowest unique bid for some sort of prize, in this case the right to eat Ozzy's "homecooked Yorkshire Pudding at his new pad in L.A."

The winner will also get tickets to an Ozzy concert in San Diego, as well as a few hundred bucks in cash and a hotel room in LA.

The way it works, as I understand it is that you visit Solow's site and make a bid for the prize, say, 25 cents. The winner is the person who makes the lowest unique bid. Anyone will be able to try three times for free, and after that they'll get charged 99 cents.

Now, I'm not sure who would want to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the Osbournes. I would be afraid he'd try to rip off my head and serve it with some sort of sweetmeat. But that's me.

For others, however, it might be the event of a lifetime.

The question is, with an odd but interesting bidding system like this, what will be the lowest unique bid? It's actually likely to be fairly high, since everyone will start out trying to bid a penny, 2 cents, 3 cents and so on. Pretty soon, depending on how many people play, you're talking real money.

I'll make my bid negative $1.23. I wonder if that will work? If so, I guess I'll be telling my wife Thanksgiving dinner with her family is off this year.