Branding goes to pot! Or is pot going to branding?

Snoop Dogg has his own line of marijuana. So does Willie Nelson. Melissa Etheridge has a marijuana-infused wine. (Now there's red for meat, white for fish and Etheridge for M&Ms.)

So why is Tattle having such a difficult time launching our pot-infused ginger ale - Cannabis Dry.

Or our idea for a SEPTA Tokin'.

Or our get high french fry made from a new strain of pot-ato.

Guess potheads think Snoop has more cachet. Snoop calls his eight strains of weed "Dank From the Doggfather Himself." Nelson's yet-to-be-released line says the pot is "born of the awed memories of musicians who visited Willie's bus after a show."

Ew.

Consumers, however, have no way of knowing that celebrity-branded pot is any different than what they could get in a baggie from that skeevy kid hanging around the high school.

But with legalization comes big business. Hundreds of marijuana-related patents have likely been requested from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to those who work in the industry.

"They haven't issued a single patent yet," said Eric Greenbaum, director of intellectual property for Ligand Pharmaceuticals, which is seeking to patent a strain of marijuana to treat seizures.

Companies like Ligand are betting that if weed becomes legal nationally, they will be able to claim legal ownership of whichever type of marijuana they have already developed.

For now, though, where there is money to be made in pot, it's being made by lawyers.

Last year, Hershey's sued two companies in Colorado and Washington for selling "Reefer's" peanut butter cups and "Dabby Patty" candies, which resembled Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and York peppermint patties. Both pot companies agreed to stop selling the products and destroy any remaining inventory.

Bertolt Brecht's epic play of war, Mother Courage and Her Children, is having as much conflict offstage as on.

Tony Award-winning actress Tonya Pinkins said she will abruptly leave the Classic Stage Company's revival early next month, claiming the part has been "neutered," "subordinate" and created through "the filter of the white gaze."

Brian Kulick, the artistic director of the company acknowledged there was an "impasse" and that "we couldn't hear each other anymore." The play is about a woman who profits on the bloodshed around her and needs war to support her family.

In the CSC revival, the play's setting was changed from the Thirty Years War to the Congo and the script was cut.

Pinkins complained the shift to Africa was "a decorative motif" and it was not clear to her until technical rehearsals that the revival's view of the heroine "was of a delusional woman trying to do the impossible."

She claimed in a statement that her "Mother Courage" was left speechless and powerless.

Kulick said in a statement he had "great respect" for Pinkins both as a theater artist and activist and, "I am so sorry that over the course of this production our views on Mother Courage diverged."

Pinkins will continue to play the part through Jan. 3 but said, "My Mother Courage is too big for CSC's definition. So it is best that they find someone to 'fit in,' because I cannot."

The company plans to continue the production with replacement casting to be announced.

* New York Post movie critic Kyle Smith said that Carrie Fisher's complaining about being judged on her appearance, is silly.

"Fisher made millions off being pretty," he said. "Far from being bitter about this, she and other actresses who profited nicely from their looks should be grateful they had a turn at the top."

"Fisher is a public figure. If she didn't want the public to talk about her, she could have spent the last 40 years teaching kindergarten," Smith wrote.

Gosh, we hope Fisher responds.

* Also a public figure: Sarah Silverman.

Silverman has been taking a fair amount of heat for her holiday tweet, "MERRY CHRISTMAS! Jesus was gender fluid!"

E! News reports that Silverman responded to the backlash by writing, "I prefer not to respond to nonsense but . . . I was in Wales w my boyfriend and his family. I was sitting in the car on the way to Christmas at his sister's and figured I'd sent out a Christmas tweet. Decided to add on a word from our collective vocabulary since, to me, it's funny, beautiful, and true in that He is all of us. The absolute best is when the (adorable) haters write 'I'd like to see you make fun of Jews!' Um, hi, have we met??"

Happy New Year!

- Daily News wire services

contributed to this report.

Email: gensleh@phillynews.com

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