Friday, March 24, 2006

Life imitates art

There's a guy at my work who looks exactly like the Lorax, only taller. Every time I see him I want to pat him on the head and express my deepest regret that his habitat was destroyed. It's seriously all I can do to keep from asking him if he knows he looks like the Lorax.

So I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it made me think of the Simpsons episode when Homer gets bypass surgery. Dr. Nick isn't fully prepared because he accidentally taped-over the surgery show about bypass operations with a talk show about People Who Look Like Things.

Pumpkinhead: All we ask for is a little dignity and a little respect.
Host: [sly] And a new candle every now and then?
Pumpkinhead: Yes, and a new -- [realizes] no!
The ironic thing about the people on the Simpsons talk show is that they all could have greatly reduced their likenesses to pumpkins, brooms, etc. by changing superficial things. Which brings me back to Monsieur Lorax. Does he know? Does he realize that if he trimmed his bushy mustache and combed his hair and improved his posture he could look more like a human and less like some fantastic endangered species? Maybe he does know all this. Maybe he maintains his appearance in order to remind us all to be enviro-friendly. I have been recycling more since I met him.

7 comments:

Nick said...

That episode of Simpsons always reminds me of Elder Holland. I mean absolutely no disrespect, but do you think he owns a bulldog?

JennyW said...
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JennyW said...

Jared--two lines in and I laughed out loud. Great post.

I have a different, but related, problem: people are always telling me that I look/sound/act "just like" their friend/someone they know. In fact, just today one of my students told me that the way I speak and gesture when I'm teaching reminds her of the lawyer in the movie Holes. I'd say this happens to me at least once a week, and more if I'm in a situation where I'm meeting people for the first time. It's kind of odd. First, that it seems to happen to me on a fairly regular basis (could I have some type of "ideal" face and voice?) and second, that no one really ever seems to hesitate to tell me what/who I look/sound like (then again, those comparisons tend to involve real people instead of seussian derivations).

What I really want to know is if any of you think/have thought that I remind you of someone you know ...

JennyW said...

PS: Sorry about my technical difficulties ... I'm still getting the hang of this posting thing.

Anonymous said...

Jenny, you and I have the same problem. Not that it's terribly perplexing for me, but it always drives other people crazy that they don't know where they met me before or that I'm not related to so-and-so, as they were sure I was. I once had a participant in one of my EFY groups that wouldn't talk to me the whole week and even screamed and ran away once because I was some sort of double-incarnation of a boy she had kissed.

I don't know why we've been given this gift. People used to say, "When God made (insert name), He broke the mold." Perhaps our respective molds were reused several times because they were a reliable model, making us sort of the Cadillac of temporal shells.

To answer your question, I've never thought you reminded me of anyone else. Although, once I did meet someone who reminded me of you.

JonF said...

I still have a tendency to wait way too long between haircuts. So the only thing keeping me from the constant "you look like Harry Potter" business is that I wear my contacts almost all the time. Not that it was particularly annoying.
I can change the hair and glasses, but not the scars. . . Maybe duct tape will get rid of those. I'll have to look that up in my book, "1001 Things to do with Duct Tape."

JennyW said...

Jared, I like your Cadillac theory--it's nice to think of it as being reliable and well-built rather than a mass marketed Walmart version.