My doppelgängers

I may never have been a tall man, but I did have two things going for me: A 28-inch-waist and a ardently admired head of hair. (A little guy named Sotaro who sat behind me in my classical studies class in first year proclaimed himself a "big fan" of my hair.) Now that hair is much diminished and I'm increasingly described as "stocky".

Consequently, I've had a growing fear for the last few years of one day being compared to Seinfeld's George Costanza. Finally it happened. "You know you you remind me of?" my friend Krista said. "George Constanza." I made an anguished noise. "Oh, I didn't mean physically," she said. "Personality-wise." I was relieved. Then I was upset again because George Costanza actually had a pretty loathsome personality.

But at least I don't look like him. So while I've dodged that bullet, I have been compared to a few famous faces from time to time. I present to you my celebrity doppelgängers:

I used to get compared to Bruce McCulloch of The Kids in the Hall fairly often. Fair enough. He's actually my favorite Kid, and I do grant a certain superficial resemblance. Plus, the hair was similar, and I used to dress kind of like him and even walk like him. I played this up once by going to a costume party dressed as his character Gavin.


My ex-girlfriend used to say I resembled adult film actor Peter North. Sadly, she only meant that I looked like him from the neck up. I mentioned this supposed facial resemblance the other day. "Who's Peter North?" my innocent co-worker Julie asked. "A really ugly porn star," she was told. I can't win.


In my last year of university, it occurred to me that it was my last shot at growing my hair long before entering the working world and eventually going bald, so I did. Around this time, people started saying I looked like David Spade. Needless to say, I cut my hair. Yet, I still get this comparison from time to time. When pressed, people say the similarity is in the personality. This is obviously worse than the George Costanza thing.


One odd evening, Jay and I found ourselves cast into the unlikely role of gigolos by two of his female co-workers whom we met in a bar and who insisted on buying us drinks and paying for us to play pool. One of them told me that I looked like Kevin Bacon, "only better looking." It should be clear to you now that she was six degrees away from sobriety. I suppose she was right about there being a resemblance around the nose, though.


I was once told I looked like a much shorter version of Bill Nye, the Science Guy. I don't get it. However, while reading the Wikipedia entry on Bill Nye, I read that he announced his engagement on The Late Late Show last month. I, on the other hand, remain single. The logical consequence of this is that despite his handicapping himself by wearing a bowtie, Bill Nye is more attractive than I am.


No one has ever agreed with me on this, but I personally think that before I cut my hair, I looked just a little bit like Christopher Guest circa his run on Saturday Night Live in 1984–1985. This may, however, be just some sort of weird subconscious manifestation of my longtime desire to mate with Jamie Lee Curtis, to whom he has been married since he was on SNL. If you hear about anyone murdering him and wearing his face as a mask Hannibal Lecter-style, it's probably me.


Via ChampagneMinimalist, I discoved a site called MyHeritage that lets you upload a picture of yourself and then searches a database to find out what celebrities you look most like. I uploaded a picture of myself taken a couple of Christmasses ago that I'd always thought was a fairly good one even though I was deliberately fattening myself up like a prize hog in order to win a body transformation contest at work when it was taken. But to my horror, MyHeritage said I looked like slovenly murdered Dutch film director Theo van Gogh.


Wanting to regain some self-esteem, I uploaded a picture of myself taken during the contest, at a point when I'd lost 41 pounds and cropped my hair to an eighth of an inch and theoretically looked the best I've ever looked in my life. Not so, said MyHeritage. I looked like Billy Corgan, it said. Despite all my rage, I still look like a guy with a head so egg-shaped that his grey matter is yellow.


You can see now, perhaps, why I have not allowed any pictures of me to be posted on the web.