October 2006 Archives

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, or perhaps merely the spirit of overwhelming self-absorption, I decided to test the photo-recognition program at myheritage.com by using a different photo of myself--the one that graces my biography page at this website:



This pic was taken by my friend Sarah R (Hi, Sarah!) at Amigos Restaurant in Charlottesville in what I believe was the spring of 2002; it was a snapshot, taken with minimal preparation on either my part or Sarah's, and it may be the best photo of me ever taken. But who does it look like? And will it be the same cast of characters? Do I have the same gravitas as Primo Levi? Am I really as glam as Kristin Davis? And will my resemblance to Alexis Denisof help me sell books to Buffy fans?

The second set of results suggests... no. Mostly no, anyway.

Based on this shot, the celebrity who most resembles me is not Primo Levi after all:



Instead, I'm a dead ringer for Richard Dreyfuss (67%). OK, reasonable, though I'm not that grey yet.

In 2nd place, at 64%, is this middle-aged, bespectacled semi-Jewish white guy:



Dave Chappelle. Fine with me, though Dave may find it a bit puzzling.

But then things start getting a bit... weirder.

At 58%, we get another comedian:



Bob Saget. Ow. At least I look more like Chappelle.

But just behind Bob comes yet another member of the Buffyverse at 57%--not Wesley again, but also not Giles, not Xander, not Angel, not even Spike:



Yes, it's Faith, played by Eliza Dushku. And the fact that I've always thought Eliza was particularly hot makes this resemblance particularly... disturbing... I might go so far as to say "ooky."

Finally, however, I regain some dignity thanks to my 55% resemblance to this literary lion:



That's science fiction legend Stanislaw Lem, author of the brilliant "Trurl's Electric Bard," among other wonderful stories.

And somehow I have little trouble imagining Lem sitting down to write a story about how people in the future waste their time by comparing their photographs to those of celebrities...

7:19 PM

OK, here's a new internet oddity--determining which celebrities you resemble via photo analysis. Yes, the folks at myheritage.com have the technology.

I used my catalogue photo from work--it's about five years old, I believe:



Going through its files, myheritage.com found a variety of matches, some perhaps more believable than others. None used the photos I'm including here, but here are the celebs they claim I look like.





Number One, at 67% similarity:



But of course! Celebrated Italian writer and Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi!


Number Two, at 55%




Uh... OK. That's Sex and the City's Kristin Davis. Riiiiiight.


Tied for Number Three, with 54% each:





















You guessed it--model Carmen Kass and Buffyverse staple Alexis Denisof!


And finally, with just over 50% similarity:



Yep, it's Sean "Boromir" Bean. "Gondor has no headshot... Gondor needs no headshot."









It's a fun exercise, though it missed out on my most obvious celebrity doppelganger:







Yes, only Bruce Campbell has the chin necessary to be classed with yrs. truly.

5:33 PM

At long last, we're done with our last Parents' Weekend, my grades and comments are turned in, and I stand a reasonable chance of actually reading something longer than a comic book sometime soon.

But today's big news: John Bunting is out.

After a year where UNC's football team was approaching the status of national joke--in other words, approaching that of Duke football--the Powers That Be have decided Bunting will not return to the sidelines next year.

I can't argue with that decision. Carolina has been outscored 195-60 in its six games against Division I opponents. (For purposes of comparison, winless Duke has been outscored 181-51 in its six D-I games.) Yes, UNC has a win, but it was against a D-IAA Furman, and it was by only a field goal, after we'd given up 42 points and over 500 yards of total offense to the Paladins. And frankly, I don't think "Three points better than IAA!" is much of a rallying cry.

The vitriol levelled at Bunting has made me sad, though. The guy was a true stud among studs during his days as a UNC linebacker--back in the days when we were producing good linebackers on a regular basis. For years, from the 60s through the 80s, you could count on UNC to produce NFL-caliber linebackers, offensive linement, and tailbacks. That was it, though--we didn't send a lot of QBs or wideouts to the bigs, and our secondary was awful for years (until Steve Streater, Bracey Walker, and Dre Bly finally broke the mold.) And Bunting took obvious pride in being back at his alma mater, with the Old Well Walks and the singing of UNC fight songs and a real attempt to connect with the fans. (I mean really, can you imagine former UNC coach Dick Crum singing "I Zigga Zoomba" in public?)

He was a solid NFL assistant by all counts--and as St. Louis's linebacker coach, he helped the Rams to their Super Bowl win. Alas, he just didn't seem to know how to put together a winning program. A clean program? Sure. A proud program? Yep. But not a winner. I'm sorry that it had to come to this, but I think it was time for Bunting to coach elsewhere.

Now all we've got to do is find a new guy who can run a football program worthy of Roy Williams' basketball, Anson Dorrance's soccer, and Mike Fox's baseball programs. It won't be easy, but I have an idea for the interview: Tell the candidates to sing their school fight songs.

If they can't do it, we should look elsewhere.

10:35 PM

***GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASP!***

Sorry... It's just that I've... been swimming... under the surface... for about... a week.

Occasionally the WFS weather patterns create a "perfect storm" of factors causing the faculty's heads to go under. Over the past two weekends, those factors have included one parents' weekend, a Sunday dorm duty, a swarm of writing conferences, the second draft of my speech students' original oratories, a Sunday ropes course duty, my first college recommendation letter coming due, and yesterday's noon deadline for grades and comments. And this coming weekend, I'm looking at our second parents' weekend and a Saturday dorm duty.

Yes, it's fall at the Forest, where the only sure thing is that there's something else you were supposed to be doing while you were doing that other thing you had to do. After a string of five-hour-a-night sleeps last week, I officially Went Under, but now that I've turned in my grades, I've had a chance to come back up for a lungful or two.

Let's hope the waters recede soon. Our headmaster has traditionally ordered a free day somewhere near Halloween, and this year it would come as an extremely welcome order.

On the plus side:
*I saw the year's first Palm Warbler on Sunday
*I may be moderating a panel at this March's Virginia Festival of the Book (more later)
*My fantasy teams (the Fighting Coelacanths of FLOGG and the Scrub Jays of Number Crushers) both have winning records.
*I've lost about five pounds over the last couple of weeks... somehow...
*I've got a shiny new travel mug for my coffee.
*I finally got in touch with fellow Chapel Hillian Will Blythe (author of To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever) and thanked him for quoting me on page 213.
*I'm only three episodes from the end of Season Two of Lost.
*UNC has started basketball practice.
*Halloween's only two weeks away!

2:27 PM

Political bloggers far more able than I have spent the past few weeks (and months, and even years) doing a better job than I can of dissecting the state of our nation's leadership, but with less than a month before Election Day, I feel it necessary to pick up my own scalpel, however dull it may be, and drive it right into the helpless pickled corpse laid out before me.

And if you think there's a message in using the metaphor of a dead, formaldehyde-soaked frog, you're right--and you've been following the news.

I live in an area where all my national representatives are Republicans: my Congressman, my President, and both my Senators. One of the latter, John Warner, is a seemingly decent man who owns both a backbone and a sense of shame, as evidenced by his repeated refusal to genuflect toward idols chosen by his party. I first observed this about him back in 1994, when Oliver North was running for Congress--the same Congress he'd famously lied to concerning his illegal activities in funneling our tax dollars to anti-government guerrillas in Nicaragua. Warner felt that perhaps this demonstrated a certain contempt for the laws created by the legislative body in question, not to mention the body itself, and refused to support North's campaign.

In more recent months, he was among the group of GOP Senators (along with John McCain & Lindsay Graham) who refused to swallow the Bush administration's insistence that the Geneva Conventions were a significant barrier to national security. Mind you, I'm not happy that he voted in favor of a compromise bill that still bursts at the seams with legal and ethical problems (such as the executive's supposed ability to deny habeas corpus, or to determine for itself what constitutes "support" for terrorism), but at least he was willing to stand in front of the oncoming Bush tank with a shopping bag, which is more than most of his colleagues have done in the past five years. I don't love Warner, but I respect him, which is why he's the only one of the aforementioned national representatives for whom I've cast my ballot. But he's not running this year.

My feelings about George W. Bush have been the subject of previous entries here, particularly during the run-up to November of 2004: in short, I think he's the worst president of my lifetime. Worse than his father. Worse than Johnson or Reagan or Kennedy. Far worse than Clinton. Worse even than the hapless Ford, the overmatched Carter, or the soulless, Machiavellian Nixon. He has damaged our nation in ways that we'll be discovering for years to come, and I will celebrate his final hours in office with a relief and joy that is probably unbecoming in a man who supports Constitutional government. But he's not running this year, either.

So what about the guys who ARE running--Senator George Allen and Representative Eric Cantor ? Do I support their return to D.C.?

Even if Allen hadn't failed to disclose his stock options in a high-tech firm as required by Senate rules, so that his votes could be clearly seen as unaffected by his personal interests... even if Cantor didn't have a 92% rating from the Christian Coalition and a 7% rating from the ACLU... even if Allen, a carpetbagger from California, hadn't been stupid enough to direct a racial slur and the cry of "Welcome to America!" at a Virginia-born man while the man was holding a video camera... even if Cantor hadn't repeatedly voted for Constitutional amendments to outlaw flag burning and gay marriage, two threats to our Republic that rank somewhere below psoriasis and bad grammar... even if Allen hadn't been sporting Confederate flags since the mid-60s, when they were an unmistakable display of contempt for the Civil Rights movement... even if both of them were not rubber stamps for the Bush administration's incompetence and moral bankruptcy... I still wouldn't vote for them.

Why not? Because they're incumbents.

The current Congress's lack of initiative is historic in scope: it has accomplished virtually nothing. Whether the question is Iraq, the economy, recovery from Hurrican Katrina, energy policy, North Korea, Social Security, the national debt, Iran, you name it, nothing substantive has been done about it by this Congress--a Congress controlled by the Republicans in both houses, with a Republican President who has vetoed exactly one bill in his two terms.

The current Congress's lack of integrity is equally historic. The common complaints of influence peddling and bribery grew to a flood thanks to the efforts of former GOP strongman Tom DeLay, and the waters of the resulting Abramoff scandal are still rising. But even that flood has been lost in the maelstrom surrounding the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley and the revelation that his habitual e-pursuit of Congressional pages was known to the GOP leadership as long ago as 2000. To put personal and partisan concerns over those of one's constituents is inexcusable; to put them over those of sixteen-year-olds working in the Capitol is contemptible.

Thus, the members of the current Congress are at best incompetent legislators. Some have committed actions that are inexcusable. Still others are worthy of nothing more than our contempt.

If you have a vote, then, use it in this Congressional election. Use it to send the incumbents home. Until they are proven to be parts of the solution, assume that your representative and your senator are parts of the problem, and do what you can to remove that problem.

Don't vote based on partisan concerns or habit or loyalty to the Congressman you've become familiar with. Over ninety percent of incumbents are re-elected to Congress, mostly out of simple name recognition. It's a job for life, so long as you don't make a serious mistake.

This Congress has made a serious mistake. My representatives and yours alike--all of them--have begun to believe that they are not answerable to the people.

It is time to make them pay for that mistake.

6:57 AM

October is here, leaving us only a few months before the January release of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash! Pre-order now to reserve your copy, featuring PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus other Cash-inspired writings by Gayle Brandeis, Russell Rowland, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others!

I was somewhere near the top of the switchback section on Old Rag Mountain's Ridge Trail when I stopped in my tracks and cried out, "Whoa!" Jim and Paul, the other two faculty members in our school's Rapidan Outdoors Program, were a few paces ahead of me at the time, and both turned around sharply, obviously concerned about me.

And they had good reason to be, honestly. Aside from the fact that the Ridge Trail is a vigorous hike--about 90 minutes of walking up switchbacks through the forest, followed by another hour-plus of scrambling over exposed rock and leveraging yourself through cracks in the granite mountaintop--this was really my first day back in Rapidan after a solid week and a half of infection-related absence. Stamina is not my main strength as an outdoorsman anyway, and after such a long layoff, when even loading the dishwasher was a physical challenge for me, I'm sure they were worried that I wouldn't be able to handle more than an about an hour's ascent.

As I said, I don't blame them a bit for worrying, but I'm beginning to appreciate some things about myself in relation to the outdoors.

I started working with Rapidan in the fall of 2004, and after that season decided I'd need more direct experience with camping, hiking, climbing, and kayaking if I was going to be useful to the program. Hence, during the following summer I spent two weeks in North Carolina at NC Outward Bound and the Nantahala Outdoor Center; I hardly consider myself an expert outdoorsman as a result of that instruction, but I did learn that being outdoors can make even a crappy day in the rain into something worthwhile.

No matter how tired I am--and believe me, by the top of Old Rag's switchback section, my thigh muscles were barely working--I feel better for having exhausted myself outside. Sometimes I can get that kind of buzz in the gym, after a particularly savage session on the elliptical machine or something, but it's only occasional. When I strap on my hiking boots, or even leverage myself into the uncomfortable confines of a kayak, I always come back feeling better. Even when I'm sweaty, mosquito-bitten, and dosed with poison ivy, I'm full of endorphins and optimistic.

And sometimes there's even a reason. Friday, for example, I was preparing for my first kayak trip in months, perched atop the bank of the Rapidan, covered in neoprene, and wondering if I could still remember how to do a roll properly. The paddling jacket was too warm, the helmet uncomfortably hard against my left ear, and the strap of my life jacket too tight, but I wasn't concerned about that, because there was a bird in a low tree on the bank near me. Its belly was creamy white, but its upper breast was dark, with a clean line dividing the two; at first I thought it was a very, very early junco. I peered into the leaves and pished, and it kept hopping around, but I didn't have a clue about its identity until I spied a small patch of white along the edge of its wing--the telltale "pocket handkerchief" of the Black-throated Blue Warbler. This is a bird I'd seen exactly once before--and even then, I did so only through binoculars, as it was high in the canopy of a tulip poplar somewhere near Lillington, NC. This one was clean, dark, and no further from me than the length of a kayak, welcoming me back to the river, to the world outside, and to health.

All of which may help explain why I was standing high on Old Rag last Tuesday, cocking my head and saying "Whoa." There, following a good two weeks of carrying around a head thoroughly stuffed with mucus and other goo, after suffering through pain, pressure, and sleepless nights that actually had me in tears on several occasions, I suddenly felt something shift in my left ear. It wasn't painful--merely surprising. There was a long, loud, rushing sound, sort of like the swirling winds that lead off side two of Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick, and I realized I was hearing something I usually don't notice: air moving through my eustachian tube. It was open at last, and the pressure on either side of my eardrum was equalized. I might be sore, exhausted, and even slightly dehydrated, but I was getting better at last. In fact, I realized, there under the still-green autumn leaves of the Appalachian forest, I was better. I always am better out there.

Want a cure for what ails you? Climb a mountain!

12:54 PM