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Separated at Birth?

A friend recently mentioned that I reminded them of British actor Christopher Eccleston (Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, the 2005 BBC remake of Doctor Who, etc). I must protest - first off, my mother strenuously denies having had twins and given one up for adoption (though I suppose her next line of "One like you was more than enough" could be construed as somewhat ambiguous by the literalist nit-pickers of the world). Second, that would require Eccleston's stated birth date of 16 February 1964 (precisely 9 months and a day after mine...hmmm...but let's stay focused, shall we?) to be false, and we all know that actors never lie about their ages, or anything else, for that matter. Third and most telling, my nose is *much* more prominent than that little nub sported by Mr. Eccleston. Check it out - that's me on the left, and Eccleston on the right:

          

(I must say, he does look rather like a big-nosed version of Ralph Fiennes, though.)

But, I'll let you, dear reader, be the judge - imagine me as a poncy Brit wearing an Elizabethan costume, and then check out these movie stills.

On the subject of lookalikes, another friend of mine once told me that I had the same stubborn lower lip as champion cyclist Lance Armstrong (see photo at right). Actually, there's a reason for that. See, some years ago, when Lance had just started breaking into the upper echelon of world cycling, he comes to me and says he needs some way of getting the other cyclists to take him more seriously - a sort of intimidating glower or some other such aspect that would serve to cow and intimidate his rivals. So I tell him what he needs is a "mien makeover", at which point he says he doesn't like the idea of a trademark glower, since that detracts from the nice-guy aspect he wants to maintain in the media. Then he asks if he could just borrow my lower lip for a couple of months, you know, just for the Worlds and the European summer cycling season, figuring that it'll give him a never-say-die look without detracting from his nice-guy aspect. I say fine, just get it back to me in the fall, preferably in good condition, and buy me a beer or something by way of thanks. No big deal, right? Let me tell you ... some people, all it takes is a little success, and they get all high and mighty on you. Lance, he wins one teeny World Road Racing Championship and a couple Tours de France (all using my lower lip), and suddenly he's not returning my phone calls...frickin' lower-lip-borrowing-and-not-returning deadbeat. I just hope that deep in that black little heart of his he feels like the total fraud he is, knowing that it's really someone else's lower lip that Sheryl Crow is nibbling on during their lovey-dovey nookie-wookie sessions...

http://hogranch.com/mayer/sep_at_birth.html -- Last Revised: 26 May 2005
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