A House on Newbury Street
Back in the day before House was in syndication, when, as far as I can tell, it was only watched by waitresses and my Aunt Mindy — we're talking 2005-2006 here — only waitresses and my Aunt Mindy would stop me and tell me I looked like House. My Aunt Mindy was actually the first, and didn't feel the need to qualify the observation with "in a good way," like every waitress (and they are legion) who has ever told me has.
Since then, I've gotten used to the waitresses. That's de rigueur. But as House has become a household name the meme has spread to shop clerks, flight attendants, cabbies, and colleagues and students at the college where I work. But today it went to a whole nutha level.
I'm biking down Newbury Street on my way to the Urban Outfitters at the Mass Ave. end, and I pass that spot where the skateboarders all hang out making a nuisance of themselves. It's after dark already. And yet, as I ride past I hear them — first one, then a whole chorus:
"Doctor House! Doctor House!"
Now, I don't think I look like House at all from any vantage point I myself am privy to, but even if I did slightly resemble Hugh Laurie, in a good way of course, in a certain light, I can't believe I could resemble him to the point where twenty-odd skateboarder punks hanging out on Newbury Street would be calling after me as I passed by in the dark.
Not that I'm complaining exactly. I actually like House. I just hope I can continue to show my face around town when the series jumps the shark.
Shave that beard and your problem resolved.
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Ah, my friend -- while that might solve one problem it would create many others.
Most men look better the older they get the more of their faces are covered up, don't you think? When people start getting curious about what's going on under the scruff, I tell them a story from some years ago when my mother was nagging me incessantly to shave.
Finally I gave in.
“Oh, you shaved,” she said. “I like the beard better.”
Now, that may say more about my mother than the beard, but feedback from other sources on the rare occasions in recent memory I have ventured out clean-shaven has has mostly confirmed this -- friends either like the beard better or are oblivious/indifferent -- in which case why would I bother to shave?
I tend to like my men a little scruffy, too.
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Hmm...what about making the scruff a bit more radical/19th c.-ish or Fu Manchu? (Not too serious a suggestion, but the edgy strung-out biker [or Richard Burton, not the Liz Taylor one] look might be passing amusing and nobody'd connect it to Hugh Laurie...)
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Ooh -- radical scruff! I like it!
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You're resembling Dr House makes my dick hard as a rock and leak through my jeans.
Is that something with which to tamper?
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Hey, I'll take it.
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