Roll Call: Calling Mr. Fat and Sloppy!

I call roll in a different, silly way each day. I'll call roll by middle names - I say your name, you tell me your middle name. I'll do it by nickname, by the name of your favorite relative, by the last good movie you saw or book you read. It keeps the students on their toes, allows them to reveal a little about themselves in a safe way, and it entertains the heck out of me.

So today's roll call topic was "Who do people tell you that you look like?" Between my two classes, I have a Sylvester Stallone, a J-Lo, a Mya, an Omar Epps, a Princess Jasmine, a Liv Tyler, and a gaggle of people who say they look like their siblings or parents.

I told them about Suzanne's insistence that I look like Christian Slater. First of all, half of them didn't know who that is. (Which is a bad sign for Christian - but he's been on that downhill slide since Kuffs in 1992.) Second of all, those who do know who that is said, "No. In fact, you look like the guy from Knocked Up." With horror and disgust on my face, I said, "Not Seth Rogen?!" And with glee and evil on their faces, they said, "Yes, exactly! That guy!"

So in my second class of the day, I called roll the same way and started to plead my case to them, saying, "The other class thought I look like Seth Rogen." At least two people said, "I've thought that since the first day of class!"

I then excused myself to the hall where I cried softly for a time and then raised my fists in rage, crying, "Why?! Why have I gotten so fat and sloppy?!" Then I drove to the nearest Rally Burger and bought two milkshakes and an order of deep-fried lard balls to drown my sorrows.

So I did an image search to see if it's as bad as all that. My main problem was, I couldn't even begin to imagine any resemblance. Not having seen Knocked Up, Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin, or any of his other super-naughty films, I didn't have a strong sense of what the guy looks like.

This is the primary image I have of him in my head:



Nothing doing, right? Well, I searched around a little more and found this:



If I had a camera with me right now, I'd take a photo of myself in my white shirt and tie, with my little square glasses, and my week's worth of facial growth. I'd post it near the above picture so everyone could say, "Hey, wow, Mark really does resemble that chubby, super-foul guy. Lucky him."

Yeah, my life is sweet. It used to be Christian Slater who at least at one time was considered a sex symbol. Now I've slid down the scale to resembling the chubby, funny guy. Awesome. Kevin James, here I come.