Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Faces and Places

Reading a magazine yesterday, I came upon a photograph of multi-billionaire Warren Buffett.


I was reminded of the time not so long ago that a woman said that I looked like Mr. Buffett.

“No,” I replied, “I don't have his looks; I have his money.”

A few years before that, I was at Carnegie Hall when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was another woman with an idea of someone I resembled. “Are you the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky?” she inquired.

“I'm not Russian; I'm not a baritone; and I can't carry a tune,” I replied.


It must have been the hair.

The earliest alleged resemblance that I can recall at this late date was to the actor Oskar Homolka.


It must have been the cigar.

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Other places, other questions.

On streets in cities from Montreal to Buenos Aires and from Los Angeles to London, I have routinely been asked by strangers for directions. It must be the urbane cosmopolitanism of my looks and demeanor makes people believe that wherever I may be that I am native there and to the manner born (to slightly revise Hamlet).

Then again, there might not be anyone else around for them to ask.



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