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02/08/2003

Separated At Birth

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I was watching The Larry Sanders Show: The Complete First Season yesterday (Thanks, Netflix!) and I got the shock of my life. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, it was probably the shock of the year. Hmmm. No, it wasn't that big of a deal. I guess it was the shock of the... um, afternoon I guess. Anyway, one of the bonus tracks on the DVD was Gerry Shandling being interviewed by Tom Shales, television critic for the Washington Post. Also, Shales is the author of Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live a book I just finished and enjoyed. For some reason, I always pictured Tom Shales as a hip, funky, happening dude. But he's not. He's just Roger Ebert.

I don't mean that in a mean way. Perhaps I do, but I don't want it to sound like that. I love Roger Ebert. Well, I love his work. I don't want to consider actual Ebert-love. But Ebert has always been on T.V. so I've come to know what he looks like. He looks like a guy who enjoys sitting in a theater, watching movies while eating popcorn and drinking soda and then going back to write on a computer all day and night. What do you expect that guy to look like? I'd look like that guy you're imagining if I got to go to all the movies that Roger gets to go to. But I trust anything Roger Ebert says about movies over any other movie critic. And that the same with Shales. Although I don't read his work as much because it's not in my local newspaper. And I don't get a chance to see him because he doesn't appear regularly on T.V. like Ebert. In fact, I've never seen him before today. And now I find he IS Ebert.

I just find it odd that the two critics that I trust for their opions of their respective mediums look so much alike. As I am so often wont to say, so sue me.

Roger Ebert