Totally Looks Like Somebody Should be Riding the Short Bus

Totally Looks Like - part of the vast Cheezburger empire - is, to my mind, one the most egregious examples of the theme of this blog: the power of the internet in the hands of nincompoops. The premise of the site is simple: contributors put up two side-by-side photos, usually one of a celebrity next to someone or something that bears a striking resemble to the celebrity, like the following example:

I don't want to seem like I'm bashing the site itself. I like it for the most part. When it works, it can be very entertaining, but when it fails, it does so catastrophically. I think a common cause of some of these failures (aside from the fact that some people are just stupid) is simple ignorance, especially ignorance of pop culture and history. When you couple ignorance with being too lazy to do a few moments of research as to why two things might be similar, you get results like the following:

Now, I knew about the cover of the Queen album depicted on the right. I was not aware, however, of the image on the left, from the October 1953 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Apparently, whoever contributed this must not have been aware of it either. Then he/she ran across the older image and was struck by the similarity. Yes, that's right: we were both ignorant of the magazine cover, but if I had stumbled across the original image, I probably would have said something like, "Wow, so that's where Queen got the idea for the cover of News of the World." Did the contributor think that Queen was just stealing the image from Frank Kelly Freas? Did she/he think that the two images are just the result of an amazing coincidence? A few moments of Googling would have cleared up any misconceptions. Perhaps he/she knew the truth, but just has a penchant for stating the obvious.

Another example of what must be either a bad case of stating the obvious, or some innate inability to be able to understand why a music group would want to reference a popular advertising icon in order to boost shelf recognition.

Yes, Italy looks like a boot (or "shoe" if you prefer). Everybody knows this. I remember watching an old cartoon on TV when I was kid in which somehow the "boot" gets pulled off the "foot" of Italy, exposing either a stocking or a bare appendage, engendering consternation on the part of the giant body part. I'm sure that as soon as the first cartographer drew Italy hundreds of years ago, someone looking over his shoulder exclaimed, "Hey-a, it's-a boot-a!" (or some equivalent phrase in the stereotypical accent of your choice). Does the person who contributed this think he or she is the first person to note the similarity?

Hey, genius, there's a reason that these two books look alike: the one on the left is a parody of the one on the right. If you don't believe me, here's a link to a page on the internet (you know, the same system of inter-connected computers with a vast storehouse of information available for free and with minimal effort you used to create your little gem) that explains it. Oh, and here's an explanation of parody for future reference.

More of the same sort of idiocy. Collective Soul deliberately used a modified version of the artwork from Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical "Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street". Of course, if you only have a cumulative mental age of about 12, like most of the commenters on totallylookslike.com, you're not going to know about this. One sharper-than-average commenter said, "Wow…something looks exactly like itself…wow…just…wow. Congrats, submitter…you are an idiot", which prompted one of the aforementioned 12 year olds to reply: "Settle down! For a lot of us, Johnny Depp is the only version of Sweeney Todd that we have been exposed to. I would never have made the connection between the two without this submission." Another commenter then replied: "Just because you’re so poorly exposed to society doesn’t mean that [first commenter] doesn’t have a point here. Maybe YOU need to settle down, rather than getting all defensive because you’ve culturally ignorant of things like this." To which I add a hearty "Hear hear!"

This section brings me to one of my pettiest pet peeves with this website; namely, when a contributor refers to an actor not by his real name but by the name of a character he or she has portrayed. Now, I am aware that is essentially what is going on in my example of a good contribution at the top of the page. The difference is that Danny DeVito dressed up as The Penguin from Batman Returns looks very different from Danny DeVito without makeup. You wouldn't say, "Danny DeVito totally looks like Tiny Tim", because he doesn't. Saying "Danny DeVito as The Penguin totally looks like Tiny Tim" would be more accurate, but it is also cumbersome. Sean William Scott playing Stifler, however, looks no different than any other character Seann William Scott has played. How hard is it to look up the name of the actor who played Stifler? I'll tell you: not at all. It took me, like, two seconds.

This brings us to poor little Linda Hunt. At least three contributors noticed her resemblance to Edna Mode from The Incredibles. Unfortunately, none of those contributors could seem to conjure up the necessary wherewithal to find out what her real name is. All three called her by the name of a character she has portrayed. One of them couldn't even figure out the name of the character (Dr. Mittag-Leffler), opting instead to just call her "the shrink of Stranger than fiction [sic]".

I am willing to let the Hetty Lange comparison slide, however. Linda Hunt playing Hetty Lange (from NCIS: Los Angeles) does look the most like Edna Mode because of the identical (in shape if not in size) glasses. I hope Linda Hunt doesn't actually wear those glasses off the set. It's her life, but if she does, she's only inviting people to draw comparisons to a cartoon character. It would be like if Jack Black started parading about in a panda suit.

At first I thought that these three Linda Hunt/Edna Mode references were just more examples of people stating the obvious. I had seen bits of the The Incredibles and I thought Linda Hunt was the voice of Edna Mode. The fact that Edna looks like Linda Hunt I attributed to the fact that Disney and Pixar animators tend to imbue their characters with certain resemblances to the actors who voice them. The fact the Linda Hunt now wears those glasses on NCIS: LA seemed a little creepy to me. I thought maybe she had gone a bit daft and was now modeling herself after her cartoon avatar. A little research turned up that not only was Linda Hunt not the voice of Edna Mode, but that Edna Mode was modeled after famous Hollywood costume designer Edith Head:

Well, that about wraps up my little tirade against people who seem to go all retarded when they see two things that look alike. A note to Totallylookslike.com contributors: it's the internet, people. You don't have to take everything on it as gospel truth, but every piece of missing information from the examples above was supplied by a few minutes of practicing a seemingly lost art called 'r-e-s-e-a-r-c-h'. If this downward trend doesn't reverse itself, we may soon seen a contribution like this:

 

Ashley Olsen totally looks like Mary-Kate Olsen!