This is most probably the weirdest question you’ll be asked all day:  What do Luciano Pavarotti, Peter Ustinov, Buddy Hackett, a famous Japanese sumo wrestler and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop all have in common?

They all look like me.

What a select group, eh?

Over the last 30 years or so, I have had many a conversation that started out, “You know who you look like?”  It turns out I look like pretty much every famous fat guy with a beard.

I can’t remember the last time I was told I looked like George Clooney or Brad Pitt.  Oh, wait a minute, yes I can:  Never.

But one of these days, if C. Everett Koop ever runs afoul of the Mafia, I’m going to have to hire a bodyguard.  The only thing worse than being whacked is being misrecognized and whacked.

It’s actually gone on my whole life.  Because I have a slightly deformed, crooked mouth, when I was a little kid people would always flash on Buddy Hackett.  (The mouth also is the reason I never smile in pictures.)

When I was in Japan in the late 1970s, the most famous, popular sumo wrestler there was a guy who went by the nom de guerre Takamiyama.  He was Hawaiian and, like all sumo wrestlers, a building with feet. My Japanese never was very good, but I could always tell when I was overhearing a conversation about me because I’d hear “Takamiyama.”  It got to the point where I toyed with the idea of passing myself off as him to get some perks, but I wasn’t sure if there were sumo groupies, so I never pursued the notion.

Roger, one of the lifers I worked with in the feed mill, always told me I looked like Peter Ustinov.  I didn’t mind, because I always thought he was pretty talented (Ustinov, not Roger).  Another guy I worked with later occasionally called me “Pavarotti,” which I also didn’t mind for the same reason.  It’s better than being compared to, say, Pauly Shore.

Of course, the whole Koop thing is because of the style of beard we share, rather than any huge resemblance.  For the record, my lack of a mustache has nothing to do with a desire to look like him or, for that matter, to look Amish, although I do like to dress in black.  I don’t have one because I find them uncomfortable and a nuisance.  I don’t know why Koop doesn’t have one.

I shouldn’t complain, though.   I may never have been told I look like a sex symbol, but at least nobody has ever pointed out that I look like Charles Manson or somebody like that.  Now that would be a cross to bear.  Nobody I’m compared to would ever turn heads, but none of those guys would cut one off, either.

Such benign comparisons actually can make for some fun.  On the block where I grew up Ed Lach, who lived next door, was a dead ringer for Johnny Cash.  It was sort of a standing neighborhood joke.  His son, Charlie, was a friend of mine and one day I saw him in the lobby of the high school talking to a particularly attractive girl who was wearing an expression of disbelief.  I walked up, Charlie turned to me and said, “Tom, who’s my dad?”  I caught on right away, of course, and said in a who-else-would-it-be voice, “Johnny Cash.”  But what sealed the deal was when Steve, another guy from the block, walked up and Charlie did the same thing with the same result.  The girl just about freaked.

It only works, thoug,h if you don’t make an effort to look like a famous person.  I’ve been to a few writer’s conferences and there’s always one guy who apparently is trying to win an Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest.  They even try to dress like Hemingway.  That’s just silly, especially if, like me, you don’t much care for Hemingway.  If you want to impress me, walk in looking like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hunter S. Thompson.  Now that would show some style.

And God forbid you should have plastic surgery to look like a famous person.  The Octamom was said to have had some work done to make her resemble Angelina Jolie.  If you squint at a picture of her, I suppose she does, but I personally have neither the money nor the desire for unnecessary plastic surgery, although I would like to get the mouth thing fixed just so I can look sunnier in photographs.

I suppose that had I been smart all these years, I would’ve done what I briefly considered doing with the sumo wrestler and actually tried to pass myself off as one of those guys.  Pavarotti would have been the easiest, although I would have had to fake an Italian accent.  It would’ve worked right up until they pushed me onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.  Once my singing started, the audience would have been bleeding from the ears and the jig would’ve been up, but it would’ve been great good fun right up until then.

Just think of it:  Feted in all the best places in Europe, hanging out with swells, telling made-up stories about other famous people (“That Maria Callas, she was such a minx!”).  Reservations at the most exclusive restaurants.  The satisfaction of throwing a public hissy fit and having everyone scramble to make it better. 

But Pavarotti and Ustinov are dead, so those trains have left the station.  Takamiyama is long retired and nobody in the U.S. has heard of him. Koop just hectors people to quit smoking, so there’s no upside to being him.

Life is just one long series of missed opportunities if you’re fat and bearded.