One of my all time favorite things about the internet is the full, free archive of This American Life. I discovered the podcast about a year ago and it immediately became an institution in our household. I listen to it while I paint. The mister and I usually listen to it while we drift off to sleep. He’s even downloaded a bunch of shows to his mp3 player so we’d be entertained on a long roadtrip.

Laying in bed and listening to the now familiar voices reach out in the darkness, I often find myself laughing, once in a while crying and sometimes absolutely enraged by the always entertaining stories. But most of all I feel comforted. My favorite storytellers are so familiar now they feel like friends.

So when Emily mentioned that she was going to see a live taping of the show, I was, of course, immensely jealous, but also left to ponder how strange it would be to actually see the owners’ of those voices. I had pretty vivid images of what Ira Glass (*swoon*) and David Sedaris (love love love) looked like, but it wasn’t until I was commenting on Emily’s blog that I took a moment to really figure out where those visions in my imagination had come from. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that they’re just other celebrities, and…uh…not particularly flattering at that.

First off, Ira Glass:

He’s totally rocking the nerd hotness in real life and though my imaginary version isn’t that far off, I was horrified when I deduced where that blurry vague image of him was coming from – none other than scumbag of the decade, Howard K. Stern (otherwise known as suitcase pimp of the late Anna Nicole):

David Sedaris is one of my favorite authors and I’m sure I had a different picture of him rolling around my bean when I was just reading his words, but after I heard his quirky voice as he read one of his stories aloud this is the vision of him that stuck:

Yup, that’d be John Cage of “Ally McBeal” (also known as Peter MacNicol). Here’s the real David:

Not even close!

I wonder if people do that with artists too…see a painting & imagine the face & persona who created it. I wonder what people would guess I look like based on my paintings. Based on my examples here? I don’t think I want to know!