The Eyes of Laurie From Mars

Spent the last three days obsessing over Slate.com's Oscar ID contest, featuring small bits of famous people's faces. The challenge is to identify, say, REESE WITHERSPOON from her chinny smile alone, or (easy one) Christopher Walken from his jujube forehead. A friend and I had a small but bitter disagreement--the sort you can have with a friend who has trod the path to middle age with you for many many a year and who has seen/heard you throw up or actually wreck a toilet--about whether one set of rather blank eyes belong to Sean Astin or not. She says not. I says yes way, I says. I actually woke up last night at 3.30 and went on Google to see if I could finally convince myself one way or another that I was right. When I came to myself, it was 4.45 and I had just spent 1.25 hours that I will never get back trolling the internet for publicity stills of an actor that I cannot stand. I've seen him with no shirt on (MAKE IT STOP). with his wife, without his wife, in mug shots for "Rudy," which, as I now can vouch from personal experience, is the tale of a complete moron and I don't care if that's sensitive or not, he tried to make a ballroom full of rich octogenarian supporters of a Catholic college sing the theme song from "Barney" as a testament to all that is good in the world as opposed to the crap that they make you read in university and this is a TOTAL aside but still, holy God, the guy got paid for that and as he kept saying over and over again, now he's rich and lives in Las Vegas, so think about that. I don't know which is worse, this Sam, your Sam with no shirt on business, or the pesky Lorenzo Lamasproblem that I had for more years than I can count. Tonight I take some Lunesta and try hard to sleep through the urge to dawdle over picture #4. Jack Lemmon? Meryl Streep? Charlize Theron? Haley Joel Osment? They all look so damn much alike.