MONSTER DAD: Separated at Birth?

Monday, November 21, 2011

Separated at Birth?

Remember those old "Separated at Birth" books that came out back in the 1980s? They were humorous looks at people (generally celebrities or politicians, but occasionally animals) who seemed to resemble each other in photos. They'd put the two photos side by side for comic effect. I think that Jay Leno or David Letterman used to do a similar skit on one of their shows. Anyway, I guess that the idea never really went away. I had one of the books (and probably still do have it, just need to track it down), but kind of lost interest in the subject over time. I haven't done much research (and it wouldn't take much), but I'm sure there are now plenty of websites and other online sources dedicated to this kind of thing.

Here are the two "Separated at Birth?" books from the 1980s:

Which brings me to the point of this blog. I recently stumbled upon something to add to the Separated at Birth list. I haven't had cable for close to ten years. This means that I've missed out on a lot of the big must-see cable-based shows of the last decade ("The Sopranos", "Mad Men", "Weeds"...). Of course this doesn't explain why I've never seen a single episode of the show "24". That show was on Fox, which is, of course, a broadcast network. Well, thanks to the internet, Netflix and DVDs, I've been able to catch up on some of the stuff I've missed over the years (like "Battlestar Galactica", "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Breaking Bad"). The Wife got me a Roku box for my birthday and we've been streaming a lot of stuff on our TV from Netflix through the Roku unit. We've subscribed to Netflix for a long time, but have mostly gotten DVDs from them through the mail. We never really did much "instant viewing" on the computer. Now that we can do it on the TV instead we're getting into it more.

Thanks to the convenience and instant availability of Netflix streaming, we finally started watching "24" recently. The show started a decade ago in 2001, and there are apparently close to 200 episodes. That number feels just a wee bit daunting to us at the moment. We've only seen about half of the first season so far and have a long way to go. So what, you might ask, does all have to do with "Separated at Birth"? Please let me explain...

When you go onto the Netflix channel on Roku and search for "24" a certain image from the show shows up on the screen as an icon of sorts. I see this image every time we start and finish watching an episode of the show. It is an action shot of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) jumping onto a taxi while firing his pistol at (presumably) some bad guys. It's an image that must have been part of the publicity for the show and was probably used on the cover for the DVD set of one of the seasons (or something like that). Well, every time I see this image I can't help but think of... Julia Stiles! Bet you didn't see that coming, huh? Actually, it makes me think of the movie that she was in called "Save the Last Dance". I never saw the movie (and don't plan to), but I do remember the poster for it for some reason.

So who exactly am I suggesting were separated at birth? It might seem like I'm trying to say it was the stars of these two productions, but I don't think that Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Stiles look anything alike. Here the two stars are as an example:

No, I'm not suggesting that they look alike specifically, but I can't shake the feeling that the image from "24" I see on Netflix through Roku and the poster for "Save the Last Dance" were separated at birth. Here are those two images that I can't seem to separate in my mind when I see either one. You be the judge...