Eye Of The Beholder

   You know everyone doesn't love Raymond.  Me for one.  He and his show might be very funny but I'll never know, because I can't stand the way Ray Ramano looks.  Everybody has actors who are like that for them.

    Another for me is Billy Crystal, but unlike Raymond, I'll watch some things with Billy Crystal because of the quality of the whole.  And if I dont have to look at him, I think he's great, as in his narration of some of the Ken Burns baseball series.

     I used to feel that way about the guy from Home Improvement, which I never watched, but he's won me over--largely with his part in the fantasic film Galaxy Quest-- and I'm now OK with how he looks.  I wouldn't want my daughter to marry him and produce grandkids with his weird face genes, but I don't have to change the channel when he comes on anymore.

      This is purely personal preference.  Jack Palance and Don Ameche were weird looking, and I don't think this is a minority opinion, but somebody must have found their looks appealing or they wouldn't have got those leading men roles.  ( You'd have to pay me to watch City Slickers, which has both Billy Crystal and Jack Palance. )

       Some people feel this way about entertainers I like. Jerry Seinfield, OK, I can see that, but I know people who don't like to look at Meryl Streep.  She doesn't have a classic movie star face,  but I think she's beautiful.

       I have a friend who doesn't like to look at Cameron Diaz, and her eyes are a little weird, but he also doesn't like the looks of Uma Thurman.  Can't see how anybody could think that.

       There's only one female who comes to mind that I feel that way about, Kerri Russell. I wanted to watch that show she broke out in, Felicity, because the story line appealed to me, but I couldn't get past my distaste with her looks.

        The most outstanding example of this in my life involves a TV commercial.  At my house we always mute the commercials, but there was one for which my friends and I had to kill the visual as well.

        Said commercial came on during  Braves games a few years back.  I guess it was for some exercise program, because its spokesman was a large bare-chested man with a buldging torso on which sat a tiny head.  His image was so repulsive it was as if we were vampires and he  was a crucifix. Shouts of "Agh! Agh! Man tits!" were heard as we tried to find the remote with our hands over our eyes.