It all started on New Year’s Eve.  David and I were riding the #38 Geary Line after spending a day exploring San Francisco.  We had only been in town for a few days and were feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, and our feet were aching from not wearing good walking shoes.  Our friends, Neil and Tommy, had invited us over for a little NYE get together and we were discussing what we felt like doing.  

 

At Geary and Masonic, a smiling, happy, thirty-something couple  gets on the bus and sits next to us.  They are sharing an iPod with one earbud each and I can smell alcohol on their breath.  They are both smartly dressed and seem very enthusiastic and excited; I can almost feel their energy sparking the air around us.  After a few minutes, I notice the woman staring at me, like very intensely staring, with a giant grin on her face.  It’s making me feel very uncomfortable.  She turns to the guy and whispers in his ear and he looks up at me as she is doing so.  He then gives me the peace sign and mouths “fuck yeah!”  I’m feeling very perplexed.  

 

We reach our stop and rise to get off the bus passing them as we make our way to the door.  As we do so, the woman yells out something.  David has been unaware of anything happening up to this point.  When we get off the bus, he asks what was that about, and I tell him that they think I’m someone else.  He stops in his tracks and asks me if I heard what she said.  I didn’t.  She had yelled, “Adam, you rock!”  

 

So began a series of events in which strangers have assumed that I was Adam Savage from Mythbusters.  I’ve begun to realize that look on peoples’ faces when they do a double take and this shit-eating grin begins to spread across their face.  And then there’s the ones who talk to me.  After my last trip back to Austin, I stopped at a bar in the Castro and a young woman came up to me and asked if I was on a flight from LAX to Oakland the other day (I had been).  She starts screaming, “Oh my god!  I thought you were the guy from Mythbusters!  I told all my friends that I was sitting in front of Adam from Mythbusters!”  Or last night, “Excuse me, sir.  Are you on that show Mythbusters?”

 

David keeps asking if these people have never seen a redhead before - maybe all gingers look alike to some people.  We’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really look so much like Adam so much as I look like the possible offspring of Jamie and Adam - a Mythbusters Lovechild, if you will.

 

now, if I can just figure out how to use this to get some free shit...

 

Thanks to Clem for the borrowed photo.