unpleasant surprises...

[crappyjones123]

this past year, one of the better parts of my driving schedule has been listening to wait wait dont tell me. a very well written (or performed, if it isnt rehearsed) news quiz/slight comedy npr show. part of the allure has been the voice of peter sagal and his presentation and after a few months i had a fairly decent picture of what he might look like in my head. a few minutes ago i randomly happened upon the npr website and having never seen a picture of him, i searched for him. he doesnt look like anything i had pictured =/ not that that changes my desire to listen to the show but it does put me off a tad. i want to say i feel cheated but it is just something silly.

anyone else feel similar when they find out a radio personality/musician doesnt in fact look anything you had imagined? does the disconnect make you listen/like them any less?

i ask in part because i am just curious and in part to see if this theory i have about us mathematicians is correct...we tend to personify problems. there are ones that we like and ones that we hate with a passion just like a person who cuts us off in traffic or yells at us for no reason. there are ones that are annoyingly easy but take us ages to solve which results in expletives being yelled upon finishing the problem but then also a little chuckle. it is fairly quirky and very few people in my own dept understand what i mean when i say that. wonder if the whole people not looking like i had thought them to is just an extension of that phenomenon or something entirely different.

[Dusty Chalk]

Not so much disappointed as surprised, but I am also not a mathematician (I do have some math in my background, and am very good at math [got straight A's in college], but...not a mathematician per se), so...take that as your data point.

[jvlgato]

Not sure about your theory, but Peter Sagal lives in our suburb. I have never met him, but we have friends who have a child who is classmates with his child in the elementary school. They also said they were surprised by how different he looked from what they expected.

[blessingx]

I think your experience of radio voices is pretty common for many.

I'm curious if this short story (also from NPR) confirms your mathematician theory. It's a killer.

MP3: Selected Shorts - Ron Carlson - Towel Season.

From MathFiction:

When they were dating, he'd begun to try to explain his work to her in metaphors, and she'd continued the game through his career, asking him for comparisons that she'd then inhabit, embellish. Right after they were married and Edison was in graduate school, he'd work late into the night in their apartment and crawl into bed with the calculations still percolating in his head. "What's it like?" Leslie would ask. "Where are you now?" She could tell he was remote, lit. They talked in territories.

"I've crossed all the open ground, and the wind has stopped now. My hope is to find a way through this next place."

"Mountains.?"

"Right. Okay, mountains--blank, very few markings." He spoke carefully and with a quiet zeal. "They're steep, hard to see."

"Is it cold?"

"No, but it is strange. It's quiet." Then he'd turn to her in bed, his eyes bright, alive. "I'm way past the path. I don't think anyone has climbed this route before. There are no trails, handholds."

Leslie would smile and kiss him in that close proximity. "Keep going," she'd say. "Halfway up that mountain, there's a woman with a cappuccino cart and a chicken-salad sandwich--me."

Then a smile would break across his face, too, and he would see her, kiss her back, and say it: "Right. You."

[Salt Peanuts]

Personally, I was rather surprised with how different Carl Kasell was from my expectation. I somehow expected an elderly gentleman somewhat resembling Santa Claus.

[jinp6301]

I think your experience of radio voices is pretty common for many.

I'm curious if this short story (also from NPR) confirms your mathematician theory. It's a killer.

MP3: Selected Shorts - Ron Carlson - Towel Season.

From MathFiction:

I dont think thats with only math. It probably happens with a lot of grad students. I explain my research to my brother in video game analogies.

[NightWoundsTime]

Being a fan of "indie" music from before indie was fashionable, and fashion became a huge part of "indie", I have a few favorite artists that I have actively refused to look at pictures of. Basically the opposite of the ugly radio personality. I've got pictures in my head of bearded freaks and if they turned out to be metro douches with $300 haircuts I'd be crushed.