Wednesday 2 December 2009

Grant, Marx and Victoria: Same hairstyle all their lives. Gandhi - not so much.

I'm so impressed. I certainly wouldn't have got more than two. Anyway, in case you haven't seen the answers compiled by the Brains Trust in the comments box, here they are.








Sorry about the wonky layout, I spent too much time trying to sort it out, failed; and have decided not to spend the way too much time it would presumably take to succeed.

A few unsorted thoughts: Marx is my favourite. At first, it's inconceivable that Marx ever looked like that - but put the pictures side by side, and suddenly old Marx is just young Marx in a Father Christmas costume. Look at his eyes and nose - they haven't aged at all.

All these people lived relatively long lives, and yet, even with the evidence before me, it doesn't really change the way I feel - that the unfamiliar pictures are an interesting curiosity, but that Queen Victoria was basically always an old woman, Chaplin was always a young man, and Cary Grant was always about 45.

Alice Hargreaves, nee Liddell, was still alive in 1934! There will be people alive today who remember her. Crikey.

It's encouraging for those of us who plan to become old men that whilst handsome young men (Chaplin, Grant) turn into handsome old men; plain young men (Darwin) can do the same.

Talking of Darwin as an old man, can it be entirely coincidence that whilst his rather simian brow and deep set eyes make him look more like an ape than most men; his white hair and flowing beard make him look considerably more like God? And if it's not a coincidence, whose joke is it?

And speaking of God liking a joke, let's hope he does, because conversation in the comments somehow lead me to promise the following in return for a completed quiz sheet:



Halleluja.

6 comments:

Jessica said...

Me thinks the joke, on the fact that old Darwin looks like God, is the artists, as usual (see previous post & comments about the National Gallery)! And a gem of useless info for you all (the sort of thing that fills my brain unfortunately); Darwin’s daughter is buried at Malvern Priory, should you wish to visit sometime!
Speaking of God, thanks to “Him” for men like Cary Grant! Gives hope to us all in old age (although I have a while yet)! Are there any (famous) men around now that will still look so handsome in old age (and in geek glasses).... Jude Law (probably not); Hugh Jackman (maybe); David Beckham (certainly not - but then I don't rate him now). Perhaps Cary Grant had a punishing moisturising regime!
As for Karl Marx... He always had BIG hair, and then later.... A BIG BEARD! And a big coat.
John, just a quick question; where is the Kangaroo in your last supper photo?

John Finnemore said...

I painted him out... turned him into a disciple. I mean, there's twenty-eight of them, another one's hardly going to notice.

Richard O. Smith said...

Ooooh…I thought your face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place you – now I know where I’ve seen you before: performing a tango sequence in Miranda. Plus 2000 years of devout iconography.

As for overlapping lives, you’re correct to propose there are people still alive who knew Alice Liddell. I’m an Oxford tour guide, and when I once recounted the peculiar eccentricities of Christ Church that had inspired some of Charles Dodgson’s famous creations, an elderly lady informed the group that, as a small child, she had lived almost next door to the real Alice in the New Forest – which I assume would have been around the early 1930s(?).

riffle said...

Another fine game by the purveyor here. A few of my own unsorted thoughts:

Facial recognition is ridiculously good: we can identify or distinguish many times more faces than our average prehistoric ancestor would have seen in a lifetime.

Cosmetic surgery will make this game much more difficult for future generations.

Marx must have thought that a 3/4 left view was his "good side."

I'm glad to see you're doing your part to gin up Christmas fever around here.

riffle

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Molly Blue Dawn said...

"Talking of Darwin as an old man, can it be entirely coincidence that whilst his rather simian brow and deep set eyes make him look more like an ape than most men; his white hair and flowing beard make him look considerably more like God? And if it's not a coincidence, whose joke is it?"

I think it must be Terry Pratchett's joke, because his Death describes humans as “the place where the Falling Angel meets the Rising Ape” - Charles Darwin is the perfect illustration of this principle!