Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News


Most people can quickly answer the question of best looking celebrity without much hesitation. People Magazine puts out an annual list of most beautiful people and sexiest men/women alive. Even the 90s hit TV show Friends featured a subplot about “the freebie list,” a list of five celebrities with whom you are allowed to act out your wildest fantasies without repercussions from your significant other. People who are mentally stable don’t usually entertain any notions that such a situation would ever arise, so with the exception of creepy stalkers who take things too far, I think a celebrity crush is relatively normal.

Normal as they may be, my personal celebrity crushes have often strayed from the traditional people who normally top the lists. Oh I’ve had my fair share of those, don’t get me wrong. When I was a pre-teen, my bedroom walls were plastered with the face of Michael J. Fox. I knew his birthday, his height, his favorite food (at the time it was linguine with clam sauce – I honestly do remember the strangest things!) and I may or may not have kissed his likeness goodnight a time or two.

In my estimation, Dr. Drew Pinsky is a silver fox, Johnny Depp is beautiful, and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine is easily the finest specimen of a man I have ever laid eyes on. Most people are with me up to this point, even if they don’t share the same opinion. It’s when I reveal that I once pined for Dudley Moore, swooned over Jim Carrey, and wanted to marry John Goodman that I receive chuckles or blank stares in response. I just shrug and laugh. After all, I’m a non-conventional kind of person so why be embarrassed by my non-conventional admirations?

There is one fascination I haven’t fully admitted to though. I hesitated because even for me it seems slightly bizarre. But in the course of a recent conversation with a friend, I learned that there are people who have romantic feelings for inanimate objects. For instance, there is a man out there somewhere who kisses his blue Volkswagen Beetle and a woman who is in love with the Berlin Wall and married to the Eiffel Tower. Given this information, I don’t feel quite so peculiar now. At least the object of my infatuation is human.

Well, not exactly. He’s actually a 900 year old Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who has two hearts, travels through time and space in a blue phone box, and has the ability to regenerate into a new body in lieu of dying. But he’s portrayed by a human.

For those of you not familiar with the British sci-fi series Doctor Who (specifically the revival that began in 2005) I am referring to the man himself, The Doctor. I don’t simply mean that I am a fan of the show. I think I’ve made that easily obvious to anyone who even vaguely knows me. And I’m not confusing my crush on The Doctor with a crush on the actors who have portrayed him in recent years, although I readily admit that I find David Tennant exceedingly squee-worthy. In fact, I was so dejected when David left the show that it was more than a year and a half after his departure before I would even consider watching episodes with Matt Smith. I finally relented and watched season five, after having re-watched season one with Christopher Eccleston and seasons two through four with David Tennant, AND… That’s when it became clear to me that my interest is in the character rather than the actors themselves.

For those of you questioning my sanity right now, I would like to refer you back to Mrs. Eiffel Tower.

There’s so much to love about The Doctor. For starters, he’s unquestionably brilliant. He’s charming and funny and mysterious (we don’t even know his name – Doctor Who?) He is against violence but is still the most feared being in the entire universe. He has a sonic screwdriver that can do nearly anything. (It doesn’t work on wood. Really?? Wood?) He’s met Shakespeare, Churchill, Queen Victoria, Agatha Christie and Vincent van Gogh. He always saves the maiden from terrifying creatures (prisoner zero, the stone angels, the Vashta Nerada, the empty child and his band of undead, gas-mask-faced mutants searching for their mummies, and the androids dressed in jesters' masks who threatened Madame de Pompadour) and not so terrifying creatures (the Judoon are just rhinoceroses, Sontarans have been compared to talking baked potatoes, and the Daleks appear to be wielding kitchen mixer attachments and toilet plungers as weapons. But I digress.)

I am infatuated with a fictional character.

I know I am not the only person out there who has experienced this. Just this morning on the radio the DJs were discussing the decades-old debate of Mary Ann vs. Ginger, and I know plenty of guys who have mentioned Jessica Rabbit as an object of their fantasies. So fess up. Which fictional character would you put on your freebie list?

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