THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9504010242
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Write something, an editor said, for April Fools' Day.
All right, and it's all true.
A concerned reader, Portsmouth's Harold Huntley, asked the public editor to have somebody ``take a better picture'' of Friddell than the one that heads this column.
``It looks as though he is trying to recover from a headache,'' he wrote - one of many to complain.
Harold, that picture by prize-winning photographer Beth Bergman FLATTERS me. She worked AN HOUR AND A HALF to take it.
Used up 38 ROLLS OF FILM.
The idea was to get as little as possible of my face in the picture.
Once, she said, ``Guy, try putting your hand in FRONT of your face and peer through your fingers.''
I did. To me, that one was best.
An editor rejected it.
``You look like a monkey behind bars,'' he said.
```It is one thing,'' he said, ``to write like a gifted chimpanzee, but it is quite another to look like one.''
When her boss saw Beth's face after she took 300 pictures of one subject at a single sitting, he said, ``Beth, take next week off.''
Three years ago when our newspapers broke out in a rash of photographs of columnists, I was the only one to resist the idea.
``It is high school journalism,'' I told them. ``No, on second thought, it is junior high school journalism.''
(Now, junior high school has become ``middle school'' just to confuse us junior high alumni.)
Let us face it. No, let us avert our faces. The reason I was against photographs was my homely mug.
No, not homely, UGLY mug.
Listen, the fellow with that face is from the planet UG.
You think it bothers me to look like a troll just come out from under the bridge to contest the way with Billy Goat Gruff?
Not in a long time. Only a little bit. Back in junior high.
One day a guard phoned from downstairs to tell me a mother with two children wished to see me.
``A friend told her you look like a troll,'' he said.
So up they came and stood about 30 feet off, looking.
``You're not as ugly as I thought you were,'' she called, at last.
``I'm sorry,'' I said, trying to look uglier.
``You'll get by,'' she said. ``I just wanted to be careful not to disillusion them. Last week they found there was no Easter Bunny.''
They left, reassured.
``Start charging admission,'' the guard suggested.
To look bizarre is wonderfully liberating.
When one's face is irreparable one need not give any thought to how one appears.
Then why, you ask, oppose being portrayed in the first place.
Because, dear reader, I was thinking of you.
``There is no point,'' I told them, ``in having our readers face that face at the breakfast table.''
And that's not April Fool.
That's April Truth. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
by CNB