Doogie

In seventh grade, a new family moved into the house down the street, and the younger son was in my class at school. He was kind of skinny and smart and nerdy in an in-your-face, overly political, combative kind of way (whereas I was just nerdy in a quietly-reading-in-the-corner-not-bothering-anyone kind of way). He got picked on quite a bit (and he totally picked on me all the time, and I only found out when he invited me to his semi-formal in ninth grade that it was in the "I'll pull your hair because I like" you sort of way, because he really was so awful to me that ran home crying at least once every few weeks), and usually began with, "Hey DOOGIE!" because he was sort of physically and socially reminiscent of Doogie Howser, M.D.

So I sort of wonder what's happened to the neighbor kid, whether he's become super-cool like Doogie eventually did. Seriously, when the Smelmooo and I saw NPH in Cabaret a few years ago, we were like, holy crap, how is Doogie Howser the emcee in Cabaret?! And then, all of a sudden, he was cool: he was in Harold and Kumar, and now in How I Met Your Mother, which I've had sort of lukewarm feelings about, but the Barney character -- and NPH's performance -- has been consistently awesome whenever I've caught the show.

And I just saw this morning that Barney has a blog, which is super-fun, and I love this most recent entry on the '90s, and I sort of wish it were my job to write Barney's blog.

Someone once told me I look like Wanda from Doogie Howser, which I did not take as a compliment, but now I wonder if she's turned out as well as NPH. Uhhhhh, yeah...not so much, at least in terms of her Hollywood gigs.