Rick's List
It's a small town and a close-knit region with a lot of loyal Day readers, and we thank you. But I mention this to say that, if your picture's is in The Day with any regularity — whether as a mug shot, or in an ad for your law firm or car dealership, or perhaps because you write a weekly column — you're going to be recognized on occasion.
In that spirit, when it happens to me, it's almost never for anything I did or wrote but instead for one of three reasons.
1 "Hey, Koster! I didn't get my paper on Tuesday!"
2 "Are you Nick Koster? Tell Mike DiMauro he's 100 percent wrong about (fill in ANY sports opinion)."
3 "You're that ... that, ah, guy. The music writer guy. Tell Paul Choiniere for me to take his commie opinions to Moscow!"
Recently, though, a disconcerting number of folks have approached to ask when I'm going to change my column photo. I'm not sure why. It's the same image it's always been — and it must still be recognizable because, well, how would people know to ask me about changing it if they couldn't tell it was me?
But it started me thinking that maybe it IS time for a change. The only question would be: how should I look for my new column photo?
Personally, I don't feel as though there are any fresh "looks" left out there that'd work for me, so here are a few time-honored stereotypes that have always intrigued me in "What the hell were you thinking?!" fashion. I'd like to try one of these. Let me know which resonate — or throw in a few ideas of your own — and I will soon select one for my new Rick's List photo.
1 The white guy weed-head with waist-length dreadlocks who wants everyone to believe that it was either Ziggy Marley or Usain Bolt who personally appointed him "an honorary Jamaican."
2 The casually smug "tennis coach" dude who's always in the stands at Wimbledon. Question: If he knows so much about tennis, how come he's never actually playing?
3 With sideburns like Robert Shaw as Quint in "Jaws."
4 The aloof but slightly wry "literary" novelist who sneers any time David Baldacci has a bestseller and insists that it was just by chance the photographer snapped his own author photo just as he was chewing the arm of his glasses in thoughtful contemplation.
5 A British noble dressed for fox hunting.
6 The bloated wino sleeping it off in a potter's field as though presciently but subconsciously aware he'll end up there permanently, sooner rather than later. Oh, wait — that's the picture we're using now.