planetdan

Wednesday, February 08, 2006 :::

The Usual Suspects

I've always been dubious about the usefulness of police sketches. I doubt people remember faces all that well in the first place, and then to have to relay that visual memory in verbal form to a third party seems absolutely ludicrous. The end results are always awesomely generic and therefore completely pointless, or even worse: sub-human in appearance. Case in point, here is a sketch that I saw on the BBC site today:

To be fair, the point of the article is that the eyewitness is unhappy with the accuracy of this police sketch. Apparently the suspect wasn't a sun-bleached Hitler after all.

Anyway, that gave the idea to do a Google Image search for "police sketch", the results of which were totally awesome. Seriously, it's like when my grade school art teacher made us draw each other's faces for display in the hallway. Fascinating, but some of them freak my shit out:

Yuck. They totally give me that Unsolved Mysteries type of upset stomach. I can't even hear the theme song to that show without convulsing. They play it twice daily on Lifetime and I always accidentally flip to it during my lunch break and instantly lose my appetite. It must be a weird childhood trauma association, from having watched the show as a kid while I was home alone. I had a similar experience with a particular episode of Three's Company where Janet gets robbed at the flower shop and the detective tells her that the suspect may come back to kill her, since she was the only eyewitness, and that she should therefore avoid walking in front of any open windows. I may be be getting the details of the episode wrong, but I closed all the drapes and ducked under windows for weeks after watching that damn thing. I still can't sit with my back to a window.

::: posted by dan at 7:43 AM :: [ link ] :: (18) comments

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18 previous comments:

LMAO I watch Unsolved Mysteries everyday on Lifetime, can't help it, there's not much else on at that time of day. Anyway, I remember a particularly bad ghost episode when I was about 13 and my sister and I didn't sleep for a week. My sister also refuses to sit with her back to a window, guess she caught the same episode of Three's Company as you. =)

By

DaphnesTwin, at 4:33 PM

'Member when sista K got held up at gun point at the restaurant she worked at? TWICE!

I'dve flipped on the dude.

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Colleen, at 5:43 PM

That was the Halloween episode from '88 or '89, sis, and it was ALL about ghosts...there was the guy who walked thru the door of the kitchen to see a disembodied, translucent head sitting on the counter, and that freaky little ghost kid sitting at the bar, spinning a glass and grinning his horrible, mangled face...damn, didn't know I had such total recall of that episode, I must be scarred...

I just gave myself the heebie jeebies. Gonna turn on a light.

I can still hear Robert Stack now..."write to Unsolved Mysteries, PO Box 11449, Burbank California, 91510-1449"...

*shiver*

By

Darcy's Twin, at 6:00 PM

dan, unsolved mysteries fucked my 12 year old shit up, too.

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Honey Bunny, at 7:25 PM

Witness recall is notoriously questionable. We had a family friend who was a sketch artist but he hypnotized his witnesses. That's the only kind of recall I would trust in a situation like that. I gave a description to a cop once and I'm still not sure if what I see in my mind's eye is even remotely correct.

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Sissy, at 7:56 PM

I RECOGNIZE THAT SKETCH!

It's this chick, wearing a fake moustache:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060207/ap_on_re_eu/face_transplant

By

Anonymous, at 8:30 AM

I never watched THREES COMPANY but I can tell you if Janet had gotten murdered in front of some window I might have tuned in...wait, was she the brunette or the retarded blonde one???

By

Anonymous, at 11:30 AM

This is the funniest sh*t I've read in a while. Really. Your observational humour just gets me. It gets me good. I sometimes like to pretend that my life is a sitcom...but I think yours really is...or at least you tell it like it is.

By

Zain, at 7:42 AM

I think the diamond purveyors of the world ripped off dan and his clever photoshopping of his chiseled jaw onto Fabio's chiseled neck: http://www.adiamondisforever.com/valentine/

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callmekidd, at 10:45 AM

Are you sure these aren't more of those wacky French face transplant patients?

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Anonymous, at 11:51 AM

Still refuse to watch "Unsolved Mysteries". Freaks me out.

Don't remember the "Three's Company" episode, but I did the exact thing after watching "Jagged Edge". Seriously ducked under windows at night. Can't sleep with my back to an open door.

Chills.

By

Kimmy, at 1:59 PM

The only 3 company episodes I remember had to do with a misunderstanding. Oh, wait, that was every episode.

By

TracyD, at 3:52 PM

Have I been staring at this since Wednesday?

You guys need to go out more so we that don't go out and take pictures have something to do...

By

the other sarah, at 6:08 PM

In some ways, it is most disturbing knowing that the voices they seek in my broken mind are just ecos of the past. Some get close, but see only the shadows of the lonely ones who linger too long in one place. Wondering where to hide next.
I can not, and dare not to push them too hard to stay sleeping, because some may awaken.
The rooms are getting cold, and the dampness thickens, feeding moister to the mold on the walls.
A man with dark staring eyes keeps watch over the door, and this makes me very nervous.
It's getting so cold.

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Anonymous, at 12:29 PM

DAN! Theres a crazy snow storm here in nyc and we need you to post something new ASAP before we all die of boredom. Thank you!

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Anonymous, at 1:40 PM

Wait! Wait! I've seen that first suspect's face before! Oh... wait. It's Mr. Potato Head! Definitely a hardened criminal.

I'm thinking, when was "Three's Company" ever serious like that? Are you sure you didn't mix it up with "Columbo" or something?

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PeaceBang, at 4:11 PM

I can totally relate with the Three's Company childhood fear.

I was forever changed by a very special Halloween episode of "The Facts of Life," where Blair was hairsprayed to death and Natalie was strangled to death by a pair of fuzzy dice. That episode haunts me to this very day.

By

Robert, at 6:17 AM

Wow! and i thought i was the only person with a blood curdling fear of unsolved mysteries my mother would always watch it dispite my fear. I still cant even hear the theme song with out a chill up my spine.

By

Anonymous, at 12:25 AM

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