What Road Runner cartoons can teach us about the Hodgman Mac/PC commercials

In a brilliant explanation of why it makes sense for Hodgman's "PC" character to be so much more likable than Justin Long's "Mac" character, the Fishbowl blog points out that the PC character is analogous to Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. This may be seen by considering the writer's rules for all Coyote and Road Runner cartoons:

1. Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “beep, beep”.
2. No outside force can harm the Coyote—only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.
3. The Coyote could stop anytime—if he was not a fanatic. (Repeat: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.” —George Santayana).
4. No dialogue ever, except “beep, beep”.
5. Road Runner must stay on the road—for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner.
6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters—the southwest American desert.
7. All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.
9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
10. The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
11. The Coyote is not allowed to catch the road runner.

Call for Hodgman impersonators

Today I had one of those abrupt realizations: This world needs more John Hodgmans ("Hodgmen"). Until cloning technology is sufficiently advanced, we will have to settle for Hodgman impersonators.

There is some precedent for Hodgman impersonation. There was this guy:



He was supposed to resemble the PC character Hodgman plays in the Apple ads. But he's a little stern and a bit of a downer (perhaps because that is what was required of him for the commercial), so I'm not even going to link to the actual Microsoft commercial. Instead I'm going to move on and list some individuals for whom impersonators are available:

George Carlin

John Wayne

Babe Ruth

Albert Einstein

Jack Sparrow

Trinity from "The Matrix"

like every single Harry Potter character

Groucho Marx

Bill Murray

Michael Jordan

and Mark Twain

And that's great. But if you are going to pay someone hundreds of dollars to pretend to be someone else, you really would prefer to get an actual Hodgman. Hodgmen should be available to entertain at your child's birthday party or to referee at your hipster croquet outing.

If you know where I can find a Hodgman impersonator, or if you ARE a Hodgman impersonator drop me a line. Soon.

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UPDATE: I found a New York Times article about Microsoft's reponse ads to the Apple ads, and in particular, information about the guy who was cast to play the Microsoft version of the PC character, based on his resemblance to Hodgman.