The Intersection

Luz and I agree on a lot of things. Being friends for six years and being housemates for three is an indication of how we willingly submit ourselves to each other's company. That is a pretty good sign that we like the same things.

And we really are in synch with the "important" stuff: faith, values, books, humor, etc. But we are sooo different in a hundred different small things. One of those little things is agreeing on the appreciation of aesthetic values in the male species (i.e., we seldom agree whether a guy is cute or not).

Having this difference in taste is a good thing, especially between friends. But since she's a married woman now, it renders the point moot. Nevertheless, it has never prevented either of us in disparaging the other. Well, now she gets to make fun of me more since any joke I make on her taste would throw shrapnel on her husband Allen who is also a good friend of mine and, for the record, a great guy. 

All these years, we have kept this informal survey of our "intersecting" tastes. Amazingly, of all the celebrities in movies/tv shows and all the real people we both know, we only have a grand total of TWO intersections. And the other's agreement is more like "Meh, but yeah, kinda cute." These two intersections were Paul Rudd and Jay Chou.

Luz always has a dissenting description for the celebrities I like. Jesse Eisenberg is too geeky (I think his neurosis is endearingly funny). Zachary Levi's grin is creepy (It's not. Great looking guy, in my opinion). IBM scientist Dr. David Gondek seems like a psychopath lurking behind a nice guy facade. (What?! He's intelligent, self-effacing, witty.)

The way she mercilessly judged those guys is nowhere near my diplomatic assesment of her pre-marital taste of athletic jocks and masculine men -- some of whom you don't want to meet in a dark alleyway without pepper spray or a good self-defense training. And so for a long time, we have been working under the theory that we're just wired differently in that human aspect. It's a source of amusement for us both and we were willing to concede.

So one can imagine how pleasantly surprised we were when we found our ultimate intersection. No halfway compromises, no measure of tolerance on either side. Just an outright YES, all caps. And it comes in the form of Grant Imahara. Over the long weekend, Luz and I had the chance to catch up on the episodes of MythBusters and we were both smitten by the robot-obsessed, Japanese-American build team member who is smart, funny, and adorably cute. 

I'm so taken with his unapologetic geekiness and open smile. One of my favorite MythBuster moments was when he gleefully clapped his hands while saying, "I love those two words! Bomb robot!" Luz's first reaction seeing him onscreen was: "What a great skin complexion!" And the ultimate compliment: she'd marry Grant if she were still single.

So Grant Imahara has busted our theory. So much so that when Allen called us for dinner, his wife had yelled out, "Wait! We're finishing watching the cute guy!" And to recover for that, Luz added, "He's also an electrical engineer like you. I have such great taste."

Nice save.