You watch it and you think, sure, in real life that doesn't happen. And it doesn't, at least in dogs. But dogs can look a lot different in real life than people. That's probably why dogs have such a good sense of smell; if they didn't, they'd never be able to tell us all apart.

In people, it's like there's this one gene for good-looking and if you get it, you're set for at least the first 40 years of your life and sometimes even longer. But if you're a guy it does different things than if you're a girl. This is why a football player marries a supermodel and their kids all turn out like the puppies on Lady & The Tramp. It's why famous people always have good-looking kids, except for Cher and Jimmy Carter.

I think the gene must be recessive, too, because there's a whole lot of folks out there who are just plain-looking, average people.

I once asked someone from Los Angeles what percentage of people she thought were good-looking, and she said 20%. but I really believe her perspective is skewed by the celebrities and all their kids who live out there. I think it's more like 3%, but of course my own persepective may be skewed by all the good-looking people who might have lived here but all moved out to Los Angeles to try and be movie stars.

Anyway, I was talking about how good-looking men look totally different than good-looking women. It's totally true and I don't think it's sexist either. I don't have a problem with like Madonna or Linda Hamilton getting all pumped up, but even they've got to know that they looked better before. And then you have guys who look all girly like that Leonard kid that everyone was so crazy about a few years ago, but pretty boys and pumped-up women are the exception and not the rule.

Every so often you hear a liberal talk about how 90% of the world's wealth is in the hands of like 5% of the population, which sounds monumentally unfair when you just say it like that. But good looks are the same way, and sometimes it really does seem like the vast majority of us are impoverished.

Now all of this may sound shallow, but I'm not one of those who thinks that looks are everything. On the other hand, I'm not one of those freaks who says that looks aren't anything at all. I will also say that if good looks are like wealth, then we really are very fortunate because when you think about it, even though there are a great many really really poor people there are hardly any people who are as ugly as they are poor, and most folks are just regular plain-looking people.