In fact, I'm starting to wonder if....

Have a look at these two images of Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik character played by Bob Denver from that 50-year-old TV series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The website bobdenver.com has a special section on Maynard that is worth a careful read. Maynard was extremely popular; some people even say he's a role model. I used to hear his name all the time when I was small, though I had no idea where it originated. (I don't recall watching Dobie Gillis.)

The slim, unkempt Maynard was a musician who liked to recite very bad beatnik poetry. He hated work and was very lazy. He had dark hair, a goatee and a soul patch, way before soul patches became popular. He became a cultural icon beloved by many.

Maynard doesn't look familiar to you, does he? Just a little bit? Suppose you were a height-challenged nerdy girl with no friends, then one day you met this really cool artist girl who became your best and only friend, and she had this older brother who was tall, slim, unkempt, loved music, recited awful poetry, did his own thing without worrying about the larger world, didn't like authority or hard work, slept all the time, had dark hair and a goatee and a soul patch, said "Like" and "Man" a lot, was kinda handsome and cool....

Are you still with me?

Do you think that Bob Denver was the role model for anyone else you know?

I'm really starting to wonder.


LATE ADD: Well, shoot. Here I thought I was coming up with something original, then I do a Google search and find that someone came up with this idea long before I did. Dang! And I was so sure I had a unique thought for once! I should take my brain back to K-mart and get a refund. I would if I could find the receipt. Must have thrown it out.

Oh, and here's another Daria fanfic that makes reference to the great Maynard. It's a pretty wild read. I liked it. Maybe Maynard and the Lanes do have a connection.

If Stacy was Mary Anne, then who would be Ginger?

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the birth of comedy actor Bob Denver, who played Gilligan on some TV show from the 1960s whose name escapes me, but it had to do with an island. The real Bob Denver is at right, flanked by two of the show's leading ladies, and Kevin Thompson is dressed as Gilligan in an alter ego at left. Funny, I guess there really is a resemblance between the two. Weird.

Kevin is holding a coconut with a straw in it, which is a pretty typical prop from the original show, which I used to watch when it wasn't in reruns. I was in elementary school then. There were dinosaurs around too, I recall.

You would be surprised, perhaps (or perhaps not, knowing this fandom), at the number of Daria tales having to do with Gilligan, or at least how many stories mention him. In no special order:

• Survivor
• The Hunt for Daria Morgendorffer
• The Idiocy
• It's a Nutty, Nutty, Nutty Coincidence
• The Generic Action Tale
  
• The Many Loves of Thalia Gillis (actually a crossover with The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, a long-ago TV show on which Bob Denver also starred)

and, most importantly,

• Outcast Castaways, which nails it. Congratulations to Robert Nowall for this crossover triumph.
  

Wanna hear something really weird? The character that Bob Denver played on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was named Maynard G. Krebs, a shaggy-looking beatnik. It has been reported that the character Shaggy Rogers, from the Scooby-Doo franchise, was created from Maynard G. Krebs. If that is true, then the Daria background character Shaggy (who was apparently based on the Scooby-Doo Shaggy) was ultimately derived from Bob Denver's long-ago character.

In other words, the man who gave us Gilligan also gave us Shaggy.

Small planet, isn't it?