Soup for you!

I know the feeling of being mistaken for celebrities...people often confuse me with athletes (David Beckham), movie actors (George Clooney) and television performers (Mr Ed) so I have learned to live with it, to smile and sign the autograph and move along.  (One time, a disappointed souvenir-seeker complained that I spelled "Clooney" wrong.  "There are two Os in Clooney!" she hollered. So I took the paper back and wrote it out with two Os: CLONEYO.)

So I can relate to the problems, if not the black eye, of Mario Licato, a New Yorker who got popped in the peeper last weekend because he looks too much like Shia LaBeouf.

Yes, you read that right.  Someone out there up there knows what S la B looks like and blackened the eye of another person for getting too close to that line.

What Shia really looks like

Well, the story got all over the place in just a few days...Vanity Fair and other news outlets, and wacky nutjobsite Breitbart did as well. And to show how people communicate these days (besides by punching each other in the schnozzola)...here's how Licato got the word that Shia had left him a few words...LaBeouf went on Mario's Instagram and commented that he ought to check his voicemail. "Feel better G," the comment concluded.

Licato says the voicemail turned out to be on his work phone, which he doesn't normally check.  That ought to come as wonderful news to his employers and to the 328 other people who have left him messages there...

But he said, "It was a pretty long voicemail. He was like, 'Hey, this is Shia LaBeouf … I just read an article that you were punched in the face because you look like me?' And he was like, 'Aw, man. That sucks. I'm so sorry. But I get it. It's happened to me before.' And then he was like, 'I don't know. I wish I was in New York. I'd come bring you soup.' He was just like, 'This sucks. I don't even know what to say. I'm sorry. People are just crazy. Just because you look like me?' 

Crime victim

"I was obviously laughing the whole time. And then he was like, 'Here's my phone number. Don't give it to anybody. Please, please, call me back. Call me back if you want to. We could chat. Let's giggle over this. Maybe there's a silver lining in all this. But call me back.' And then he was like, 'And once again, this is Shia LaBeouf, the guy you got hit for looking like. And yeah, man, I'm sorry. I'm just really sorry.' And he was like 'Keep your head up, G.' And that was it.

Welcome to 2016, and a world in which Shia LaBeouf calls a guy who got smacked for looking like Shia LaBeouf and Shia LaBeouf says a) he has been hit for the same reason  and b) he would like to bring over some soup.

And he calls a man named Mario Licato "G."

I'm so confused.