Doppelganger
There's a new impostor out there.
A false Pete. An Anti-Pete.
Two summers ago, I blogged about the presence of another Pete Nguyen on the internet, a kinder, gentler, more acoustic Pete Nguyen. A sensitive, John Mayeresque, gelled-hair Pete Nguyen. A... holy crap, the link to his site is broken! The domain name is up for grabs! JOHN! QUICK! GET ME THAT DOMAIN!
Anyway. About this new Pete Nguyen that has shown up on the radar. In the last month or so, my inbox has been inundated with fan mail. Yes, I get fan mail. Usually it's some jackass who wants to know if my penis is really black -- I get about one or two of those a week -- but lately it's been the real deal: like 15 to 20 emails a day, from real actual people. When this first started happening, I was on top of the world. People were calling me an "undiscovered comedic genius." I was being heralded as The Next Big Thing. The poster boy for humor blogging. The new voice of our generation. The Chosen One.
And then I started to notice a common denominator. More than half of these emails were referencing "essays." Things like, "Hey, I discovered your essays on the internet and wanted to let you know how much they made me laugh today!"
It was easy at first to assume that "essays" meant "blog entries", but the more emails I read that referenced funny history papers, the more I began to question all the adulation I was getting. Turns out there's another Pete Nguyen out there -- actually he calls himself Peter Nguyen, I haven't been "Peter" since middle school -- and he's written goofy college essays that have spawned whole message board threads devoted to him. Turns out that 90% of the people that were emailing me? They thought I was someone else.
Who would have thought that I'm not the funniest, edgiest Pete Nguyen on the planet?
I'm reminded of the pretentious end of the movie Malcolm X, or those old Tiger Woods commercials, except in my personal version, kids of all ethnicities and backgrounds say: "I am Pete Nguyen."
"I am Pete Nguyen."
"I am Pete Nguyen."
"I am Pete Nguyen."
"I AM PETE NGUYEN."
"i am pete nguyen."
"I am Pete Nguyen."
But if this world is only big enough for one Greatest Pete Nguyen in the History of the Universe, then I guess that leaves me as the impostor. The false Pete. The Anti-Pete. Although, I'll take solace in the fact that if the subversive humor on this blog had people consistently mistaking me for that other guy, then I can't be a total schmuck.
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11 Comments
Aw. We all know there can only be one Pete!
I just looked at those essays. They look stupid. You still own the title as the funniest Pete Nguyen alive.
You about forgot the teenage asian girl who would say, "I aM pEtE nGuYeN."
So, you say you're the greatest Asian, yet you are not the greatest person with your name??
I love you pete, although those essays are very cute and that other pete is clearly an innovative genius.
Who knew there were so many of you out there, let alone so many with even your last name.
I want to see how good that other Pete Nguyen could blog, I bet he couldn't come close to you. All he does is write dumb bullshit papers. You got more versatility.
Don't feel so bad that there's a better version of you out there. Feel bad that your cock is black.
Like Obi Wan said in Episode 1, "There's always a bigger fish."
You can also take solace in the fact that the you're not the third best Pete Nguyen in the world, which apparently the "more acoustic" Pete Nguyen seems to be.
Oh how I love you so !
I'm seriously falling for Pete Nguyen, yeah you..hang on...maybe the other one...oops, I'm utterly confused :(
(my surname is not Nguyen)
Did anyone else catch that he says he's going to stop blogging but he's been in full force for a week now! Petey I love you....that other PeteR Nguyen is nothing!