Face made for the ‘Net

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
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I’ve got a face made for radio, er, podcasting.

The good news for you guys – I’m not in HD.

“You have to be really careful about what you’re doing each and every day. Because imperfections show up a lot more in high-definition. It’s a lot less forgiving,” said Neal Bennett, the news director at NBC29 in Charlottesville, which debuted local news in HD this week.

As soon as he said the words, my thoughts immediately turned to the place in my chin that, when the sun is shining just right, resembles the chin of Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus,” but the rest of the time is more reminiscent of the chin of a boxer who’s taken one too many.

And then to the pockmarks in my otherwise pinchable cheeks that are the residue of the years when the kids in school who participated in such activities got away with calling me Pizza Face.

And then there’s that one tooth that my parents decided wasn’t that far out of line to justify spending a couple thousand dollars to correct with braces, you know, given how times were tight there when I was heading into my teen years in the mid-1980s recession and all.

HD would magnify those, ahem, beauty marks that I seem to have in overabundance.

And even the pretty faces on the local news need help in that department, to hear Bennett tell it.

“We’ve hired makeup consultants and hair consultants for our talent – because even makeup is different when it comes to high-definition,” Bennett said.

There’s no hope for me, is there?