I’ve really let myself go since high school. That’s why I feel better when I see people from my high school who have REALLY let themselves go. It’s been 8 years. Some people have 2 or 3 kids by now. I was thinking about that today when I remembered a story from 4 years ago.

Remember this photo from National Geographic?

Well, we know now that that’s Sharbat Gula. Her picture was taken by this guy, Steve McCurry, and it landed on the July 1985 cover of the magazine. World famous picture. Nobody knew who she was and she was just known as the “Afghan Girl”. Oh yeah - she was at an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan after the Soviets started bombing. That’s in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in between ‘Ayatollah’s in Iran’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’, for those of you checking your chronology at home.

Now, I don’t know a single thing about Steve McCurry. But I think he wanted to take this girl’s picture because he thought she was pretty dope. I mean, at the time, people were saying how beautiful this girl was and how she had these ‘piercing blue green eyes’ and such. She was around 12 years old at the time. She had this Olson Twins thing about her, where I think McCurry was waiting and counting down the time before she was of legal age and he could find her and whisk her away to America. He supposedly made several ill-fated attempts to contact her in the ’90’s. Yeah, because she would have been 18 by then. He probably had an ‘Afghan Girl: Coundown to 18′ clock at home.

Then, the Taliban was overthrown in 2001 and Afghanistan was open again to the Western world. Guess who went right back over there to try to locate her? That’s right Steve McPervy. And he found her all right. Let’s take a look at what he found…

GOOOOOOOOOOO!!! She looks like a character from The Dark Crystal. Here was the cover of that issue when they found her.

ou’re goddamned right you cover that up. You can’t be scaring the shit out of people when they’re at a newstand. That’s 30 years of hard living staring back at you. I mean, I don’t know what people were expecting. Supermodels come from some exotic places, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard of one coming from the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan. Don’t blame me. I’m not the one who was searching for my bride in war-torn refugee camps. I’ll just go ahead and guess that Mr McCurry won’t be returning to her town any time soon. No, he’ll just rake in the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’s probably made off of exploiting her and can sleep well at night knowing he’s answered all of his ‘what-ifs’ and realizing his wife ‘ain’t so bad afterall’. “Thanks for all the fame and glory, Afghan Girl. Me and my money are going back to the States. You be good, okay? Have fun in this shit hole. Listen, I gotta run. It’s money counting day. Say hi to your kids and goat for me. Gotta run. Bye”.

He should have just sent Pat Healy to find her.

There’s Something About Sharbat… and it ain’t good. Anyway, here’s my point… I don’t really have one. I just remembered a four-year-old ‘news’ story and decided to run with it.

11/10/2006
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