It’s the Friday. It’s a time of revelation. By which I mean, I’m going to reveal who I was trying to draw and your reaction will likely be deep insights into the nature of human error.

Here is my first unwitting subject.  

Many of you mistook this person for a woman, which will be hilarious to you when you see the source photo. This is a man. A very masculine man.

But first, your lady guesses.

• A severe and humorless European autocrat (female) – OR Gabriel Byrne. 
• Annette Benning
• Margaret Thatcher
• Ann Bancroft
• Dame Judi Dench (but a terrible likeness) 
• Ellen!
• From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: title character
• Suze Orman
• My grandmother
• Stern old lady…Hillary Clinton, maybe? 
• Wow…probably a woman? 
• Gertrude Stein (“A rose is a rose is a…my god, has my right eye always been higher than my left?”) 

And for the men:

• Christopher Walken 
• Andy Rooney, circa 1985 (in his finest pearls) 
• Dracula
• Michael Douglas
• And my favorite answer: “I don’t usually enter online contests. But when I do, I prefer ‘Matthew Draws’ (the most interesting man in the world, sans goatee, if he were played by Christopher Walken)

And for the answers that defy gender classification:

• Thanks for fueling my nightmares. 
• I thought this was an old rockstar dude. My boyfriend thought it was a woman. We are confused. 
• The closest thing to a correct answer: “Al Pacino…as a woman…so, Alice Pacino?” 

Alas, this is not Alice Pacino, but good old Al himself. God help me if he ever sees my drawing . I might end up swimming with the fishes.

Next up, then, is the drawing I’m most proud of.

And no fewer than six of you rewarded me by correctly guessing the identity.

However, we still had a good deal of gender confusion in the works.

Here are the man guesses:

• Conan O’Brien
• Craig Fergeson 
• Jason Segel
• Jimmy Fallon
• John Lithgow
• Jonah Hill, circa 2017 (in his new ad for Weight Watchers) 
• Mr. Friendly Pointynose
• That guy from Friends!
• Tom Hiddleston or Benedict Cumberbatch
• I want to say Aaron Paul, but he wouldn’t wear a collared shirt

And the gender-nonspecific guesses:

• A Zombie? Like the undead variety. Not the Rob variety. 
• No clue – but I admire your unflagging determination
• Definitely either Ellen Degeneres or Michael Phelps. Definitely.
• Clay Aiken

And, finally,  the lady guessses:

• Oh, wait. There were no incorrect lady guesses.

Which brings us to the right guesses.

• ELLEN DEGENERES DUH GOOD JOB MAFFEW!
• Ellen DeGeneres (though, again, we had a gender debate, but with Ellen that makes more sense) 
• Ellen! Ellen! Ellen! (Or post-surgery Clay Aiken?)
• Ellen (Totally got this one on my own. No internet searching. My wife cheated.)
• Ellen?

What I love is that everyone thought I’d drawn a man except for the people who recognized Ellen. For the record, I think the zombie guess is not entirely unfair. I’m also flattered (and a little concerned) that Matthew Draws is now a forum for confession of cheating wives.

Here we go. Once in every version of Matthew Draws something goes horribly wrong. And that horrible thing usually happens to the fetching young thing of smooth skin and delicate features.

This time, the gender of my subject was not in question. But her identity eluded all but two of you.

She is not “a very startled Shannon Dougherty” or “another plastic surgery victim (the emotions are all gone).”

She is not Bertha or Janine Garafolo or Joan Jett or Katy Perry or Lana Turner or Rosanna Arquette or “one of the Olsen Twins.”

She is not Cat Power and Suzanne Vega’s love child.

She is not “dat gurl whose husband died…and her husband was batman.”

Not “that chick who plays Donna from Dr. Who.”

Not Christine Baranksi on a bad hair day

Not “Debby Harry? Love IS so confusing.”

She might be “Scared, happy, and confused,” but that is not the right answer.  

Not “that woman from the real housewives of somewhere”

Not “Lindsay Lohan getting mugshotted yet again”

Nope, this is Zooey Deschanel, or, as one of you even more accurately put it “Zooey Deschanel about to be hit by a bus.”

She does take vacancy to a whole new level, doesn’t she?

Which brings us to my final drawing, which I selected thinking it would be a no-miss affair.

This person’s face is so distinctive, so idiosyncratic, and so full of ridiculous features to draw on, I was certain that each and every one of you would guess it right.

But that was before I did the drawing.

Not Bones, Dan Rather, Eugene Levy, Lewis Black, Robert De Niro, Marv Albert,  Sam Donaldson, or Mr. Spock.

Not “cigarette smoking man from the X Files.

Not Gilbert Gottfried (based solely on the space between his eyes).

Not “some smarmy politician”

Not “Putin, wondering if there are enough ethnic Russians in Kent Co to annex it as well”

Delightfully, five of you got it right, This is Mr. Bean, AKA Rowan Atkinson.

And NONE of you thought I’d drawn a woman. Thanks for that.

Onward, then, to the bonus question, which is always my favorite part of Matthew Draws.

BONUS: Which one of these people seems most qualified to perform an emergency appendectomy, and why?

• Christopher Walken. He may not know “how” to do an appendectomy. But he has connections
• Probably some smarmy politician. They steal from us already
• That #4 looks like he wants to cut somebody. 
• The gold chain on person #1 says “I’m a surgeon, baby.” I’m going with him.
• Ellen becasue even in a near-death scenario, shed have you ROTFL-ing, and maybe in the midst of that ROTFL, you would L your appendix right out. (Translation for the unhip: ROTFL = rolling on the floor laughing)
• Andy Rooney in pearls, because I’m pretty sure he knows a thing or two about useless organs. 
• Ellen would seamlessly weave the emergency appendectomy into her Oscar hosting, probably call on actors who play doctors, and make it funny. 
• #1 probably performs them by ripping them out with his/her hands. But then probably eats them, so I”ll go with #4, who looks like he could at least concentrate long enough to do it,
• Since I have zero confidence in the accuracy of any of my guesses, I’m gonna have to extrapolate from facial expressions. #4 seems way too nefarious and #2 far too happy, so I’m ruling them out. #1 looks serious enough for the job, but her unaligned eyeballs make me doubt whether she could visually differentiate between my appendix and my vas deferens, so I’m gonna go with #3, who at least seems very AWAKE, always a plus in a surgeon.