My wife does not like that billboard.

Each morning on her drive through Westwood she sees it, sees him staring down through Clark Kent-ish spectacles, his dress a conservative suit and tie, his expression blank. His stance is so awkwardly stiff, as though someone shoved him out there, this man with the hypnotically seductive voice and a face for radio. It's such a disappointment to my wife, and not just because he was more attractive through her mind's eye.

She didn't want to know this much, preferred to imagine him and all those wonderful stories. In these look-at-me days of a world gone YouTube, there was great value in this thing that not only required imagination, but inspired it. But now it's being ruined it for my wife, for me, for a lot of us.

A version of This American Life is coming to pay television, too.