The Wide World of Andrew Wheelers

One of my very first posts here was a survey of the global reach of the conspiracy of Andrew Wheelers -- it sounds like a reasonably distinctive name, but it's actually so blandly Anglo-Saxon that there are thousands of us -- and I haven't gone back to check since. Given that I'm now the top result for a Google search for "Andrew Wheeler" (Ha! take that, Mr. Australian Composer!), I thought it was about time to see whose charred bodies I had to climb over to reach this lofty pinnacle.

(Or, perhaps, I had nothing better to do, and still didn't feel like writing an actual book review.)

First, there's Andrew Chamberlain Wheeler, whom I've actually met -- I used to do business with his wife (and that caused occasional confusion on the phone when I called her office) -- represented here by his wedding announcement in the New York Times.

I might be #1 on Google, but right behind me is the motorsports photographer Andrew Wheeler, who takes lovely pictures of motorcycles (and other racing) from a base in California.

Aha! The London comics-reviewing Andrew Wheeler is still around on LiveJournal, including this great recent post on webcomics:

Yeuch. When did Penny Arcade make this transition into not-funny-and-fancies-itself-something rotten territory? It's incredibly impressive how the art has evolved over the years, but what happened to the jokes? It used to be that I knew nothing about video games and I still found it funny. Now I know at least a little more than I need to about video games and I don't find it funny at all! Fighting Russians and kissing babes? What the hell? Who cares?

But it's still better than XKCD. XKCD sucks. YES I SAID IT! XKCD is for people who think Joss Whedon is a feminist. (Fetishising women does not, in fact, make you a feminist; it makes you a fetishist.) If there is anything in the world more smug than XKCD, I would very much like to punch it in the face. And it's so fucking saccharine. It should be full of ponies. It disgusts me.

And the Perry Bible Fellowship guy doesn't even bother anymore, since his damn book came out! We just have that awful Truck Bearing Kibble knock-off, which looks much the same but suffers from unbearably banal jokes.

And Achewood is crap as well. How come that guy's art doesn't ever get any better? The art on Sinfest is lovely; it's the writing that's odious in the extreme. I expect El Goonish Shive is crap as well, but I've never read it. Oh, and Ctrl+Alt+Del. What a piece of shit.

This constructive analysis brought to you by the urge to stomp on a metropolis while roaring.

The actor Andrew Wheeler is still out there working, with eight acting credits this year. (The highlight: the upcoming Guardsman in The Day the Earth Stood Still.)

And there's the Andrew Wheeler who photographs horses -- I've never been quite sure if he's the same as the motorcycle photographer or not. It's a big world full of Andrew Wheelers; there's room for more than one photographer. (There was a comment from one of the photographic Andrew Wheelers on the old version of this post, which I think means that the equine AW and the motorcycle AW are the same person. But possibly not.)

The Australian composer/conductor doesn't seem to have updated his website since 2001, so he's fallen far down the rankings. I hope he's still out there, though. Andrew Wheelers are meant to be happy and successful and powerful, so he's got to keep the side up.

MySpace has this Andrew Wheeler, who's from my home town but was born about a decade later. He also wears sunglasses to play guitar.

On the professional networking site LinkedIn, I'm the top Andrew Wheeler (at least in this search) out of at least three dozen.

A site called Topix has all of the hot Andrew Wheeler news, of which there isn't any.

This Andrew Wheeler is a corporate headhunter for a firm with a long name, which means he must be good.

Another photographer Andrew Wheeler operates out of Paris; he's the one who has the immensely valuable andrewwheeler.com address.

Another Andrew Wheeler is a lawyer in Vancouver, Washington -- and the firm has "Wheeler" right at the front of it's name.

I am not nearly the most Republican Andrew Wheeler out there: the Andrew Wheeler who is the on the Republican staff of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works -- and who I keep seeing getting quoted in my daily Google paranoia feeds -- is. It sounds like his job is to claim that climate change is not occurring, and never will.

One otherwise undifferentiated Andrew Wheeler has an Earthlink site -- it was updated in 2006, but "Earthlink" just screams 1999 to me.

If you want something built for you, I'd recommend using Portland, OR architect Andrew Wheeler. (Though his web presence is very scanty.)

Petty Officer Andrew Wheeler plays saxophone in the Navy Band.

This Andrew Wheeler built some pretty impressive wireless sensor networks while a grad student at MIT.

Another Andrew Wheeler, with the glazed look I remember well from my own college days, plays soccer for York College.

And this Andrew Wheeler plays roller hockey for West Point.

(I still haven't found ""Buzzy," the athletic director from the first time I did this, but there are a lot more athletically-inclined AWs than I expected.)

And these are the Andrew Wheelers of Facebook. Fear us!

If you need insurance in Connecticut, this is the Andrew Wheeler for you.

All of Andrew Wheeler's fans gather at MovieTome! See how many there are!

Andrew Wheeler is running for county commissioner of Okaloosa County, Florida. He has the coveted andywheeler.com domain.

Andy Wheeler is an Engineering Librarian at the US Naval Academy. That's two Navy Andrew Wheelers!

I'm running out of gas now, but remember -- these are just a few of the worldwide army of Andrew Wheelers. There are 419 of us in the US alone! Tremble at our passing!

The most popular name, though, is James Smith. I pity you if you're one of that vast gray army -- there are over 51,000 of them in the USA.

My father-in-law, on the other hand, has a name shared by at most three people in the US. My sister-in-law is probably the only one in the whole country with her name. The same with my mother-in-law. Perhaps I should have changed my name when I got married?