There are so many excellent things bouncing around in this story–about a professional Bono impersonator who’s started trying to pass himself off as Bono when he’s off the clock–that it’s hard to keep track of them all without a list:
1.) A professional Bono impersonator has turned being Bono into “a lifestyle.”
2.) Fake Bono serenades the crowd at a Miami restaurant with an acoustic guitar borrowed from the owner, then tells a woman who lost her virginity to “With or Without You” that she put the song “to good use.” He writes “Todo es posible con Jesus” on the guitar, suggesting that the copy is just as pretentious as the original.
3.) The fact that fake Bono showed up at the restaurant avec posse, indicating either that he’s good enough to fool people into going out to dinner with “Bono” or that there are people willing to go along with a known imposter, possibly hoping for free food.
4.) The phrase “Suspicion immediately fell on the North American Bono impersonator community,” which I regret I will never be able to use in my own reporting.
5.) Another, more responsible Bono impersonator describes the “huge rush” of being mistaken for the real thing: “People just look and stare, touch your hair and shake your hand, thank you for all the wonderful things you’re doing for Africa. . . . I can see where you’d want to keep doing it and doing it.” We can infer from this statement that people frequently touch the real Bono’s hair, as if he were Jesus or a beautiful horse.
6.) The Bono impersonator suspected of being behind the caper abruptly cut off an e-mail exchange with the reporter with the excuse that he was “going four-wheeling in Big Bear.”
Maybe it’s just outlaw love left over from the recent “Little Houdini” excitement or the fact that in my head I’m picturing Danny McBride in the role of fake Bono, but something in me really wants him to keep it up. Live the dream, fake Bono. Illegitimi non carborundum.