Several people have seen the plane soaring overhead around the city today.

"Hey. That plane is dragging a banner of Che Guevara."

That’s what they’ve been saying.  They’s what I said too, when I first saw it.

It’s not Che.  It’s the Geico caveman.  I caught a close look.

Mistake is understandable though.

So, as a public service, I thought we would go over our heavily bearded people-of-note:

This is Che:

Che was a Cuban revolutionary and Marxist leader.  He was executed 40 years ago this month at the age of 39 after being captured during an overthrow of Bolivia.  But the famous image (shown above), taken in 1960, lives on.

This is the Geico caveman:

The Geico caveman is a television icon and insurance company spokesman, and will have a series out this fall on network television.  Unlike Che Guevara, he is not involved in Marxist-Socialist politics and was never an ideological comrade of Fidel Castro.  In fact, he is entirely made up, and protrayed by an actor wearing unconfortable latex makeup.

And this, by the way, is Barry Gibb, circa 1980:

Barry Gibb, unlike the two above, is not dead and/or not fictional.  Which proves, by the way, there is no God.  He is a member of the BeeGees, a music group consisting of three Australian brothers who  popularized disco in the late 70’s with their use of screechy high girly-man voices set to thumpa-thumpa music.  (See, e.g., Fever, Saturday Night).

The banner flying over Winston-Salem is the guy in the middle.