Just a Chip Off

Confused for the celebrity father? Not often. Not really. Even if a child has inherited the look, the talent is different.

So, for those who care about such experiments, the waiting game has begun to see the results and whether Clay Aiken Jr. (or whatever 40-ish producer Jaymes Foster decides to call her artificially inseminated — thanks CA — child) is a greater or worser idol than the American Idull.

How will people compare him/her to the sire? Will they begin comparing immediately, think of the child as sui generis or only care when the context of the person is revealed? The, unfortunately, seems to be the fate of Rain Pryor, author of "Jokes My Father Never Taught Me" and still (?) on tour. She has both her father Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III's legacy to live up to and his death sentence (multiple sclerosis) with its hereditary considerations to worry about.

Even if the look is the same, there is almost always a talent difference. We are more interested in the father when the child is the star and put pressure on the child to step-it-up when daddy has already gone big-time. But not every child really is bothered by the pressure. Fred Trevino, for example, may be the spitting image of the hot club swinging Lee, "... but once [anyone sees] me play they know I am Tony Trevino, not Lee."

** The search for star power adds to the mysterious link between father and child. **