Oh, his face wasn't chalk-white and he didn't have green hair... but you could tell from one look that it was him. It wasn't just the his long, lined face or his child-like eyes with their wide, feminine lashes or the way his green sweatshirt was tucked into his green sweatpants which were tucked into his white sweat socks which were tucked into his tan, tasseled loafers... or even the fact that he was sporting the broadest, most off-putting smile I've ever seen before of since.

He simply was the Joker.

When I met him, he was trying to load a chair into his sensible family SUV (which is actually a much appropriate vehicle for the Joker than some kind of clown car, if you think about it), and I helped him out, partly because I was the only one around, but mostly because he was easily the most upsetting person I'd ever met. So, I loaded the chair into the Joker's trunk and he thanked me for my time and if drove off into the night, looking chipper and elfin and demonic; leaving me to try to piece together what it all meant.

About twenty minutes later, I ran into a staggeringly vast dude in a Batman t-shirt that looked for all the world like it could be carbon dated back to the first Tim Burton movie.

But that guy wasn't Batman.