SOOOOOOO. I don’t even know where to begin with this post.

Well first off if you don’t know what a Doppelgänger is then let me enlighten you:

• A ghostly counterpart to a living person (according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 

When I first saw this title under the “Listening to Stories” category for this weeks assignments I thought it would be the most interesting one to listen too. And boy was it interesting.

For some reason I had this preconceived notation that it was going to be all about celebrity doppelgängers. Who knows why, it’s just what I thought. I thought wrong.

If you’d like to listen to it before I discuss it below, feel free to click here.

Review on the Story

Ira Glass and his doppelgänger, Fred Arminsen (Portlandia star), start off the show talking about Fred’s Saturday Night Live skit where he portrays Ira Glass. They share outtake clips, fading in and out of music and talking over the music at times. I have to say in the beginning I became confused by who’s voice was whose. Fred has a higher pitched voice, but as they began talking faster, I became much harder to tell. At this point I was still convinced that it would be about celebrity doppelgängers.

Then they moved into the story portion of the radio show and that’s when I realized this would not be about celebrity doppelgängers. I guess it would have helped if I read the top of the page before starting the show.

The radio show shared two stories, the first one being about “artificial calamari” aka Hog Rectum. Yep you read that correctly. I literally did a double take at my computer. Obviously there was nothing to see, but when Mr. Glass said that they got a story about people selling “artificial calamari” and that it was hog rectum, my jaw fell to the ground.

After researching this and having several phone interviews with sellers of hog rectum, they couldn’t obtain any true evidence that hog rectum was really being sold as “calamari.” Mr. Glass and his sister, who is a chef, decided to fry up some real calamari and some artificial  calamari and see if people could tell a difference. In the end, no one could tell the difference. THAT IS ALARMING! I’ve never had calamari, but the thought that it could be hog rectum is enough for me to NEVER try it!

In this story Mr. Glass used “restaurant sounds/music”, glasses clinking, people talking, soft jazz music planning when he described the possibility of people eating “artificial calamari” everyday in restaurants. This allowed a picture to be painted in my mind.

He overlapped this phone interviews with information about the interviewees and how their conversations played out. He goes into more detail about a hog’s rectum, itself, and adds dramatic music as he talks.When Mr. Glass and his sister traveled to the market to get the calamari and hog rectum he recorded their conversation and added it into the story. I felt like I was right their with them.

Towards the very end Mr. Glass says he is on the side of the hog rectum. He describes it as a story of hope. The music is adds in this section seems to glamorized the hog rectum and describes the “rise of the low man on the totem pole, to the big leagues.” This part made me laugh.

While this story completely grossed me out, I really liked the way it was described and relayed to the listener. I really felt like I was there with Mr. Glass as they prepared the “calamari” and throughout the who interview process. The story kept me interested and curious about the final results of the “experiment”.

Second doppelgänger story

Once again, this was not about celebrities. But rather a comparison between a Military Veteran named Brandon and an inner city guy named Curtis.

This story was based on 7 ways their were similar and their stories.

• Seeing a dead body. For Curtis, his mom was killed and laying in the street when his grandmother started to scream. He saw her laying in the road. For Brandon, (I believe) he was on his base and a military truck came back with dead bodies after an attack from the Afghan men. 
• How they handled their feelings and emotions. Both men were in denial about the death of their mother (for Curtis) and military buddies (for Brandon).
• Unfiltered Rage. Curtis hated the guys that killed his mother and promised that he would find them and kill them too. Brandon admitted that he had extreme hate towards the Afghan people and he said that he wished they were not even here [on earth].
• Quiet times were the worst times because they both had time to think about what had happened.
• Self-Medicated. Curtis used drugs and alcohol to suppress his feelings. After returning home, Brandon began drinking a lot.
• Lashed out at family. They were both violent. Brandon got very rough with his girlfriend one night. She called the police and when they got there, Brandon asked if the officers gun was loaded, because Brandon just wanted the officer to shoot him. Curtis shot his sister’s boyfriend (he survived) and tried to kill himself, but his grandmother walked in on him and was able to stop him.
• Realized they were not alone. Brandon is in support groups with other military veterans to discuss his problems. Curtis has the support of his grandma and is working toward getting himself out of this inner city lifestyle.

The way the story is told is that Mr. Glass give a similarity and then cuts back and forth between Curtis and Brandon’s stories. He does a really great job of lining the stories up and presenting them in a logical manner. Mr. Glass wraps up the end of the story.

After both stories, Fred joins in again and they both finish up the show. It was very interesting, and VERY unexpected. I really ended up liking this show a lot. I liked how both stories were pieced together. Mr. Glass did a great job of creating an interesting plot and stories that kept my interest. This is why he is so great at what he does!