jack bauer, my doppelganger

a doppelganger is a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person. jack bauer is probably the toughest american to ever live... i'd say it's between jack and chuck norris with jack edging chuck out with a sweet choke-hold in the final round of their death match. some might say i could be included in that mix due to my alleged resemblance to agent bauer... it's impossible to know; but, if you'll indulge me for the duration of this post, i'd like to explore a little deeper the similarities between myself and jack.

i bring this up only because while wandering the halls at church today in an effort to prepare for the lesson i was going to teach in elders quorum, someone said "what's up, jack?" and then her husband said, "i was just thinking that same thing. how's that virus treating you, jack?" first off, i eat viruses like that for breakfast, so, needless to say, it's pretty much worked it's way out of my system... i think i had a little cough left over from the virus' worst today, but i barely even noticed it.

secondly, while i am flattered by the comparison to the very person you could tell me i have a man crush on and i'd be alright with it, when i told my wife about the comment, she said that it really wasn't a compliment. actually, babe, it is a compliment and on more than one level, but what i suspect you are referring solely to the fact that jack isn't all that physically attractive. i mean, he's no quaisimotto or anything, but he's certainly not nearly as dreamy as jason bourne. don't let that get to you though, aim, since i think what the joneseseses were trying to say is it's not so much that jack and i are pretty much twins separated at birth but that my very aura emits the "he's never going to crack no matter what they do to him while simultaneously saving the world from terrorists for the umpteenth time" type of toughness and resolve that only the likes of jack bauer and myself can exude.

listen, i've been told i look jack before... it's nothing new. i've also been told i look like jason bourne, as well... more so when i was younger. jack is pretty much an older version of jason, so from a timeline standpoint that makes sense: younger me: bourne, older me: bauer. plus, all of our names start with "j". however, in the spirit of full disclosure, i feel compelled to amdmit that a girl in high school used to always tell me i looked like the cowardly lion from the wizard of oz movie. still, two comparisons to tough guys versus one comparison to a cowardly animal... i think it's obvious who is more accurate and in case you haven't figured it out yet, it wasn't the girl from my high school. as if.



plus, unlike the cowardly lion, i have done hundreds, if not thousands, of very bauer/bourne-esque things like going dumpster diving to recover a very important hard drive. just in case you're curious, this took place back when the cooper five was schaking up at an apartment complex in san jose, ca. i had a laptop and the hard drive went out. i had a warranty on the lap top which would replace the bad hard drive with a new one at no cost provided i sent back the bad one once i installed the new one. well, i got the new one, replaced the old one and once i had what i needed, i left the old one on a desk in our room to send back at a later date when i felt like it. so, there it sat for a week or two. no biggie... i knew i could send it in whenever i wanted and not be charged for the new hard drive... it wasn't going anywhere. quit rushing me, people.



so, there it sat until i returned home one night and noticed that the hard drive was missing. i asked mrs. blogmaster where the hard drive was at. she didn't answer. i gave her one more chance and she still didn't answer so i tied her to a chair and started to pull the electrical wires out of the lamp to prep the mood for the interrogation. that didn't phase her so i told jameson that i was going to need a hacksaw. needless to say, she cracked like a whip when she heard that. in case it's not obvious, i'm just kidding... i don't physically torture my wife, there are other equally effective but less obvious forms of torture i prefer. actually, she just answered the question without any threats from me and told me that she had thrown it out that very day because she thought we didn't need it anymore.

being completely computer part challenged, i figured a new hard drive would run around $500 and i didn't want to spend $500 like that, so there was only one way to remedy this problem and like jack did in season two when someone had to fly the sesna carrying the atomic bomb into the desert on a suicide mission, i threw on the yellow dishwashing gloves and headed for the community dumpster all on my own. i wasn't happy about it, but i was willing to do my duty to the family.

it was a fairly humiliating situation. luckily, it was dark, so i figured me jumping in and out of the dumpster wasn't going to be quite as noticeable to potential passers by as it would be during the day (this was a covert op). nonetheless, i made aim come with me to keep watch and prevent some random tenant from happening upon me while swimming around in muck and calling the cops or offering to take me to the local homeless shelter. i was filling encouraged though as i made my way to the dumpster since aim had mentioned that she had heard the hard drive hit the bottom of the dumpster when she tossed it in there. "good," i thought, "it should be right there at the bottom, an easy to find, quick extraction, in and out, the dumpster will never no what hit it."

but, as luck would have it, the trash heap was nearly full by the time i got there. apparently, dumpsters fill up fairly quickly when scores of apartment dwellers are throwing their garbage in them over the course of 12 hours. modern day mythology would have you believe all those progressive californians are consuming less than that... not so, my friend. at any rate, we approached the dumpster cautiously, and i activated the asset (me). i jumped over the dumpster's wall like a spry cat and started fishing around as carefully as i could. this was going to be harder and more humiliating than i thought.. certainly it is one thing to fish through any grouping of garbage for any reason at all, but to be knee deep in the dumpster of a 300 plus apartment complex looking for what in reality was probably only a $200 hard drive is quite another.

10, maybe 15, minutes passed with no hard drive in sight. the fumes were starting to get to me, but it was imperative that i find that hard drive... the fate of our financial future depended on it. so, we carried on... and by carried on i mean that i was the one digging around in the dumpster and aim was still keeping watch outside the dumpster in the much cleaner, less smellier and not nearly as enveloped in other people's old toothbrushes, rotting leftovers, used kleenexes, etc. area when all of a sudden we heard a startling noise coming from the general direction of our building.

"what could that be," we thought (those exact same words and at the exact same time, too). no matter, we must not be diverted from the primary target of our mission: the hard drive. then we heard it again... it was an interesting noise, somewhat startling... something akin to the aliens from the aliens movies when they get shot: high and shrieking. then, out of nowhere, we saw our french neighbor, and fellow blog commenter, alex running around in his french pajamas (they weren't really french pajamas, but i'd like you to try and picture him in french pajamas for purposes of this post, whatever that means). he was looking for us and beckoned for us to come thither (should we trust him? wwjd? what would jack do?). aim abandoned her post and left me vulnerable in the dumpster... apparently, she never graduated from ranger school or else she'd have known to never leave anyone behind except that i must not have graduated from ranger school either since we both decided we could leave jameson behind in the apartment since he was asleep when we decided to go dumpster diving. beside, i needed a lookout man, or woman.

as luck would have it, jameson woke up and being the three or four year old he was at the time was scared upon concluding he had been abandoned and, as such, made his way out into the common area of our building crying and screaming (please read alex's comment for more accurate account of the story. i didn't change because i am using some artistic license here). alex, who lived directly above us, later described jameson's shrills as sounding something like a pig being slaughtered.
obviously, jameson did not inherit the bauer dna his dad got.

actually, the mrs. and i felt pretty bad about all that, but our feeling of remorse quickly went away when we found the hard drive in the dumpster and saved ourselves some coin. it was a win win for all of us: jameson wasn't abducted and we found the hard drive. i had the hazmat team hose me off and aim and i embraced while kissing passionately. jameson's self-esteem increased upon seeing his parents be openly affectionate with one another. it was a child psychologist's dream. good news is, there was no mole in the cooper household.

so, there you go... based on that experience alone i can only conclude that i am pretty much jack bauer or jason bourne or a hybrid of the both of them, take your pick. alright, we'll just leave it at jack bauer, since saying i look like matt damon is a little self-serving of me... i don't want to be that guy, you know, the one who says that people tell him all the time that he looks like tom cruise, or george clooney, or andy from the office except that i have said that throughout this entire post. i like my cake, can't i eat it, too, for crying out loud?



fine, i'm fine if you don't think think i look like bourne, but can you at least consider me to be a hipper, better dressed, pedicure-getting version of jack bauer? i won't go so far as to say a gay version of jack bauer for what i would hope should be obvious reasons, but maybe more of a straight male model version of jack bauer... or something similar to the likes thereof.

in fact, i'll make it easy on you. here are your choices:

jeremy looks like:

a. a better looking version of jack bauer
b. a better dressed version of jack bauer
c. a cooler version of jack bauer
d. other (be nice, my ego is fragile)

go ahead, waste a minute of your time telling me what you think, i'd appreciate it. the real question we should be discussing, however, is how someone can call me jack bauer and feel good about themselves when my wife is way hotter than jack's wife was?