doppelgänger, you brought her.

It's such an easy joke. And so lame for its ease. But there it is.

Anyway...

So The Jamez has a doppelgänger. Friends and coworkers of his have been claiming to have seen him all over the place, and at lots of work-related things. It took a while for them all to figure out that half of the James sightings were non-James sightings. But the mystery deepened: who is this Alternate James?

James went to a show the other week where, lo and behold, his doppelgänger was playing drums. Adding to the Twilight Zone weirdness, it was a Radio Head cover band, and James is one of those clinically obsessed Radio Head Heads. Via the band's listing, James found out the guys' name. And it took only a little bit more digging to find out who/what he was at the big G.

We, the fans of James Prime, egged him to contact the guy. Especially Special K, who once spent about 15 minutes talked to the guy on the bus thinking it was James Prime and wondering why James was being all aloof and rude to her and not cluing in to anything she was saying (she called James out on it later and had to say, "That wasn't me." Special K thought she had gone mad.

I found James Sub1 on MySpace via his band.

Here is a randomly cropped odd headshot of James Prime:


And here is a random pic of James Sub1 from his MySpace profile:

You can sorta see it.

What's weirder is that James Sub1 is wearing my glasses!


James Prime ultimately wrote to the guy via the internal mail system:

Hi there,

This is going to be a weird email, but bear with me.

I've worked at [The G] for ages, and a few years ago people started telling me odd stories about seeing me in some random cafeteria but realizing the me they saw wasn't me. Apparently there was a doppleganger on campus. And as time wore on the guy with dark eyeglass frames has been pointed out to me, who wears navy blue dickies jackets and such (like mine), and has the same kind of dark blonde hair worn in a sort of less than, shall we say, combed manner. Which is to say the same scruffy way I've got it.

I've even got a friend who apparently started talking to me on the bus but realized the me she was talking to didn't know her. Which was you.

This sort of thing happens, everyone has someone who looks like them. However last night I went to see Disappear Incompletely at Bruno's. I'm a huge Radiohead fan. And there you are playing drums, named Jamie, and more or less having a similar look to mine. Not to mention playing music that I am clinically addicted to. It was would have been more surreal if I weren't paying so much attention to the music.

Anyway, all that being said you guys were great. Which is the point of this email. I was completely impressed and can't imagine that the band wouldn't be pleased with the arrangements you all have put together. I'll be back out to see you again.

And yes, if you put our two employee pics next to each other you'd think all of my friends need new eyeglasses.

Cheers,
J

I imagine he means everyone needs new eyeglasses except for me. Clearly, James Sub1 would approve of mine.

James Sub1 replied and James Prime forwarded the response, but I accidentally deleted that e-mail. Suffice it to say he was pretty cool about the whole thing. I did not e-mail Sub1 about the frame. That would have been a little too close to stalker craziness I think. But we'll probably take in another show. And get a side-by-side shot of the twins, then pimp them out for DoubleMint ads.

And readers beware: you may have a double out there too.

Which may prove convenient when you chose to ignore people you know on the bus.

I'm just sayin'.