Ira Glass
Ira Glass produces This American Life for Chicago Public Radio, which enjoys massive popularity among suburban housewives and young, male stoners. Ira Glass lives in Chicago, where he lives in and works out of his bathtub. He is consistently ranked as the most successful of all Americans who have no job skills whatsoever.
Early Life[edit | edit source]
Though it is not evident from his radio broadcasts, Ira Glass is actually quite brilliant, having studied semiotics, which is the study of signs, or some high-concept nonsense. Upon graduating college, he underwent a voice surgery to alter the pitch of his voice, from the same surgeon who performed the same operation on singer Michael Jackson.
Career[edit | edit source]
Glass produces Chicago Public Radio's This American Life. He also provides the main narration. He does all this from his bathtub.
In producing This American Life, Glass provides an outlet for a small, urban community of ultra-introverted hipsters, who would be drug addicts, save for their rampant poverty. Glass allows them to produce segments on his show. To do this, the following procedure is used. When a friend of Glass has come up with a sufficiently boring personal history, they prepare for Glass an offering of cheese. This is presented to Glass in his office (which is, bear in mind, a bathroom). If the offering pleases Glass, then he allows the hopeful to sit down on the toilet, where a microphone is positioned, and record his or her segment in a single, unrehearsed run. Glass, being an expert in signs, will quickly detect any signs of preparation, cohesiveness, or truly engaging content; any one of these is grounds for a week-long banishment from Glass's bathroom. If the segment makes the cut and appears on the radio, the friend is provided shelter for a night, along with breakfast the next morning, provided they change out Glass's bathwater (in addition to working out of his bathtub, Glass also lives in it).
Personal life[edit | edit source]
Glass lives with his wife in Chicago, IL. He claims to watch The OC, but this has been determined to be untrue. Glass does not indulge in any fictional movie- or TV-watching, as he fears that cross-contamination into his own show might belie the fictitious nature of This American Life.
In addition to shitting diamonds, Glass can create farts that are cucumber-melon scented and are produced with a crisp whistling noise. He spends a great portion of his days and nights in his bathtub, but in addition to this, he can be found in his bathrobe getting coffee, listening to podcasts of his own radio show.
Glass is good friends with David Sedaris. Whenever Glass requires a filler for his show, he uses a recording from one of his telephone conversations with Sedaris. Living in Normandy, Sedaris is often tripping on acid; hence, in telephone conversations he has a penchant for describing at length situations that involve anthropomorphic squirrels.
Bathtub[edit | edit source]
Glass's bathtub was designed by the same engineer who designed Stephen Hawkings's wheelchair. Equipped with high-quality microphones and a retractable guest chair, the electronic hardware of it is entirely toe-operated. The tub and the bathroom in which its situated are specially designed to allow the tub to be easily extracted, so that when Glass is on tour, he can deliver public shows from the same bathtub in which he dreamed the stories in the first place.
Trivia[edit | edit source]
- Glass spends three hours every morning rehearsing hip, throwback sayings, i.e., "Ok, so...".
- Glass has admitted to not actually being interested in any story that has ever come on This American Life.