Tag Archives: American humor

RIP Joe Frank (1938 – 2018)

This happened two years ago but I only found out today.

Also, I had never heard of Joe Frank.

Today, I googled for Ken Nordine and ASMR (one of my guilty pleasures) and I found Joe Frank.

I listened and liked immediately and immensely. Frank is an absolute genius.

Up there in absurdity with the likes of Roland Topor.

Joe Frank was a French-born American writer radio performer known for his philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and absurd monologues and radio dramas, says Wikipedia.

Typical radio dramas include “Bad Karma” (2000) and “That Night” (1994).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9YwALw73gY
“Bad Karma” (2000)

“Bad Karma” opens with:

“I’m sitting at a dinner party attended by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Seated at another smaller table are Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milošević, Pinochet and some others I don’t recognize. And then there’s a third table, sort of a children’s table, it has shorter legs and smaller children’s chairs. And sitting there are Richard Speck, Gary Gilmore, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7UFFapg_-U
“That Night”

Synopsis from “That Night”:

“Joe’s uncle drowns while fishing a week after retiring, urban animal criminals, voyeur complains about a nude woman, sex with nuns in a limo, an elderly marching band and homecoming parade has been lost for 40 years and is being chased by homecoming queen’s fiance, creating life-size maps, to Jesus: why is there so much suffering, we’re on the edge of chaos, it’s great to feel a part of nature monologue with traffic background, monologue on sleep (repeated in other programs).” [3]

“That Night” also mentions maps on a 1:1 scale, just as Borges did in his one-paragraph story “On Exactitude in Science”.

RIP Mal Sharpe (1936 – 2020)

“Maniacs In Living Hell”, from The Insane (But Hilarious) Minds Of Coyle & Sharpe (1964).

Mal Sharpe was an American humorist.

His most notable work was done as part of the duo Coyle and Sharpe.  They were active as street interviewers in the early 1960s and were simply hilarious.

The filmed sequence of “The Warbler” is hilarious. Sadly, it appears to be offline at the moment.

I give you “Maniacs In Living Hell”, collected on the album The Insane (But Hilarious) Minds Of Coyle & Sharpe (1964).

RIP Henry Jacobs (1924 – 2015)

Via the death of Ken Nordine I find out that Henry Jacobs died.

“Interview with Dr. Sholem Stein” (1955)

Henry Jacobs was an American sound artist and humorist, known for the radio program Music and Folklore, the TV program The Fine Art of Goofing Off (1971–1972) and compositions such as “Sonata For Loudspeakers” (1955).

“Sonata For Loudspeakers” (1955), it’s hard to tell whether this is serious or comical.

He also invented the fictional characters Sixt Von Arnim, Sholem Stein and Shorty Petterstein.

The Fine Art of Goofing Off 

Of these three, Sholem Stein is my favorite. I used him as a mystification in my book on the history of erotica in which I put the following words into his mouth:

“Man reveals his true nature in his fears and desires. Show me what he is afraid of, show me what excites him, I will tell you who he is.”

I use Sholem Stein off and on nowadays, I usually have him cite dicta I don’t know who to ascribe to.