Joe Frank:

October 26, 2000 4:20 PM

Joe Frank: When endowed with profound religious feeling, your skin becomes transparent and your blood begins to turn a thin watery hue until the light of the sun streaming in the window passes entirely through you. At last, having evolved into pure spiritual energy, nothing remains of your existence but a small pile of dirty underwear, damp socks, rumpled garments, a driver's license, credit cards and perhaps a small nail clipper.
posted by subpixel (5 comments total)

Joe Frank is a Radio God. There is nothing quite like listening to Joe Frank as you drive the streets of Los Angeles on a Saturday night, his warm and inviting voice telling tales of isolation and beauty.

And, of course, I don't think anyone has topped his performance during an NPR pledge drive a few years ago. "If you don't call in a pledge right now and help us meet our goal, I'm going to take this cocker spaniel puppy and shoot it."

A dark and beautiful genius for the aether.
posted by RakDaddy at 6:40 PM on October 26, 2000

Too bad he ripped off the puppy gag from National Lampoon. That shoot-the-dog bit is about 30 years old.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:13 AM on October 27, 2000

Ah, but Mo, isn't it just as much genius to recognize 30-year-old genius and that most people have forgotten it and repurpose it for your medium-of-choice?
posted by daveadams at 7:03 AM on October 27, 2000

Yes, but did National Lampoon then blow themselves up with a hand grenade afterwards?

(Though, if they did, more power to 'em.)
posted by RakDaddy at 9:33 AM on October 27, 2000

Joe Frank: wow. Hadn't thought of him in years. He had, I think, a show in the late 80s called "Work in Progress" - ran on our local NPR station after Harry Shearer, in the graveyard hours. I never knew who he was or what the show was, but it was the most mesmerizing radio I'd ever heard. He'd do these imaginary call-in shows in which the callers went off on interminable cogitations.

No one I knew ever heard it, so eventually I decided I'd made it all up. Now there are MP3s available. God bless the Internet.
posted by lileks at 12:46 PM on October 27, 2000