Joe Frank

It’s nearing 11:00, Sunday night. Time for Joe Frank. If you haven’t been listening to Joe Frank on NPR for the past several years, then by all means get down to it. Go to NPR’s website and find the local time that your local branch of the national public radio airs this program and then tune the hell in. Salon.com rightly described his show as the nightmare “This American Life” and “A Prairie Home Companion” have when they go home, though that description does ignore some of the humor of the show, dark though it may be. My favorite installment dealt with a woman constantly calling her ex, now remarried, and threatening to shoot herself, to which he kept screaming, “shoot the ceiling, shoot the floor, let me hear the gun!” or something along those lines. It was just so sad. So strange. Well, maybe the Tangerine Dream music that looped under the scene made it seem so damn creepy.

An aside: Frank is somewhat responsible for one of my favorite movies, After Hours, though only in the sense that the writer of the film stole some ideas and dialogue for his script.

Anyway, I may have to subscribe to the website in order to have access to the entire oeuvre. It’s become my weekly ritual, the only program I have to catch. And the loopy “Word Jazz” that follows pales in comparison, though I understand why NPR puts these two together. People love that Ira Glass show, but to me, this is what radio is all about. This is exciting.