View source for Bottle For A Headstone

{{Infobox
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|headerstyle = background:var(--infobox-header-color);
|labelstyle = background:var(--infobox-header-color);
|header1 = Series
|header3 = Original Broadcast Date
|header5 = Cast
|header7 = Format
|label10  = Preceded by: 
|label11 = Followed by: 
|data8 = 56 minutes
|data4  = December 6, [[:Category:2004|2004]]
|below = [https://www.joefrank.com/?s={{#invoke:URLEncode|encode|{{PAGENAME}}}} Purchase]&nbsp;/&nbsp; [https://www.joefrank.com/streaming/shows/?jfsearch={{#invoke:URLEncode|encode|{{PAGENAME}}}} Stream]
|belowstyle= border-top: 1px solid #333;padding-top:5px;
|data6  = Joe Frank
|data10 = [[Duplicity]]
|data11 = [[Fire]]
|data2  = [[Online]]
|
}}

''I stand before you an innocent man.''

'''Bottle for a Headstone''' is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series [[Online]]. It was originally broadcast on December 6, [[:Category:2004|2004]].

== Synopsis ==

Joe defends himself in court from charges that he raped Miss Sinclair,
recounts minute details of her home and estate.  Joe claims he was
working in his lab on a cure for a rare disease that affects
beautiful young women.  The first girl cured has a restraining order
against him.  Joe admits he took advantage of his role as a radio star
to seduce young women.  When he gets home from court, his girlfriend
remonstrates with him about all the young women with whom he has
affairs.  He says his successful therapy with Dr Nierenberg has cured
him.<ref>Joe gets a recorded message from Dr Nierenberg in [[When I'm Calling You]] 
when he calls Tele-health of Los Angeles.</ref> She leaves him.

13:40: 'Later that night, alone in bed, I dreamt I was a
diplomat attending a reception at a foreign embassy.  But I stank so
powerfully that it was as though a toilet had exploded wherever I
stood.  Finally, I was ushered into a small antechamber where a butler
attempted to wipe away the urine and feces that covered my tuxedo with
a clothes brush.  But as he did this, he seemed to be erasing me as
well.  With every stroke of the brush, another part of my anatomy
disappeared, and I realized he was destroying me.  And I grabbed at
the brush, and as we fought over it, my shoulder bumped up against a
button, and the fireplace moved aside, revealing a hidden passageway.
And I ran into it, down a long dark tunnel and up a flight of stairs,
and then out into the great, open, starry night of a meadow filled
with fragrant grass - when I saw, passing above me, a dirigible from
which depended a large gondola.  And in the gondola, I could see a man
in a striped suit clutching at the bars of a cage in what was
apparently a prison transport ship.'

15:00: Joe finds himself at the apartment of Veronica, a beautiful
movie star (in porn films).  She invites him in for a drink, and talk
about her movies.  He gives her an envelope of money.  They make love.
After, Joe dreams he's a bullfighter, gets impaled on an umbrella
stand.<ref>Compare the fate of the bullfighter in [[Arena]]</ref> When
he wakes they talk about his work as a registered nurse.

22:00: Joe consults famous psychologist Weinberg about Joe's obsession
with death and women.  Weinberg tells him to go to the morgue and make
love to a corpse.

24:00: Joe tells us that Joe Frank is just a character he created who
he pretends to be.

26:40: Father Malcolm was a priest.  Bertram was the only Jewish
altar boy.  Father Malcolm kissed him, which rendered Bertram mute for
2 years, made him the best student at the yeshiva.

28:20: After seeing <i>Triumph of the Will</i> Bertram cultivated
German friends and German culture.  He joined a motorcycle gang.  They
terrorized a town in New Mexico, lived as bandits.

31:40: Bertram became a mime.<ref>Bertram Fields was the name of the
mime in [[Either Or (Part 1) | Either/or]]</ref>.  A mysterious woman, named Veronica,
dressed in black, knocks on his hotel room door, says he can help her,
mentions a person he doesn't know. <ref>This is similar to a segment
of [[Islands]]: both women are dressed in black, claim a mutual
acquaintance unknown to Joe, claim they can be an asset to the firm -
though Bertram has no firm.  This story is also used in [[The Box]]</ref> She claims to work for a firm that
makes a machine that creates time, describes its amazing properties.
Trying to put her off, Bertram claims to have an appointment for
breakfast with friends, though it's midnight.  When she remonstrates,
Bertram explains with an outlandish story.

38:30: The phone rings 5 times; neither of them pick up.  When there's
a knock at the door, she makes Bertram hide in the closet.  The man
who comes in seems to have the same experience Joe did with Veronica
at 15:00.  Bertram rigs a hangman's harness on himself in the closet
to shock her when she opens the door.

41:30: Joe talks about the mysteries of time.

42:40: Bertram seduces Veronica.  Afterwards, at 2 AM, he leaves,
claiming that he teaches a dance class at 3 AM, then cleans subway
cars at 5.

49:10: A few days later they (Bertram and Veronica?) take a ride on hay wagon in the country.
Joe wonders if they're real or characters in a novel or serialized
stories.  A passing car veers off the road to miss their wagon, crashes.  A
priest falls out of it, dead, also a whiskey bottle.  Bertram and
Veronica bury him then perform an improvised service.  They drink some
of the whiskey, pour the rest on the grave.  It's Father Malcolm.
They write his name, birth date, and today's date, in chalk on the
bottle, use it as a headstone.

52:20: 'I don't think I'm rationalizing when I say that adultery is
merely what happens when the normal course of events in the biological
life of a man are defined by the boundaries of marriage.  If you
didn't have marriage, there would be no adultery, but man's behavior
would be the same.  It's completely contextual.'

52:40: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_my_daisy_(poem) 'Pull my daisy'] - David Amram<ref>Originally a poem written by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg],
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac Jack Kerouac], and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady Neal Cassady] in the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse exquisite corpse]
manner.  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Amram David Amram] set
it to music.  This rendition comes from Amram's 'No More Walls' album;
the singer is Lynn Sheffield. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frank Robert Frank] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Leslie Alfred Leslie] made [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_my_daisy a short film of the same name] in 1959: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_12rctV5Z84 The YouTube link] </ref>

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:95%; overflow:auto;"> 
<div style="font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;">Legacy Synopsis</div> 
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

*Joe in the courtroom defending himself against her accusations, but he knows absurdly too much about her home and lifestyle. His alibi: treating young children with horrific diseases, but his witness cannot appear because of a restraining order. Flirting with a juror. I object!

*Later, defending himself against his incensed girlfriend: seducing his lovely female listeners, a tearful, intimate goodbye with his therapist...in a manly way.

*Dreaming he's a diplomat at a reception.  Smelling horrible, covered in urine and feces. 

*Intellectual conversations with a porn star.

*His psychotherapist recommends necrophilia.

*"Joe Frank is a character."  A paradoxical loop: this is not my voice, I am only a mouthpiece for Joe Frank.

*Father Malcom seduces Bertram, who has a revelation, then becomes mute and joins a motorcycle gang.

*"You can best follow the instruction book on virtuoso piano playing by simply depressing the keys in the correct order."

*Then Bertram becomes a mime and plays at Carnegie Hall.  He's visited in the hotel by Veronica, who tells him of a scheme to manufacture artificial time. Then Bertram makes up excuses to try to end the encounter. Then: a knock at the door and it's her client--she's a hooker. 

*The nature of time. "Life is simply the punchline of a joke told backwards."

*Then they killed Father Malcolm? (I lost track here, 40 to 50 minutes)

*Ends with a rendition of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_My_Daisy ''Pull My Daisy''], a poem written by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac Jack Kerouac], and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady Neal Cassady].<ref>Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Cassady each wrote alternate lines seeing only the line before. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frank Robert Frank] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Leslie Alfred Leslie] made a short film based on it in 1959 - this rendition's singer is Lynn Sheffield.</ref>
</div></div>

== Music ==
{{Keepin' It Steel (The Anvil Track) (Amos Tobin)}} [Intro]
{{The Goodbye Highway (Tim "Love" Lee)}} [14:55]
{{Pull My Daisy (David Amram)}} [52:46]

== Footnotes == 

[[Category:Absurd Monologue]]
[[Category:2004]]
[[Category:Show]]
[[Category:Online]]	[[Category:Show_by_date|20041206]]	{{Airdate|airdate=2004-12-06}}{{Series|series=Online}}{{Cast|cast=Joe Frank}}