Pledge Drive Rough Cuts

Pledge Drive Rough Cuts[1]

Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
8/01/2000
Cast
Kristine McKenna, Larry Block, David Rapkin, Joe Frank
Format
Pledge Drive, 1 hour
Preceded by:	Karma Don't Deny Me
Followed by:	Karma Redux

Pledge Drive Rough Cuts is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on August 1, 2000.

Synopsis

• A quick segment in which Joe and Larry discuss viagra.
• Kristine begins reading an endorsement, Joe stops her and asks questions instead, she praises Kornfield, reads a poem.
• Kornfield: an old man plants an olive tree, "don't know mind."
• Joe and a woman discuss a recent trip he made to the emergency room suffering from internal bleeding; human kindness, connecting emotionally with people; leaving the hospital and immediately returning to old habits and the drive for sex and combat. *Kornfield: what matters at the end, ulcer poetry.
• Larry and Joe: Larry is fancy free, interacting with Chassids in central park while shirtless and wearing farmer pants, realizing one's arm is a man's arm. Sex while wearing phyllacteries, on the torah.
• Kornfield: sacred community.
• Larry and Joe: dignified suicide, driving into a stanchion at high speed, a coordinated cross country suicide game of chicken after having taking out life insurance policies. Another man suggests a suicide in which they both drive across the country while talking on mobil phones and crash in the middle.

Music

This is an incomplete record of the music in this program. If you can add more information, please do.

Shared Material

• Four Part Dissonance
• Evening Sky (Cross-country suicide pact)

Commentary

Please see guidelines on commentary and share your personal thoughts in this section.

Shiro

Christine's comment about people discovering Kornfield through Joe's programs is startling. I've always interpreted much of Joe's Karma style work as a brutal critique of the Kornfield world view. Without Joe's montage and Larry in the role of the anti-Korn (to use his phrase), there's nothing particularly compelling about the Kornfield audio. I would expect very little overlap between the audience appropriate for a straight Kornfield lecture and the Joe's following.

Spblat

I tend to see Kornfield's segments as a calm answer to the pain and misery in Joe's programs. When I think about it, I guess I see it the opposite way: that Kornfield is the "anti-Joe", the "anti-Block", the influence that lets me take a deep breath and feel like there is peace and hope and serenity to be experienced in the world after all. But I definitely agree that someone disposed to listen to pure Kornfield would be startled and horrified by the rest of this stuff.