Higher Learning
| Series | |
|---|---|
| The Other Side | |
| Original Broadcast Date | |
| 11/14/1999 | |
| Cast | |
| Friederike Frank, Joe Frank | |
| Format | |
| Absurd Monologue, 59 minutes | |
| Preceded by: | The Box |
| Followed by: | Holy Land |
| Purchase / Stream | |
"I just, just turned eighteen in November."
Higher Learning is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on November 14, 1999.[1]
Synopsis
This show is 100% re-used:
Joe's mother (Friederike Frank) tells the story of her marriage.[2][3]
17:40: A beautiful woman invites Joe to a performance of a play in which she has a role. Concerned that she watches him, Joe is self-conscious, puts so much effort into his role that he pays no attention to the play. He thinks about the roles we play, the performances we put on, in life.[4]
21:00: Humans compensate for their inferiority to animals with tools: clothes, cars, makeup …[4]
25:50: When he was a boy, falling asleep, Joe tortured himself with fantasies of making awful decisions.[5]
28:30: Joe tells of his job teaching at a private school in NYC,[6] including Kim and their unfortunate date.[7]
48:10: 'The Earth is 1 of 9 planets that revolve around the sun …' - Joe describes the vastness of space.[4]
49:30: Joe observes how small things look from an airplane, contrasts that perspective with how the city appears at ground level, comments on the ephemerality of life.[8]
52:40: Joe's mother laments the poor health of her husband.[9]
- His mom tells of her early adulthood, her marriage to an older man.
- Straining to appear likeable, the audience at a play as performers.
- Humans making up for our physical inferiority
- A child falling asleep imagines being offered hideous decisions: torture of himself or others.
- Joe Frank the schoolteacher, dating coworker Kim with capped teeth, premature ejaculation
- Defending against students' intellectual attacks
- The insignificance of humans in the universe. A city viewed from an airplane.
- Joe's mother talks about her sick husband, hospitals, nurse revenge.
Music
- "Sex" - The Necks (from Sex, 1989) | YouTube [Intro]
- "A Mother (For Your Mind)" - The Herbaliser (from Blow Your Headphones, 1997) | YouTube [17:21]
- "Close Your Eyes (Faze Action mix)" - Bebel Gilberto (from Tanto Tempo Remixes, 2001) | YouTube (Added later)[10] [25:45]
- "The Beast (Autechre Mix)" - Palmskin Productions (from The Beast Remix, 1995) | YouTube [28:07]
- Pretender (life as a schoolteacher)
- Cocktails Before Dinner
- God Only Knows
- The Road To Calvary
Footnotes
- ↑ Two shows share this air date on joefrank.com: this and Holy Land. According to KCRW, Holy Land was broadcast on November 7.
- ↑ originally in God Only Knows
- ↑ Joe's mother was born Friederike Passweg, 1910 December 7. 1929 January 2 she married Meier Langermann. On their naturalization papers they changed the spelling of their names: Friederike to Frederica, Langermann to Langerman, Meier to Meyer.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 originally in Cocktails Before Dinner
- ↑ originally in When She's Asleep, She Looks Like An Angel
- ↑ Joe taught at Dalton school
- ↑ adapted from Pretender, in which it was interspersed with Monmouth's story
- ↑ originally in He Hesitated
- ↑ originally in The Road To Calvary.
- ↑ Joe added music to several of his shows when they were rebroadcast or digitized. The updated versions are usually available at Joefrank.com
