Always

From The Joe Frank Wiki
Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
1/21/2001
Cast
Jerry Liebowitz, Larry Block, Zachary Block, Jack Cheeseborough, Moses Stone, Joe Frank
Format
Karma Style, 58 minutes
Preceded by: Insomnia (2001)
Followed by: Red Sea (A Compilation)
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"When I was a young kid I was very allergic and uh had undergone a number of allergy treatment shots."

Always is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on January 21, 2001.

Synopsis

A guy (Jerry Liebowitz?) is being treated by an allergist in Santa Monica weekly. He's working 16-17 hour days, is stressed. As he parks for an appointment a physician in a Mercedes parks so close to him he can't open his door. The physician just walks away, making Jerry mad, so he keys his car. The weeks after that he perpetrates petty vandalism on the car: dirty boots from the trash, chattering teeth from Toys-R-Us, a stack of pancakes…

8:40: Larry tells Joe about a flight: a 'loud Long Island woman' who talks a lot and a passenger who sits in the wrong seat and reacts angrily to the stewardess when she asks him to move. Larry recites the poem he wrote about the angry guy. Joe likes it.

16:50: We're back to Jerry vandalizing the physician's Mercedes, this time with a chess board, a cake, and rotten sardines.

21:40: A guy (Jack Cheeseborough?[1]) who lives on 15th & T NW Washington DC loves his dogs. The mailman fears them, accuses Jack of siccing one of them (Lucky) on him. Lucky had already bit an old man, so an additional report could endanger him. Jack gets so worked up he puts his violent pit bull mix (Blackie) in the mailman's truck; the dog bites the mailman's face; Jack thinks the dog could have killed him.[2]

38:10: A street person (preacher?) (Moses Stone?), apparently also in Washington DC talks disconnectedly, with Biblical references.

45:00: Jerry Liebowitz recounts not-paying his Continental Cable bill, which involves eating grapes.

48:40: Larry tells Joe about his latest difficulties with Zachary. (Larry calls him 'a 15-year-old arrogant bastard'.) Zachary can't remember to ask for a new Metro card at school, cuts detention, dropped Spanish class.

51:40: Zachary tells Joe his side of the story.

56:40: A guy (Jack Cheeseborough?) tells Joe about raising hell at Disneyland when he was 19 or 20. He yells to people in a people-mover car (a sky tram) that their cable is breaking.

Legacy Synopsis
  • Guy on the phone has allergies and needs weekly doctor visits to receive his shots. He keys a doctor's car for parking too close, then week after week he keeps tampering with the car.
  • Larry in an airplane and the annoying couple behind him, the obnoxious guy in the wrong seat, Larry's poem about it, Joe's critique of the poem.
  • Conclusion of the allergy guy's car revenge story.
  • Another guy on the phone and his dogs, Lucky & Blackie. One of his dogs bites an old guy on the ass in the woods. His mailman has trouble with the dogs. Lucky lunges at the mailman while on a walk. Phone guy apologizes but the mailman is sure it was an intentional attack. The police become involed. Indications are the dog will have to be executed because of the mailman's lies, so the guy puts Blackie (his pit bull) in the back of the mail truck while the mailman is out and about. Blackie attacks the mailman's face, putting him in the hospital.
  • A homeless guy offers a mad ranting soliloquy about being born in a church, making stone of a phone, right or wrong, the lord's prayer, ...
  • Another guy on the phone (Jerry Leibowitz) keeps getting daily collection calls from his cable company. During one call the collections agent reprimands Jerry for eating grapes while talking on the phone. As a result of the calls Jerry decides not to pay the bill. The same cable guy keeps calling for payment. Jerry smears grapes all over his face and videotapes himself announcing to the cable company that he's too busy eating grapes to pay the bill; Jerry sends the tape to the phone company.
  • Larry rambles about his teenage son the condescender.
  • Zachary's rebuttal to Larry's complaints. We hear Larry arguing with him in the background, then Larry takes the phone and we hear Zak arguing in the background. The argument escalates while Joe listens.
  • Another guy on the phone: scaring people at Disneyland.

Music

Commentary

I think the story the guy with the dogs tells is fictional; his knowledge of DC is accurateArthur Peabody (talk) 22:48, 31 January 2022 (EST)

Footnotes

  1. He tells the 'joke' at the beginning of Evening Sky, has a credit in Green Cadillac, which is also set in Washington DC
  2. The references to DC's streets and neighborhoods are accurate, especially Caroline Street, a 1-block street inside T & U, 15th & 16th - I had to find it on a map. I used to live there.