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|label10  = Preceded by:  
|label10  = Preceded by:  
|label11 = Followed by:  
|label11 = Followed by:  
|data8 = 57 minutes
|data8 = [[:Category:Serious Monologue|Serious Monologue]], [[:Category:Absurd Monologue|Absurd Monologue]], 57 minutes
|data4  = November 6, [[2004]]
|data4  = November 6, [[:Category:2004|2004]]
|title = Duplicity [https://www.joefrank.com/streaming/shows/?jfsearch=Duplicity]
|title = Duplicity [https://www.joefrank.com/streaming/shows/?jfsearch=Duplicity]
|data6  = Joe Frank
|data6  = Joe Frank
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''Reisling meets a woman at a party.''
''Reisling meets a woman at a party.''


'''Duplicity''' is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series [[Online]]. It was originally broadcast on November 6, [[2004]].
'''Duplicity''' is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series [[Online]]. It was originally presented at joefrank.com on November 6, [[:Category:2004|2004]].


This one-hour serious/absurd monologue, recorded over music loops, was presented in November 2004 at www.joefrank.com. It is available as [http://www.joefrank.com/archshow.html premium archived content].
== Synopsis ==
Riesling meets a beautiful woman at a party.  He goes home with her.
He fails to 'perform' in bed, is discouraged.
 
7:10: Riesling remembers the one successful love affair he had: 'hours
of frantic, lubricious lovemaking until both of them, physically
spent, would fall into a deep, profound, comatose sleep, sometimes
waking days later.  Always a bottle of Dom Perignon, an ashtray full
of gold-tipped Russian cigarettes, mink underwear, paper slippers,
feathered masks, and steamy, luxurious, two-hour-long showers when
he'd wash her hair with peppermint soap and she'd give him a rectal
infusion of chamomile tea, slightly sweetened.'
 
9:10: They go skating at the rink near Rockefeller Center at Christmas
time, get injured in a catastrophic fall.  In the ambulance on the way
to the hospital, it crashes with a bus.<ref>The ambulance in [[Love Is]]
crashed too.</ref> She's transported to heaven.  Distraught,
Riesling 'sails' around the world in a rowboat.<ref>This isn't sailing,
of course.  People have rowed around the world.</ref>
 
14:30: 'Every time I see you, I can feel the hair on the back of my
arms rise up like a great forest of black rubber penises.  Let me
nuzzle your naked breast, that little bald mountain, like a baboon's
ass.  Yes, eyes swollen shut by insect bites, let us walk hand in hand
in the park where the students sit at the University of Outhouse.'
 
15:10: John Clayman, eating Froot Loops for breakfast, sees a picture
of himself, aged 8, on the milk box, a lost child.  He looks at
himself, sees that he appears to be a child, wonders why he remembers
all the life he's had since then: college, grad school, national
guard, marriage, divorce, professor of physics at a community college
in upstate New York, living with the disabled dean, making love to the
dean's wife while the dean watches.  He wakes from a dream about being
an energy-being to find he's in the health club, on a treadmill.  He
ponders the nature of time.  He realizes he's to old to bed his
students any more.  Disappointed with his life, he ditches his home
and job, takes the next train out of town.
 
25:00: 'Wherever I go, I'm always there.  I buy a single ticket to the
movies, and who's sitting in my seat?  Me.  And as much as I would
like, I can't send myself away in a fury, and there's no closet I can
hide in without me being there in the first place.  I've been berated
and rebuked and denounced and humiliated by me, and I've been
excoriated and insulted and harangued and beaten down and even lied to
by myself.  I've probably told myself more lies than I've told
anyone.'
 
25:50: Clayman thinks about his kinship with the train's other
passengers.
 
28:10: 'We thank thee, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who
brought us out of Egypt and into Auschwitz.  We thank thee for lice
and pestilence, for cancer and other wasting diseases, for famine and
genocide. We thank thee, O Lord, for those who lose control over
their bladders and bowels, and for those who are crushed by the weight
of depression. O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, let your heart
and your arteries not be hardened against us, and let your heart not
attack us. Last night I found myself genuflecting before a huge neon
sign with rooms available for the night.  I peered from the tent flap,
beheld the desert, and on my hands and knees began to feel the
pounding grains of sand.'
 
29:30: McKenzie, a 75-year-old veteran of WW2, attends a
reconstruction of the battle of Okinawa by one of his comrades at the
[http://www.vfw.org VFW].  After he finishes, he denounces McKenzie as
a cowardly shirker who played dead on the beach during the fighting.
The VFW kicks him out.  He goes home to find his wife has left and
taken everything with her except his clothes.  The next day he finds
his bank account empty and his house foreclosed upon.  He goes out to
the highway, sticks out his thumb; a tractor-trailer, trying to stop
for him, jack-knifes and runs him over.
 
36:40: 'A priest, a rabbi, and a hyena are riding on a train.'  and
have a ridiculous conversation.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_LaFarge_Jr. John LaFarge]
was a prominent Jesuit priest in New York City contemporary with LaGuardia.</ref><ref>There was a
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_Theatre_(Harlem) Lafayette Theatre in Harlem]</ref>


== Synopsis ==
39:20: 2 Girl Scouts enter the train car of the priest, rabbi, and
hyena.  They're on their way to Duplicity to attend a convocation of
Girl Scouts about 'Madame Bovary'.
 
40:50: A sufi enters their train car, whirls like a dervish, says,
'Golf in the kingdom, ampoule of pure light, children find cadaver,
harlequin at mass, Eucharist on roller skate, flames engulf the
chameleon, life of rapture death, in the dark, accidental pilgrim goes
from cave painting to Ohio, from suspension bridge to martyrdom, from
test tube to the unreflecting famous, an object lesson to the doubtful
guest, amnesia recalls the preacher's boy, and flesh is untranslatable
into English.'
 
43:00: 'If we assume that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then is
it not absurd to pray?'  Joe questions the value of prayer.
 
45:00: A wealthy man panhandles on the street near his apartment,
denounces the people who won't help him.  At home that night he
threatens a young woman who had an affair with his father, got him to
sign a codicil to his will when he was near death that left her a
large estate, with a suit.
 
54:40: 'What sort of examination could turn up so many negative
findings?  It's as though a semi-retired professional warlock were
giving an opinion.  I was on a train, passing through a bombed-out
village.  I could see doors torn from buildings, not a window left
unbroken, with gaping holes in the walls, revealing rooms with unmade
beds, toilets flung down into the street, where I could see the
rotting carcasses of overturned, burnt-out automobiles and geysers of
steam issuing from underground pipes, where, every so often, an
explosion would send a manhole cover flipping like a coin into the
air, to come clanging down onto the pavement.  And everywhere, the
remains of bloated, dead bodies.  And yet, I was sitting very
comfortably in a first-class compartment on the train, gazing out the
window, a glass of brandy, sweetened peanuts, and a plate of caviar
and cheese on a tray before me, when my cell phone rang.  And I
flipped it open and heard a woman's voice.  "Please, you're the only
one left, the only one who can help."  And I said, "Who is this?"  And
she said, "This is no time for games, for foolishness.  You know
exactly who this is.  I'm waiting on the platform at Mapleton.  I'll
be wearing a yellow cardigan, a plaid skirt, rubber sandals, and a
swastika armband."  I put the phone back in my breast pocket and could
still hear her voice, tinny and muffled.'
 
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:100%; overflow:auto;">
<div style="font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;">Legacy Synopsis</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">


=== Riesling ===
- Riesling:
*Riesling accompanies the woman to her place, and they end up in her bed.
*Riesling accompanies the woman to her place, and they end up in her bed.
*He finds himself unable to perform sexually. Metaphors about a bad day at Kennedy Space Center, the rocket deflating.
*He finds himself unable to perform sexually. Metaphors about a bad day at Kennedy Space Center, the rocket deflating.
Line 42: Line 163:
**The wedding is cancelled. Despondent, he travels around the world in a rowboat, with an absurd collection of items.
**The wedding is cancelled. Despondent, he travels around the world in a rowboat, with an absurd collection of items.


=== Professor Clayman ===
- Professor Clayman:
*Professor John Clayman is surprised to see himself pictured as a missing child on a milk carton. Suddenly he is eight again and wonders what is happening.
*Professor John Clayman is surprised to see himself pictured as a missing child on a milk carton. Suddenly he is eight again and wonders what is happening.
**Is he eight, or is he a University Professor living in the home of the Dean, who insists on being allowed to watch as Clayman makes love to his wife?
**Is he eight, or is he a University Professor living in the home of the Dean, who insists on being allowed to watch as Clayman makes love to his wife?
Line 51: Line 172:
*Clayman considers his life and flees on the next train.
*Clayman considers his life and flees on the next train.


=== McKenzie ===
-McKenzie:
*McKenzie is a 70 year old veteran and frequently hangs out at the local [http://www.vfw.org VFW] hall.
*McKenzie is a 70 year old veteran and frequently hangs out at the local [http://www.vfw.org VFW] hall.
*Price served with him and appears one day to reenact a battle they served in together.
*Price served with him and appears one day to reenact a battle they served in together.
Line 60: Line 181:
*He tries to hitch a ride and is killed by a semi which loses control trying to pick him up.
*He tries to hitch a ride and is killed by a semi which loses control trying to pick him up.


=== The Priest, The Rabbi and the Hyena ===
- The Priest, The Rabbi and the Hyena:


*This section begins as though it is a joke, but turns into a story in which the three travel on a train with some Girl Scouts to a place called Duplicity.
*This section begins as though it is a joke, but turns into a story in which the three travel on a train with some Girl Scouts to a place called Duplicity.
*The absurdity of prayer, the foolishness of faith.
*The absurdity of prayer, the foolishness of faith.


=== The Panhandler ===
- The Panhandler:
*A panhandler at a traffic light rants and raves at motorists, who try to ignore him.
*A panhandler at a traffic light rants and raves at motorists, who try to ignore him.
*Eventually he returns to his luxurious home for a cigar and a snifter of cognac.
*Eventually he returns to his luxurious home for a cigar and a snifter of cognac.
Line 73: Line 194:


*A final brief story: touring a wrecked city on a train.
*A final brief story: touring a wrecked city on a train.
</div></div>


== Music ==
== Music ==
{{Music-Stub}}
{{Romantic Love (DJ Cam)}} [Intro]
 
{{Alone in Kyoto (Air)}} [9:04]
== Commentary ==
{{8 Ball (Underworld)}} [25:40]
{{Commentary}}
{{Epominomous, Where Are You? (Mike Richmond)}} [29:04]
 
=== [[User:Spblat|Spblat]] ===
Golly, this was a hard one to write up. It occurred to me that when Joe starts to meander across topics and into and out of miscellaneous red herrings, that's what makes some of the best material, even if it's hard to capture.  The essence of Joe in the monologue format is his storytelling, his speaking style, his amazing choice of words.


This is a stellar piece of work. The sequence where Clayman is drifting through different realities made me think of LSD. The music loops are excellent, and the thoughts on the pointlessness of prayer and its implications for God's attributes are (in my view) excellent distillations of what I find objectionable about traditional religion. Then in the beggar story we hear Joe curse like a sailor: it's nice to see him using a little of the freedom afforded by a non-airwaves medium.
== Footnotes ==


[[Category: Serious Monologue]]
[[Category: Serious Monologue]]
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[[Category:Show]]
[[Category:Show]]
[[Category:Online]] [[Category:Show_by_date|20041106]] {{Airdate|airdate=2004-11-06}}
[[Category:Online]] [[Category:Show_by_date|20041106]] {{Airdate|airdate=2004-11-06}}
{{Series|series=Online}}{{Cast|cast=Joe Frank}}
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