Just Get Me Out Of Here

Just Get Me Out Of Here[1]

Series
Somewhere Out There
Original Broadcast Date
3/17/1996
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Absurd Monologue, 58 minutes
Preceded by:	God Only Knows
Followed by:	The River

There was a period in my life when I had a breakdown and I was committed to a mental hospital on a ship.

Just Get Me Out Of Here is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Somewhere Out There. It was originally broadcast on March 17, 1996.

Synopsis

Joe recalls when he had a breakdown, was committed to a hospital on a ship. One fellow collected weather data, claimed he could predict it, also called himself a fraud. 'The chief psychologist was completely mad.' feared going to the bathroom alone. He declared the ship an autonomous nation, tried to annex New Zealand. Joe was the navigator.

6:20: Joe ends up a cabbie in the Sahara, driving in circles looking for a fare, wonders if he's gone insane.

9:30: Joe relays a woman's story. She was a troubled in school, shy. She tells Joe about boys she liked in school. Their relationships turned out badly.

15:30: She tells Joe about her mother, who was intensely depressed. Her father had left when she was young. She re-married. He cheated on her. They got an annulment. The mother got more lonely and depressed, took Valium.

18:40: Christmas 1986 she goes to her mother's house, finds she's slit her wrists.

19:30: When she was a child she'd hide in the closet.

21:20: She ate out of the dog's dish when she was a baby. She became anorexic later, got down to 99 pounds.

26:10: She talks about her relationship with Harold, her husband, an architect. She flies to Monterey, Mexico, to meet him for a week. She got tarted-up and drunk, attracted the attention of men. Harold isn't as excited to see her as she is to see him.

34:30: She wonders why people are so lonely. She talks about the nature of love and her relationship with Harold.

39:00: Joe talks about the relationship between erectile tissue and pollen, a conference in Prague, the use of pyribenzamine as an aphrodisiac; it also has the side-effect of promoting memory. A physician and his assistant, lovers, come dressed as a nose and a swab, get into a fight; the physician kills the assistant. He continues his research in jail.

45:00: Joe recounts a troubled flight to Lima for an expedition to dig in Mayan ruins Celia Brown, a beautiful young woman on the expedition, comes to his room at night, is obsessed with him; she speaks to him in German. He takes pyribenzamine, which reminds him of seeing his mother with a lover as a child, gets sick, faints.

52:20: Sweet nothings in German.

Legacy Synopsis

Joe is a mental patient and navigator on a hospital ship with a man who claims he can predict the weather. A mad chief psychologist who holds meetings in bathrooms declares the ship an independent state and decides to invade New Zealand. Joe drives a taxi in the Sahara. A woman was a withdrawn child, falls in love with impossible matches, describes childhood relationships. Her mother was depressed and angry, tried to kill herself at Christmas. She talks about visiting a lover on a business trip in Mexico. Everyone she's ever loved, she still loves. Not being bitter about experiences. Pyrobenzamine, side effects, and the doctor who kills his male lover assistant at a medical conference, goes to prison, and tries to escape by mailing himself. Flying into the Lima airport in a plane which lost an engine. Joe falls for a woman at an anthropological dig, remembers his childhood.

Music

• Judith Owen vocalizes over "The Lower We Fly"

• "The Lower We Fly" - Outside (from The Rough and the Smooth, 1995) | YouTube [Intro]

Shared material

• Red Sea (A Compilation) - Joe reuses the first and last three segments of this program

Additional credits

The original broadcast credits state: "Created in collaboration with Kristine McKenna, Arthur Miller, and David Rapkin. The music is from the group Outside. The vocalist was Judith Owen. This program was recorded, edited, and mixed by Theo Mondle. Music looping by Bob Carlson. Special thanks to Jennifer Ferro, Carly Eiseman, Esmé Gregson, and Bridget Kuehl."