[joe-frank-list] 'The decline of Spengler'

[russellbell at gmail.com]

	'I wish you love' - a cha-cha Muzak version.

	0:10: Hoffman is dead.  Joe reminisces about his encounters
with Hoffman, beginning with the time they met on a flight from
Palestine; they agreed that modern technology has alienated man from
nature.  Hoffman forced himself on a pretty stewardess in the
restroom; she broke apart: she was a robot.

	3:40: Joe has a dream.  Fists beat on his front door.  As the
only doctor in the district he has to ride his horse-drawn wagon to
serve his patients.  A servant takes Joe to a house.  When he sees the
patient, the servant tells Joe to take off his (Joe's) clothes.

	6:10: Joe attends Hoffman's funeral.  Joe finds a map of
Florida in Hoffman's apartment, supposedly of possible locations of
the fountain of youth (FoY); one of them is in Dreamland.

	7:50: The day after Joe takes a trip of the Everglades, first
possible location of the FoY, (huge winged lizards, Indians living
nearly submerged, assembling tropical fish, holding their livestock
above their heads to keep them from drowning.)

	8:30: A few days later Joe takes a bus to Fort Lauderdale, a
possible location of the FoY.  Joe arrives during the Aryan
convention, which he attends.  A bomb goes off.  Joe awakes at dusk on
a merry-go-round in Miami Beach.

	10:30: A guy (Arthur Miller?) demonstrates his human
centrifuge; some people like it.  A woman chimes in.

	12:30: Joe has another dream: he's in court, a prosecutor at a
trial.  While eating dinner, Joe notices his father sprawled in the
hallway.

	15: Joe receives a call from Mrs Waterman, who says a mutual
friend suggested they meet.  She claims to be beautiful.  Joe takes a
train to Rio David.  She picks him up at the station.  She turns out
to be severely crippled; Joe can't go through with it.  She tells him
off.  ('Diamond dust' - Jeff Beck)

	21: Joe tells of beach on the Gulf coast covered with fossils.
Old people collect and trade them, write about them.  A group of old
people quarrel about the weather.

	22:30: Joe has a dream.  He's in room filled with scrolls.  He
looks like an Orthodox Jew.  He's called to design a new oven for a
concentration camp.  Joe takes the train there; it's standing room
only, apparently a concentration camp train.  Someone whistles, 'Ach
du lieber Augustin'.  He wakes up in a pile of dead people, loaded
into a wagon, taken to the burial trench.  He recognizes the other
people in the trench.  That night, Joe climbs out, escapes, takes a
train to the Bavarian Alps.  Weeks later he arrives at the 'Retreat of
the Redeemer'.  When night falls, he climbs over the wall, cuts
through the wire, evades the army.  In the backyard he finds the
messiah (Tim Jerome?), planting trees in the moonlight.  The messiah
berates Joe for his ragged clothes.

	29:20: A fellow (Arthur Miller) says that ING buries patients,
waters and tends them carefully...  Another fellow talks about burying
people head-first.  Another fellow asks about the loss of hearing.

	31: Joe, reading Hoffman's notes, finds a play, with the
comment, 'I wonder what Spengler would think of this?'.  Joe narrates
the play.  The first act is a critic waking up.  At the intermission
the audience is served bitter herbs, unleavened bread, and sacramental
wine.  The actor playing the critic, Poole, sneaks into the audience,
falls asleep.  In the second act, Poole wakes up, then a movie is
shown.  The movie's protagonist doesn't know who he is, travels from
town to town, asking people if they know him.  His touch cures the
sick.  He never figures out who he is; disgusted at the badness of the
movie, he walks out of the screen and into the audience, up to the
Poole who, sensing a plot, pulls out a luger and shoots him.
(Remember 'Huckleberry Finn'?)  Regretful at having shot him, Poole
runs to the projection room, asks the boy there to run the film
backwards to save the actor's life.  The boy sends him to the
manager's office, where Poole finds an old man sprawled on the floor.
The action is shown to the audience.  Other actors, who had seem to be
audience members, pretend to take care of the actor.  

	38:40: Act 3: Poole is hermetically sealed in a phone booth,
but the audience can't hear him.  A panel of clergy on the stage
argues.

	42:20: The audience, bored, walks out.  An organist plays a
concert.  The panel falls to blows.  Poole is amused.

	43:20: A woman with a neck brace calls a radio doctor.  She
feels like she's dying.  He has to move along.

	44:30: The old people on the fossil beach complain about the
weather some more then consider playing cards.

	45:30: Joe has a dream: he's an expert in Jewish wisdom, but
he's unhappy, so he travels on foot to Rome to see its tzaddik.  The
tzaddik tells him that a great surgeon was called to operate but was
operated on himself.  The next night the tzaddik tells him about a
famous prosecutor who found himself guilty.
	Joe is about to leave when a man summons Joe to the tzaddik,
who tells him of a great engineer who awoke to find himself turned
into a holy man - who has the experience of Joe's dream about the
engineer.  The tzaddik reveals himself to be an SS officer, who sends
him to a concentration camp.  Jewish partisans rescue Joe from the
train, take him to see the real tzaddik of Rome, who dresses as an SS
officer and live in Palermo.  This one tells him the same stories as
the previous.  Joe takes the next train to Berlin.

	49:20: A guy with a German accent (Tim Jerome?) tells us that
things rot with age.

	50:30: Joe imagines moving to Tampa, starting a small
business, marrying, living an ordinary life.

	52: Joe cleans out Hoffman's apartment.  He keeps a prayer
shawl, shofar, and Hebrew Bible; finds an SS officer's uniform in the
closet.  Hoffman's journal closed with a description of Dreamland.

	52:40: Joe takes Hoffman's ticket, goes to Dreamland.  They
claim the rocket goes faster than the speed of light, thus reversing
the aging process.  The rocket crashes into a swamp, centuries into
the future; civilization has been destroyed by nuclear war.  Joe wakes
up, wonders which is the dream.

	56:40: A man with a German accent disclaims responsibility for
everything - he knew nothing.

	Year: 1983

	Cast: Barbara Sohmers, Joseph Palmieri, Lester Nafzger, Irene
Wagner, Tim Jerome, Leslie Cass, David Rapkin, Rosemary Foley, Charles
Potter, Arthur Miller, Brother Theodore, and Joe Frank

	Music: 'Music For Eighteen Musicians' (Steve Reich) is in much
of this episode.  'I wish you love' begins it.  'Diamond dust' (Jeff
Beck) plays over the closing part of Mrs Waterman's segment.
joefrank.com says 'I'd Have You Anytime' (George Harrison) is in this
episode; I don't hear it.

	Brother Theodore is a curious eccentric.  Steve Allen and
Johnny Carson had him on the 'Tonight' show a few times.  I think he
has only a tiny part in this episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Theodore