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39-595: Jack is an adventurer who travels the Earth, exploring both familiar physical places and a metaphysical land called the Invisible Realms. His character adapts as the story requires, ranging from a bumbling fool to a competent and professional detective into spiritual mysteries. Well-versed in the occult , folklore , primitive magic and various mystic phenomena, he is able to withstand most reality-altering experiences and generally has an open mind towards all things. Being

78-614: A "few years", he says in Return to Inverness , he was a vegetarian but gave it up. "You have to have the right body type to be a good vegetarian," rejoins chef Wham-Bam Shazam. His business card reads "What appears to be coming at you is coming from you." He first heard this motto in Brazil during the Dreams of Rio story. As to why he chose this for his business card, he explains in Dreams of Sumatra , "I heard it. I liked it. I had it printed." He

117-487: A Mystery , Jack Packard. The past life regression sequence is taken from a real life experience, and shows the actual past life relationships between series author Meatball Fulton and actress Laura Esterman, who plays the Madonna Vampyra. The technique of regression was developed by William Swygard, adapted from the pamphlet Multi-Level Awareness and was available as a booklet by mail. The Fourth Tower of Inverness

156-448: A character of audio drama , his physical appearance is not entirely clear, but he is depicted with blond hair in the CD cover art and is now in his late 60s or early 70s, having attended college in the late '60s. In Tropical Hot Dog Night (2007), his friend Claudine describes him as "six-foot-two with blond hair.". In Somewhere Next Door to Reality , a shop assistant says that he resembles

195-403: A different theme. In the series there are many musical interludes: The idea of a jukebox that plays whenever an accident was about to occur was based on and paying homage to an episode of the radio show I Love a Mystery , which featured an organ playing in the basement whenever an accident would occur. The name of the lead character, Jack Flanders , was also in homage to the hero on I Love

234-654: A dream/vision of their past shared life. Lady Jowls suggests in The Fourth Tower of Inverness that many of the characters in the series have known each other in past incarnations and are destined to move through time together. Whenever the relationship with the Ifrit does occur, it is between stories and we only ever hear references to it. There is a malevolent Oolupi in The Fourth Tower of Inverness who almost succeeds in seducing Jack. When she fails, she tries to drown him in

273-402: A hitchhiker and drifter, is invited to the estate of his aunt, Lady Sarah Jowls. As Jack approaches the estate, he sees an outline of the mansion silhouetted against the night sky, with four distinct towers reaching up to the sky, though his aunt and everyone else who lives there insists there are only three towers. Jack slowly becomes familiar with the strange inhabitants of Inverness, including

312-584: A lake of her tears. Jack's finances are something of a mystery. When he is introduced, he does not appear to have wealth, but he is able to travel around the world well enough. He lives principally in an apartment in New York and later inherits the mansion and estate of Inverness, so a good deal of family money can be assumed. In Dreams of Sumatra it is mentioned that his previous adventures have been published - Carlos Castaneda style. The Jack Flanders stories can be divided into distinct phases. Initially there

351-1004: A major pursuit in and of itself. According to adventurer André Malraux , in his Man's Fate (1933), "If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?" Similarly, Helen Keller stated that "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Outdoor adventurous activities are typically undertaken for the purposes of recreation or excitement : examples are adventure racing and adventure tourism . Adventurous activities can also lead to gains in knowledge, such as those undertaken by explorers and pioneers – the British adventurer Jason Lewis , for example, uses adventures to draw global sustainability lessons from living within finite environmental constraints on expeditions to share with schoolchildren. Adventure education intentionally uses challenging experiences for learning . Author Jon Levy suggests that an experience should meet several criteria to be considered an adventure: Some of

390-496: A wide variety of literary genres. Many adventure games ( text and graphic ) are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult. From ancient times, travelers and explorers have written about their adventures. Journals which became best-sellers in their day were written, such as Marco Polo 's journal The Travels of Marco Polo or Mark Twain 's Roughing It . Others were personal journals, only later published, such as

429-589: Is a brief return to the Cosmic Tourist for Midnight at the Casa Luna and Return to Inverness both of which are closely related to the original story - one borrows significantly and the other is a straight sequel. After a final adventure as Jungle Jack we move into a French theme and the Cul-de-sac Jack phase. These stories bring in two further companions – Claudine and Dominique. With the core group growing,

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468-502: Is able to provide a cigarette to a Moroccan, possibly implying that he smoked then, but now he has some difficulty tolerating the presence of people who smoke. On one occasion, at least, while living in London prior to the first adventure ( The Fourth Tower of Inverness ), he swallowed hashish ("purely by accident") and saw a unicorn as a result. In Moon Over Morocco , he says that he meditates and never uses any drugs. He doesn't exercise. For

507-499: Is about to occur. Accidents have been on the rise in Inverness recently, and range from simple misunderstandings involving an aroused kundalini to a fire-breathing dragon . Jack realizes that the mysterious jukebox must be playing in the invisible Fourth Tower, and is determined to find its source. It is said that in the past, eight people have seen and entered the fourth tower of Inverness, and none have returned alive. Jack Flanders

546-631: Is clearly very attractive to women, and his adventures usually include some romance. Beyond a rare kiss, no physical contact with any woman is ever depicted, and romantic feelings are implied rather than stated. Usually, the women seem to be more interested in him than he is in them. In Dreams of India , he pursues a woman, Kamala Shukla, without success. Besides Madonna Vampyra, who appears in The Fourth Tower of Inverness and Return to Inverness , Claudine (a woman from another plane of existence who first appears in Somewhere Next Door to Reality )

585-629: Is his only love interest of his who appears in more than one adventure story. In Midnight at the Casa Luna , two of the characters refer to Jack's relationship with an Ifrit , Layla Oolupi, which ended badly. Layla appears to Jack during Moon Over Morocco and plays a small but helpful role in his journey. However, in Do That in Real Life? Jack says that he first encountered Layla at Woodhenge, an event alluded to in Moon Over Morocco as occurring in

624-552: Is the Cosmic Tourist phase which makes up the first four adventures. These are principally concerned with Jack's explorations and adventures in the Invisible Realms. In these tales he is largely on his own and survives on his wit, luck, charm and the ability to always present a moving target. This is followed by the Jungle Jack phase, stories that are largely grounded in 'reality' but with various supernatural or other-worldly intrusions. The settings for these stories are spread out across

663-674: Is the beginning of the Jack Flanders series, and several of the characters introduced continue to appear in later adventures. Jack briefly returns to the mansion of Inverness in Moon Over Morocco (1973) , and the quest for the Lotus Jukebox continues in The Ah-Ha Phenomenon (1977) . A direct sequel was produced in 2000, Return to Inverness , which re-united most of the original cast. A related series "Steam Dreams of Inverness"

702-611: Is the ninth. The performer playing Jives the Butler was uncredited; he was the husband of Valerie Mamches, who played Meanie Eenie and Lady Jowls. Special thanks to Robert Durand, The Jefferson Airplane , John Romkey, Michael Roach, Augie Blume, Max & Miles and all the gang at ZBS. Dedicated to Rango, his vision made all this possible. "The Fourth Tower of Inverness has been recorded on adhesive tape" Each episode of The Fourth Tower of Inverness begins: During his adventures, Jack Flanders encounters several jukeboxes , each with

741-566: Is typically bold, sometimes risky . Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling , exploring , skydiving , mountain climbing , scuba diving , river rafting , or other extreme sports . Adventures are often undertaken to create psychological arousal or in order to achieve a greater goal, such as the pursuit of knowledge that can only be obtained by such activities. Adventurous experiences create psychological arousal , which can be interpreted as negative (e.g. fear ) or positive (e.g. flow ). For some people, adventure becomes

780-474: The 'Lotus Jukebox' (a key element in the plot and one of the focal points of the poster), which permitted stations to insert their call letters, frequency, and time of broadcast." The series was a hit on college radio stations, and has since been broadcast in several different formats, such as on NPR Playhouse and The Watt from Pedro Show . It has also been available for purchase in many audio formats including record, cassette, CD, and MP3. Jack Flanders ,

819-514: The 1970s and 1980s. Currently, they are sold directly on CD and as mp3 downloads via the ZBS Foundation website. Jack Flanders story episodes are regularly featured on Mike Watt 's The Watt from Pedro Show podcast. The following characters have prominent or recurring roles in the Jack Flanders series. Adventurer An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that

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858-448: The Cul-de-sac Jack phase at the end of the 'Travelling Jack' sub-series, that we enter a new sub-series of adventures for Captain Jack - 'The Fantastic Voyages of Captain Jack Flanders'. He, Mojo, Claudine and Dominique sail between islands in the tropics encountering ever more mysterious and other-worldly happenings. The early stories were broadcast on college radio stations and on NPR during

897-560: The Fourth Tower, ranging from an explanation of the Tibetan Wheel of Life to a past-life regression and a lesson on how to draw energy from trees. Lord Henry Jowls, the husband of Lady Jowls, vanished without a trace into the mysterious Fourth Tower some years ago. Lady Jowls is disturbed by the recent happenings at the mansion, in particular an old jukebox somewhere in one of the mansion's towers, that plays 1950s songs whenever an accident

936-523: The French poet Jacques Prévert . As the nephew of those adventurers from a past age, Lord and Lady Jowls, Jack is somewhat of a man out of time, dressing in a white suit and Panama hat . On at least two occasions he's obliged to wear a pith helmet and other adventurer's garb. On another, he promises to wear an ascot tie , which he presumably had with him. He attended the University of California, Berkeley in

975-495: The cast, and laughing when lines are flubbed. Eventually a backer was found, Augie Blume of Grunt Records , who helped shape the series down to 7-minute daily episodes, and half-hour weekend episodes. The Fourth Tower of Inverness played on 397 college radio stations between 1972 and 1973. A poster created by David Byrd helped promote the series. More than 10,000 posters were distributed in lots of 20-25 to participating radio stations. "The poster provided space, integrated into

1014-583: The farmhouse, who were friends and acquaintances of Meatball Fulton , although the series was not produced at this time. In June 1970, Meatball Fulton moved to Fort Edward , New York to help found ZBS Media, with a focus on producing commercials for various musical acts such as Billy Joel , Little Feat , Jefferson Airplane and Captain Beefheart . After about a year and a half of this, he became bored with writing commercials, and had an uncomfortable experience producing an album for Abbie Hoffman . Remembering

1053-472: The globe but they are all tropical - the Amazon, Rio, India, Bali, Sumatra, Belize, Costa Rica. For the majority of them Jack is still on his own; only in the last few is he joined by Mojo Sam who then becomes a permanent companion in subsequent adventures. Usually it is Mojo who calls upon Jack to join him and help with a particularly tricky problem (although Jack calls on Mojo in the Return to Inverness ). There

1092-530: The idea of a quest: the hero goes off in pursuit of a reward, whether it be a skill, prize, treasure, or perhaps the safety of a person. On the way, the hero must overcome various obstacles to obtain their reward. In video game culture , an adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle solving . The genre 's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative -based media, literature and film , encompassing

1131-510: The journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark or Captain James Cook 's journals. There are also books written by those not directly a part of the adventure in question, such as The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe or books written by those participating in the adventure but in a format other than that of a journal, such as Conquistadors of the Useless by Lionel Terray . Documentaries often use

1170-635: The late '60s, although it is not known what he studied. He loves coffee and likes to sample the local brews during his adventures. He frequently drinks beer but seldom wine or spirits (he does drink port in one episode of The Fourth Tower of Inverness and rum in The Mystery of Jaguar Reef ). He may have smoked during his student days ("not since I read the Surgeon General's report," he says in The Fourth Tower of Inverness ), and in Moon Over Morocco

1209-463: The mansion's caretaker, Old Far-seeing Art, who can listen to the aum sound emanating from the center of the Universe, and tends to the estate's hedge maze , a place that only he can enter without going insane. Others include Dr. Mazoola, an alchemist of the first order , Jives the Butler, who is an old quick-change artist with a dry sense of humor, the Madonna Vampyra, an energy vampire who lives in

Jack Flanders - Misplaced Pages Continue

1248-435: The mansion's hollow walls, Wham Bam Shazam, a young man with a penchant for the 1950s whom Chief Wampum is teaching to fly, and Little Frieda, a Venusian who is a "million and a half" years old, but looks like a small girl with no pupils in her eyes, large pigtails , and a penchant for smoking huge Havana cigars . The group teaches Jack what he needs to know in order to successfully enter, and, more importantly, return from,

1287-408: The natural world. The adventure takes place in an estate called Inverness, and the action focuses upon a mysterious and (at first) illusory extra tower of the mansion, which many visitors have attempted to reach, ultimately vanishing in the process. The program was originally broadcast in 7-minute-long episodes; collectively, these run a total of seven and half hours. The Fourth Tower of Inverness

1326-531: The oldest and most widespread stories in the world are stories of adventure, such as Homer 's Odyssey . The knight errant was the form the "adventure seeker" character took in the Late Middle Ages . Adventure fiction exhibits these "protagonist on adventurous journey" characteristics, as do many popular feature films , such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark . Adventure books may have

1365-477: The radio play he had written back in Montreal, he decided to produce his own script. The story was fleshed out, actors were cast, and the episodes were produced periodically whenever new scripts were written. Some of the featured actors cast were Robert Lorick in the lead role, Murray Head , and Dave Herman as narrator. The relaxed nature of the production can still be heard, with occasional breaking of character by

1404-724: The stories become more of an ensemble effort with Jack taking a less assertive and more bumbling role, often being the butt of jokes, especially from Dominique who frequently launches into political diatribe. An occasional but recurring theme is that of Captain Jack. It first appears in The Incredible Adventures of Jack Flanders where he does indeed become captain of the Blue Swallow . In The Mystery of Jaguar Reef , Captain Coco frequently refers to him as Captain Jack, saying that it feels right to do so. But it's not until we move out of

1443-604: The theme of adventure as well. There are many sports classified as adventure sports, due to their inherent danger and excitement. Some of these include mountain climbing , skydiving , or other extreme sports . The Fourth Tower of Inverness The Fourth Tower of Inverness is a 1972 radio drama , produced by the ZBS Foundation . It is the first of the Jack Flanders adventure series, and combines elements of American culture and Old-time radio , with metaphysical concepts such as past life regression , Sufi wisdom , Tibetan Buddhism and shamanistic communication with

1482-463: The theme of the hero or main character going to face the wilderness or Mother Nature . Examples include books such as Hatchet or My Side of the Mountain . These books are less about "questing", such as in mythology or other adventure novels, but more about surviving on their own, living off the land, gaining new experiences, and becoming closer to the natural world. Many adventures are based on

1521-480: Was written and directed by Meatball Fulton . The initial story concept was created while he was staying at a farmhouse outside of Montreal, Quebec , Canada. The farm was called Inverness, and was named and designed after a house the original owner had owned in Inverness , Scotland. It had been abandoned for ten years, but was being looked after by an old caretaker. The initial characters were written for other guests at

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