About the Author David Ossman, one of the four creators of The Firesign Theatre, three-time Grammy nominees, known as "The Beatles of Comedy," has been publishing poetry in books, anthologies and magazines since his teen years. Most of the poems in Marshmallows &amp; Despair were first heard on NPR's All Things Considered, the Firesign's gold-medal-winning XM Satellite program, Fools In Space, and the web's Radio Free Oz. An internationally-celebrated radio writer-director, best known for The War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary Production, Ossman has also produced major programs with John Cage, Ray Bradbury and Norman Corwin. As "George Tirebiter," he ran a national comedy campaign for U.S. Vice-President in 1976, is the voice of "Cornelius" in Pixar's A Bug's Life, and has adapted Agatha Christie's BBC Murders, Jean Cocteau's Orpheus and an e. e. cummings cabaret for stage. Ossman was born Dec. 6, 1936 in Santa Monica, California, graduated from Columbia University, and has lived on Whidbey Island, Washington, with his wife and partner, Judith Walcutt, for thirty years. They have two sons, Orson, a filmmaker, and Preston, a musician. He is currently finishing a second memoir, Fighting Clowns. Reviews "Reading David Ossman is like finding yourself caught up in a whirlwind of whimsy and dark augury. Imagine you're trying to run through a dust devil, arms flailing and hair flying and Ossman's poems are like looking up through the funnel and seeing the sun. David Ossman is an acute observer who makes flesh the Walpole dictum: "The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."" Bart Baxter Poet, Pilot, World Traveller &amp; Master of Ceremonies "We all knew there was a poetry in the madness of Firesign Theater, but there's also an inspired madness in the poetry of Firesign's David Ossman. Marshmallows &amp; Despair reveals the heart that has always been at the center of Ossman's work, changing the way one thinks about his comedy, and all comedy for that matter. With a light touch and delirious passion, Ossman takes us on a journey that is both personal and universal. Transcendent." Douglas Rushkoff author of Present Shock "A compelling diary of the first years of the century, these genial and biting poems remind us of the uniquely literary dimension of Ossman's old group, Firesign Theatre, and can be read alongside the broadcasts and albums of their great late period." Jeremy Braddock Cornell University, Modernist Studies Book Prize winner. "Funny, deeply layered, and subversive." John Goodman Unforgettable film, television, stage, and voice actor.

Marshmallows & Despair

Humor & Entertainment

Ossman, David

Humor

NeoPoiesis Press, LLC

The absorbing, astounding, true story of the invention of radio broadcasting in the early 20th Century, and a long-overdue tribute to the lman who actually devised practical AM receivers and the entire FM System:  Edwin Howard Armstrong.  His genius gave us all a wonderful new world, but his patents were stolen by corporate greed.  The story centers around three figures central to the period:  Armstrong, Lee DeForest (who claimed to have invented a lot of things), and David Sarnoff (who founded R.C.A.).  Tom Lewis' bestselling book became Ken Burns' wonderful video, but David (Firesign Theatre) Ossman's audio adaptation is the best telling of the story of any version!  Steve Allen, David Ogden Stiers, Edward Asner, Bonnie Bedelia, John Astin, Gary Owens, and a magnificent cast of 90!

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio

Lewis, Tom

Otherworld Media

History

Lonestone Catalog

THE RONALD REAGAN MURDER CASE is a 60,000-word comedy mystery novel, set in Hollywood in January 1945, which introduces George Tirebiter, then a 25 year-old radio star, in his first "celebrity detective" role. Two murder mysteries engage George in this novel. In one, he discovers that the apparent murder of Ronald Reagan's movie double could have been an early CIA double-cross, fabricated by Bill "Wild Bull" Casey! Could our beloved ex-President actually be his own stand-in? Tirebiter also follows a long covered-up killer's trail back to 1920 and solves the scandalous death of a prominent silent film director. A popular nudist camp and a famous blue movie figure prominently in the solution to this screen story, while the Golden Age adventure involves cross-dressing, army intelligence, glamorous movie stars and two live radio comedy broadcasts.   The second one, which stars Lt. "Dutch" Reagan in a tribute to Air Force Bombers, is interrupted by gunfire, and not from the sound-effects man. In 1945, Tirebiter was riding high on CBS network radio. He and his wife, one-time glamorous showgirl Lillie Lamont, starred in the popular Friday night comedy-and-music program, "Hollywood Madhouse." At the same time, George's career as a movie director at Paranoid Pictures had plateaued with yet another B programmer, "First WAC in Tokyo." A survivor of the Tarnished Age of Hollywood, George was blacklisted in the Fifties and forgotten for years, only to make a comeback during the Underground Sixties and actually run for Vice President of the U.S. in 1976 on the Nat'l Surrealist Party ticket.   George "Porgie" Tirebiter was made famous by The Firesign Theatre in their million-selling album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers. (1970). Played by David Ossman, Tirebiter has appeared in many live stage shows and radio broadcasts, the best of which are ready-to-hear in the 5-CD "George Tirebiter Collection," distributed by the Lodestone Catalogue. Tirebiter's long career, like that of Sherlock Holmes, continues to be far realer than fiction itself.

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

BearManor Media

Ossman presents the character; scripts and reminiscences of the radio classic, Dr. Firesign's Follies.

Firesign Follies

Biographies & Memoirs

More than just a rousing send-up of Shakespeare, Anythynge You Want To: Shakespeare's Lost Comedy is a full-length theatrical entertainment, written and rewritten continually throughout The Firesign Theatre's long performing career. This volume collects every iambic double entendre and silly soliloquy into a surreal comedy opus, complete with Firesign's "scholarly" Introduction, tongue-in-cheek Footnotes, diagrams, and even recipes! The Firesign Theatre has infused the classic Shakespearian scenes of hurricanes at sea, witches capering about a cooking pot, apparitions on the battlements, graveyard passion, and mortal combat with their notoriously twisted political and social humor. A devastating oil spill, alchemical terrorism, sleezy politics, and Hollywood shenanigans are all part of the laughs. As The Firesign Theatre tells it, the legendary writing/acting quartet has been writing and performing plays since 1600 when they collaborated with the Bard on Anythynge before taking their act on the road to the New World. Reborn in the Old West as Dr. Firesign's Theatre of the Plains, these fighting clowns have since worn many disguises and had countless high adventures on stage, in movies, and over the radio. The tales told here fill in the comic mythology of The Firesign Theatre's most popular recorded worlds, connecting Nick Danger and George Tirebiter to Hemlock Stones, The Electrician, and "Everything You Know is Wrong." Bonus scripts include 1967's radio saga The Armenian's Paw and an early club-act favorite, Waiting for The Mount of County Crisco. Filled with photographs from performances, along with graphics by Bruce Litz, Anythynge You Want To is truly The Firesign Theatre's major work of high comedy.

Anythynge You Want To: Shakespeare's Lost Comedie

Bergman, Peter

Austin, Philip

Dramas & Plays

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery + 1 (hardback)

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case A George Tirebiter Mystery Travel back to 1945 and the Hollywood of Ronald Reagan and Raymond Chandler. It's the Golden Age of Radio and B-Movies. A Notorious Unsolved Tinseltown Slaying! Nudists! Spies! Stars! A Hard-Boiled Dick! A Celebrity Sleuth! A Mysterious Lady! At Last The Story Can Be Told! George Leroy Tirebiter has had a long and distinguished career in American entertainment and politics. Born near Chicago on December 7, 1920, he was a child actor who appeared with Eva Le Gallienne in "Medea," and had a long run as the young Thomas Edison in the "Pageant of Electricity" at the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933. He soon moved on to roles in local radio shows and became well-known at 17 as YOUNG TOM EDISON, RAILROAD DETECTIVE. Under contract to Paranoid Pictures, Tirebiter directed wartime musicals, including BABES IN KHAKI and PARDON MY PIN-UP. His WHAT A FAMILY! (Argyle Artists 1948) spoofed teenagers Georgie Tirebiter and his pals. In his startling Hollywood roman a clef STREET OF BROKEN GLASS (1954) he discusses the blacklisting which contributed to his sudden decline and fall at age 32. The Academy, however, voted him a Good Sport Award in 1958 after he was revealed to be the auteur of two memorable sci-fi classics: NOMADS FROM NEPTUNE (in 3-D) and THE BEAST FROM UNDER THE BED (both Monotone Pictures, 1953). Also contains the NEW short story, "Another Christmas Carol." Tirebiter's creator, David Ossman, is a co-founder of The Firesign Theatre and editor of Firesign's literary heritage. His other books include THE&#8200;FLYING&#8200;SAUCER&#8200;MURDER&#8200;CASE, FIGHTING CLOWNS&#8200;OF&#8200;HOLLYWOOD, DR. FIRESIGN'S&#8200;FOLLIES, and a classic collection of conversations with major poets of the 1960s, THE&#8200;SULLEN&#8200;ART.

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery + 1

David Ossman’s memoir of The Firesign Theatre’s rapid response to the on-coming Reagan Era recounts the quartet’s uneasy transformation from writer-performer-producers of in-studio comic audio masterpieces to theatrical hopefuls and Movieland script-writers. Firesign goes Hollywood with a million $$ MGM movie deal and a string of big stage shows, featuring all-new hot comedy material, performed at the Roxy, premiere rock-club on the Sunset Strip.Here are Firesign’s new sketches from the “Owl & Octopus Show,” all the words to the full-frontal musical revue “Fighting Clowns,” and the one-act play, “Joey’s House.” Nick Danger, “America’s only detective,” re-appears in three confusing episodes and Old Time Radio fans will also dig “The History of the Art of Radio,” and “The American Pageant,” both of which turn American history over in its grave.

Fighting Clowns of Hollywood: With Laffs by THE FIRESIGN THEATRE

Arts & Literature

David Ossman's memoir of The Firesign Theatre's rapid response to the on-coming Reagan Era recounts the quartet's uneasy transformation from writer-performer-producers of in-studio comic audio masterpieces to theatrical hopefuls and Movieland script-writers. Firesign goes Hollywood with a million $$ MGM movie deal and a string of big stage shows, featuring all-new hot comedy material, performed at the Roxy, premiere rock-club on the Sunset Strip. Here are Firesign's new sketches from the "Owl & Octopus Show," all the words to the full-frontal musical revue "Fighting Clowns," and the one-act play, "Joey's House." Nick Danger, "America's only detective," re-appears in three confusing episodes and Old Time Radio fans will also dig "The History of the Art of Radio," and "The American Pageant," both of which turn American history over in its grave.

Fighting Clowns of Hollywood: With Laffs by THE FIRESIGN THEATRE (hardback)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ossman, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ossman, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ossman, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Marshmallows & Despair

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery

Firesign Follies

Anythynge You Want To: Shakespeare's Lost Comedie

Firesign Follies

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery + 1 (hardback)

The Ronald Reagan Murder Case: A George Tirebiter Mystery + 1

Fighting Clowns of Hollywood: With Laffs by THE FIRESIGN THEATRE

Fighting Clowns of Hollywood: With Laffs by THE FIRESIGN THEATRE (hardback)