Home / Blogs

JD Falk – a Decade Afterwards

Remembering JD Falk

I can still hear it. ‘Hee hee’. That’s good.

We all have unique laughs, but few are distinctive. Fewer yet belly the true nature of the human being issuing them.

British insult comedian Jimmy Carr has one such laugh, a tri-tone ‘dah dah DUH,’ rising on the third expulsion. It has a bell-like quality, ringing, embodying the deft touch that Don Rickles had of insulting while loving, something Carr has mastered. It lets you know that despite him having just said something shocking and horrid, he is laughing with, never at, reassuring the target, ‘all is well.’

Ricky Gervais is another who deftly threads much the same needle; he has hosted awards shows whose ultra-famous attendees who are barbed by his insightful but deeply cutting jokes. Gervais’s four-part laugh borders on maniacal by its end, letting the audience know it’s all in good fun, but at the same time underscoring the fact that he’s not entirely kidding.

But the laugh at hand, the one that is irrevocably burned into my conscience, is of my dearly departed friend and colleague, J.D. Falk. His sister Alisa Dramé posted a reminder today on social media, making note it’s been a decade. Ten years since we’d not heard his gentle ‘hee hee’. His was a typification of his shy yet confident manner, an evaluation of the humour laid before him. When it came, it was a considered opinion of what was funny; when JD laughed, something truly was worthy.

I’d removed the anniversary from my calendar a while back because, well, I carry those I love and who have left in my heart; I don’t need a specific day to remember them. I do it often. Also true was that it was painful to recall the end of that terrible year when that emperor of all maladies slowly drained him. But specifically today, it seems apt.

Today, in the final throes of a global existential crisis, the reverberations thereof still strong, when I would have so loved to have had him as a sounding board to help guide and temper my own reactions to what has been a half-decade of tumult and one has to admit, a great source of frustration and comedic material in equal portions. The Jews of Auschwitz laughed on their ways to the gas chambers, and so too did we two Jews laugh at his cancer and undeniable impending death. What can I say? He did look good, having dropped a few pounds. Hee hee. When all else is gone, you are left with the absurdity of it all.

JD Falk was an Internet pioneer, ten years past; we honoured him at CAUCE.org, which he helped found; we honoured him at M3AAWG.org, which he helped found and whose annual innovator award rightly bears his name. The world truly was less with his passing.

He will never be forgotten by those who knew him and now, hopefully, known a little better by some of you not so fortunate to do so.

See JD’s archived CircleID page, where his numerous contributed posts are preserved spanning from 2008 until his passing in 2011.

By Neil Schwartzman, Executive Director, The Coalition Against unsolicited Commercial Email - CAUCE

Filed Under

Comments

Comment Title:

  Notify me of follow-up comments

We encourage you to post comments and engage in discussions that advance this post through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can report it using the link at the end of each comment. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of CircleID. For more information on our comment policy, see Codes of Conduct.

CircleID Newsletter The Weekly Wrap

More and more professionals are choosing to publish critical posts on CircleID from all corners of the Internet industry. If you find it hard to keep up daily, consider subscribing to our weekly digest. We will provide you a convenient summary report once a week sent directly to your inbox. It's a quick and easy read.

I make a point of reading CircleID. There is no getting around the utility of knowing what thoughtful people are thinking and saying about our industry.

VINTON CERF
Co-designer of the TCP/IP Protocols & the Architecture of the Internet

Related

Topics

Threat Intelligence

Sponsored byWhoisXML API

Cybersecurity

Sponsored byVerisign

DNS

Sponsored byDNIB.com

IPv4 Markets

Sponsored byIPv4.Global

New TLDs

Sponsored byRadix

Domain Names

Sponsored byVerisign

Brand Protection

Sponsored byCSC