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George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and
actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary,
poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and
language, and groundbreaking routines like "Seven Words You
Can Never Use on Television," died in Los Angeles on Sunday
according to his publicist Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

I Just saw the news myself. Logged into Yahoo and seen the headline in the latest news.

Man, he was one of my favs.

He was fine a year or two ago.

Well, well first Tim Russert, now ..Carlin.

I would say he was, or at the very least is arguably one of the top ten stand up comedians of all time. I am positive he is seen in that realm by many people and as well is viewed by the media in that same light. Hats off to him.

Here is a link to the story on Yahoo.com

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080623/us_nm/carlin_dc

Ian

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

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Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin's routine were indecent, and that the government's broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.

Carlin's comedic sensibility often came back to a central theme: humanity is doomed.

"I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas," he told Reuters in a 2001 interview.

Carlin, who wrote several books and performed in many television comedy specials, is survived by his wife Sally Wade, and daughter Kelly Carlin McCall.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman and Steve Gorman; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)

rip, a very funny man

1 of only a handful of cool Americans.
RIP

anyone with kids knows his narration of Tomas The Tank Engine. I never got used to that, Carlin was very special to me. One of the greats, he took comedy to the next level...

Damn. He was a riot. Love his books and live shows. RIP george

Pdog wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:36am:

anyone with kids knows his narration of Tomas The Tank Engine. I never got used to that, Carlin was very special to me. One of the greats, he took comedy to the next level...

In the UK, the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine was the drummer of a well known beat combo from Liverpool who broke up in 1970.....!

Ah SHIT! Along with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, one of the top 10 comedians of all time and a very cool guy. His "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" will live in infamy, and his obervations on religion were side-splittingly funny. I loved him as Cardinal Glick in "Dogma" too. He'll be missed.

RIP, Georgie, you were one of the best.

This is very sad news....George was just out here last winter, I think it was December, and we didn't go see him. I wish we would've now. George was great and I am thankful to know his comedy. It lifted me up on more than one occasion.

RIP

Martha

That's why you have to go see the classics whilst they still tour, Martha! Even though George's best stuff was well behind him, it would have been a good night out.

He was a nominee for the Kennedy Center Honors this year.

RIP George Carlin

Gazza wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:48am:

Pdog wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:36am:

anyone with kids knows his narration of Tomas The Tank Engine. I never got used to that, Carlin was very special to me. One of the greats, he took comedy to the next level...

In the UK, the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine was the drummer of a well known beat combo from Liverpool who broke up in 1970.....!

carlin...ringo...alec baldwin...anyone who's anyone in hollywood has narrated thomas the tank engine.

Ironically, that's the 1st time Ringo was ever the most talented one in a group!

Gazza wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:48am:

Pdog wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:36am:

anyone with kids knows his narration of Tomas The Tank Engine. I never got used to that, Carlin was very special to me. One of the greats, he took comedy to the next level...

In the UK, the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine was the drummer of a well known beat combo from Liverpool who broke up in 1970.....!

As far as I know: Ringo, Some Baldwin and Mr. Carlin.
Back to mourning.

Starbuck wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 11:39am:

Gazza wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:48am:

Pdog wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 7:36am:

anyone with kids knows his narration of Tomas The Tank Engine. I never got used to that, Carlin was very special to me. One of the greats, he took comedy to the next level...

In the UK, the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine was the drummer of a well known beat combo from Liverpool who broke up in 1970.....!

carlin...ringo...alec baldwin...anyone who's anyone in hollywood has narrated thomas the tank engine.

We need a Ringo the narrator tribute artist.

Carlin's New Rules For 2008

New Rule #1: Stop giving me that pop-up ad for classmates.com!
There's a reason you don't talk to people for 25 years. Because you
don't particularly like them! Besides, I already know what the captain
of the football team is doing these days.... Mowing my lawn.

New Rule #2: Don't eat anything that's served to you out a window unless you're a seagull. People are acting all shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy's chili. Hey, it cost less than a dollar. What did you expect it to contain? Trout?

New Rule #3: Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men
care about your eyebrows: Do you have two of them? Okay, we're done.

New Rule #4: There's no such thing as flavored water. There's a whole
aisle of this crap at the supermarket: Water, but without that watery taste.
Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored
water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.

New Rule #5: Stop screwing with old people. Target is introducing a
redesigned pill bottle that's square, with a bigger label. And the top is now
the bottom. And by the time grandpa figures out how to open it, his
ass will be in the morgue. Congratulations, Target, you just solved the
Social Security crisis.

New Rule #6: The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande half-soy, half low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra-dry, light ice, with one sweet'n'Low, and one NutraSweet," ooh, you're a huge asshole.

New Rule #7: I'm not the cashier! By the time I look up from sliding my card, entering my PIN number, pressing "Enter," verifying the amount, deciding no, I don't want cash back, and pressing "Enter" again, the kid who is supposed to be ringing me up is standing there eating my Almond Joy.

New Rule #8: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it
doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass and it
translates to "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything
spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not
spiritual. You're just high.

New Rule #9: Competitive eating isn't a sport. It's one of the seven
deadly sins. ESPN recently televised the U.S. Open of Competitive
Eating, because watching those athletes at the poker table was just too
damned exciting. What's next, Competitive Farting??? Oh wait!? They're
already doing that. It's called "The Howard Stern Show."

New Rule #10: I don't need bigger, mega M&Ms. If I'm extra hungry for
M&Ms, I'll go nuts and eat two.

New Rule #11: No more gift registries. You know, it used to be just
for weddings. Now it's for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab.
Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you
isn't gift giving, it's the white people version of looting.

New Rule #12: When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to know
in months (e.g., 27 months.) "He's two," will do just fine. He's not a
cheese. And I didn't really care in the first place.

New Rule #13: If you ever hope to be a credible adult and want a job
that pays better than minimum wage, then for God's sake don't pierce or
tattoo every available piece of flesh. If so, then plan your future around
saying, "Do you want fries with that?"

Love that list, GTRM.
Laughed my ass off - again.

Gotta read it one more time after I find my stash of Toledo Window Box... ;)

RIP George.

Why,why,why is it that people who are anti-abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place..........One of my favorite Carlin bits.

RIP George

RIP George. He was one funny man. Saw him several times and was always impressed. He also was spot on concerning the myth of Global Warming!

"We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?

I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun. Don't you think that's already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let's see... Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh...viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

Well, that's a poetic note. And it's a start. And I can dream, can't I? See I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron...whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Riffy

I hate using this word, but Riffy, I gotta call it like I see it: That is fucking awesome.

Great piece in The Nation today:

George Carlin: American Radical
by John Nichols
06/23/2008

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -- George Carlin

The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972.

When Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians," he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today's half-a-loaf reformers. "Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"

Needless to say, George Carlin was not on message for 2008's "change we can believe in" election season.

His was a darker and more serious take on the crisis – and the change of consciousness, sweeping in scope and revolutionary in character, that was required to address it.

Carlin may have stopped voting in 1972. But America's most consistently savage social commentator for the best part of a half century, who has died at age 71, did not give up on politics.

In recent years, in front of audiences that were not always liberal, he tore apart the neo-conservative assault on liberty with a clarity rarely evidenced in the popular culture.

Recalling George Bush's ranting about how the endless "war on terror" is a battle for freedom, Carlin echoed James Madison's thinking with a simple question: "Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"

Carlin gave the Christian right – and the Christian left – no quarter. "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State," Carlin said. "My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

Carlin's take on the Ronald Reagan administration is the best antidote to the counterfactual romanticization of the former president – in which even Barack Obama has engaged – remains the single finest assessment of Reagan and his inner circle. While Carlin did not complain much about politicians, he made an exception with regard to the great communicator. Recorded in 1988 at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, and later released as an album -- What Am I Doing in New Jersey? – his savage recollection of the then-concluding Reagan-Bush years opened with the line: "I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photograph of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan administration."

But there was no nostalgia for past fights, no resting on laurels, for this topical comedian. He read the papers, he followed the news, he asked questions – the interviews I did with Carlin over the years were more conversations than traditional Q & A's – and he turned it all into a running commentary that focused not so much on politics as on the ugly intersection of power and economics.

No one, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton and certainly not John McCain, caught the zeitgeist of the vanishing American dream so well as Carlin. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Not just aware of but steeped in the traditions of American populism – more William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Victor Debs than Bill Clinton or John Kerry – Carlin preached against the consolidation of wealth and power with a fire-and-brimstone rage that betrayed a deep moral sense that could never quite be cloaked with four-letter words.

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else," ranted the comedian whose routines were studied in graduate schools.

"But I'll tell you what they don't want," Carlin continued. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.

He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

Carlin was a leveler of the old, old school. And no one who had so public a platform – as the first host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, a regular on broadcast and cable televisions shows, a best-selling author and a favorite character actor in films (he was even the narrator of the American version of the children's show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends) – did more to challenge accepted wisdom regarding our political economy.

"Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something." "But look at Joey, he's only got a couple, they won't last two days." That's the fuckin' difference! And I'm more inclined to want to share and even out," he explained in an interview several years ago with The Onion.

"I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace," Carlin continued. "That's one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That's what welfare was about. There are people who really just don't have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there's all of that. But there are also people who can't cut it, for any given reason, whether it's racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin' horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They're crippled and they can't make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal. That's where my fuckin' passion lies."

Like the radicals of the early years of the 20th century, whose politics he knew and respected, Carlin understood that free-speech fights had to come first. And always pushed the limit – happily choosing an offensive word when a more polite one might have sufficed. By 1972, the year he won the first of four Grammys for best comedy album, he had developed his most famous routine: "Seven Words (You Can't Say on Television)."

That summer, at a huge outdoor show in Milwaukee, he uttered all seven of them in public – and was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace.

When a version of the routine was aired in 1973 on WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York,. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC. Pacifica was ordered to pay a fine for violating federal regulations prohibiting the broadcast of "obscene" language. The ensuing free-speech fight made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 against the First Amendment to the Constitution, Pacifica and Carlin.

Amusingly, especially to the comedian, a full transcript of the routine ended up in court documents associated with the case, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," recalled Carlin. Proud enough that you can find the court records on the comedian's website: www.georgecarlin.com

There will, of course, be those who dismiss Carlin as a remnant of the sixties who introduced obscenity to the public discourse – just as there will be those who misread his critique of the American political and economic systems as little more than verbal nihilism. In fact, George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist – and a patriot --of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days.

Carlin explained himself best in one of his last interviews. "There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my species--and my culture in America specifically--have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power," he said. "And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word 'cynic' has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. 'George, you're cynical.' Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?"

Link: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/331953

Bob Lefsetz - The Lefsetz Letter
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

The last time I saw George Carlin was at the Universal Amphitheatre. As I watched him stride the stage with his mic, I thought what a great job this was. You get an agent to book the gig, you drive to the venue from your house, you do your show and you take ALL THE MONEY!

I'm sure George loved that. After all, he invented the format. Oh, the Borscht Belt comedians preceded him, but George wasn't a member of that club, hell, he wasn't even Jewish. He didn't depend on favors from singers, and he had a gold-selling record career. George Carlin didn't tell jokes, he specialized in the TRUTH! And one thing the baby boomers recognized was the truth. They flocked to George. Once he gave up trying to please their parents and just said what he felt on the inside.

I can't remember whether it was '67 or '68, but around seven o'clock on a Sunday evening, with school still in session, my parents dropped me off at Sacred Heart University for a concert. One of those five act extravaganzas like the one featuring the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, the Soul Survivors and...that I went to at Fairfield University the fall before. The headliner was Vanilla Fudge. Actually, I saw Carmine Appice a couple of weeks back at the Kenny Chesney show. Playing second was Connecticut's biggest local act, NAIF, the North Atlantic Invasion Force, but in the middle, on around nine, was the performance I truly remember. George Carlin took the stage. Did the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman. He was funny. I kept my eye on him. When he exploded in the seventies it wasn't news, but the preordained success of someone who worked hard, bucking the system to ultimately be successful in another system, that of youth culture.

Sure, he was about ten or fifteen years older than his new audience, but he was seen as one of them. A God. Quoted ad infinitum from his Little David records.

Seinfeld's observational comedy? That's all derived from Carlin. I don't want to hassle Jerry here, he admits it. Carlin was the first to look at our screwed up world and question it. The only comedian doing this today is Chris Rock. Cable TV killed live comedy and while everybody with a modicum of talent looked to star in, or write for, a sitcom, today's generation was subjected to the inanities of Dane Cook. A harmless gentleman, but that's just the point... Dane's about jokes. Carlin was much more than jokes, he actually inspired people to think, to question.

Save the planet? SAVE YOURSELF!

I think of Carlin's routine every time I hear people pontificate about the environment. George said the planet's been around for millions of years, it will survive. Isn't that an interesting thought? An Earth without people? Instead of thinking about whether your kids will get cancer, think of human beings going the way of dinosaurs.

And, of course, the difference between football and baseball... Sudden death and extra innings. The gridiron as opposed to the field. Baseball is a pastoral game...

And what about the routine about STUFF? Buying stuff, hoarding stuff, moving stuff. As someone addicted to my stuff, I think of George's words whenever I debate throwing something away. Do I really need it? Is my identity really rolled up in my possessions?

And then there was the Friday night executions. Maybe it was Monday night. But you remember that HBO routine. God, that would generate ratings! Begging the question, would executives put ANYTHING on television if it delivered ratings? In the years since, Carlin seems a seer. Hell, it's almost not a joking matter. They have vigils, TV reports, whenever they execute another inmate.

From a distance, it looked like George couldn't break through into TV or movies. The obituaries are saying it was his choice. I'd like to agree with this, if you're sui generis, if you're making a difference, can you play any role but yourself?

I looked forward to those HBO specials.

I must say, in the recent one, George was a bit off his game. Maybe his health was affecting his talent. Then again, we don't reevaluate Sinatra based on his final tours. Frank's legend was cemented over and over again, from the forties to the sixties. And George Carlin's legend was cemented from the seventies to the nineties. He wasn't the voice of a generation, he'd hate that description, rather he was the trusted observer, removed, sitting on high, taking the pulse of a nation.

You might say he was secondary to Richard Pryor. I love Richard, but their acts were different. Richard was a storyteller nonpareil. Carlin's talent lay in his insight, in questioning what the fuck was going on through humor.

If you look at Carlin's track record, it's akin to the Beatles'. He was more consistent than the Stones, even though he worked just as long. And even though we loved his greatest hits, we always wanted to hear his new stuff. Carlin wasn't calcified, he was positively alive.

Sure, he took drugs to cope. But, he also had a wife and a child and a level of normalcy that left him out of the "Behind The Music"/"E! True Hollywood Story" exposes. With Carlin, it wasn't about the drugs, but the talent. We marveled at the talent.

It's funny when a guy like Carlin dies. Because he still lives. Not only all those HBO specials and records, but the routines in our minds. He's changed our lives. You see, Carlin's comedy never got dated. Because being human never really changes.

But now Carlin is gone. Kinda weird, because he was an inspiration, a beacon for all us wannabe truth tellers. If Carlin could do it, maybe we could too. Now, the path is only illuminated by his legacy, there will be no more new words, no more new routines. No more appearances on late night TV where he questions the conventional wisdom, where he states he doesn't vote because it doesn't make a difference. I'm a big believer in casting my ballot, but I can see that George is right. The fat cats win no matter what. The little guy is squeezed out. George was not a star who wanted to live above the fray, he never forgot his roots, he was interested in the little guy, and the little guy loved him for it.

Everybody I know who interacted with Carlin said they had a conversation. His stardom did not eviscerate his humanity. But his poor heart stopped him cold.

Seventy one is too young to die. Seems old, but when you get there, or see that a man running for President is that age, you realize that as a septuagenarian, you've still got a lot of living to do. Hopefully.

George's candle has been snuffed out, but his memory will live on. If I think of my pantheon of inspirations, I put him right up there with Tom Wolfe and Frank Zappa. Wolfe the observer and Zappa the questioner. That's what George Carlin was. An observer who was not afraid to question the status quo. I will be continued to be inspired by him. Hopefully, you will too.

george was awesome, a very funny man

thanks for the laughs

rest well

love dave

:wtf1

RIP

He had some funny views of life!

RIP

"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that".

We were all created because the Earth wanted plastic.

HBO is paying tribute to George by re-airing 11 of his 14 specials tonight and tom'w on HBO2.
Starts at 8 Eastern.

6/25
“George Carlin At USC” (1977)
“George Carlin Again!” (1978)
“Carlin At Carnegie” (1983)
“Carlin On Campus” (1984)
“Playin’ With Your Head” (1986)

6/26
“What Am I Doing In New Jersey?” (1988)
“Doin’ It Again” (1990)
“Jammin’ In New York” (1992)
“Back In Town” (1996)
“You Are All Diseased” (1999)
“It’s Bad For Ya” (2008)

And Saturday Night Live will rebroadcast the very first SNL from 1975, hosted by GC.

One of the greatest foul mouths of all time. Not me bullshit, fuck you, up yours, get laid, eat shit, drop dead, jack me off, suck this, I don't need parts that badly I'm not that sick!

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http://rocksoff.org/cgi-bin/messageboard/YaBB.pl GENERAL >> MAIN BOARD >> George Carlin, the Comedian, Is Dead at 71 http://rocksoff.org/cgi-bin/messageboard/YaBB.pl?num=1214198866 Message started by mojoman on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 12:27am