 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
||
 |
||
|
Enter the text or keywords here: |
|
|
| Search | |
|
| Help& Advanced | |
|
|
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
George Carlin is Dead.
George Carlin died yesterday, at the positively Methusalean age of 71—when you reflect that it's the life in your years, not the years in your life, that counts.
The night before Carlin suffered his third cardiac arrest in Santa Monica California, I was at a birthday party in Austin, Texas. Where, among other topics of conversation, a friend and I debated the merits of saying somebody "passed away" vs. somebody "died." It does my heart good that I had Carlin's part in the argument:
He lived as a starving lion against 1,000 jackals in defense of the carcass of Truth. He understood that the power of words is eclipsed only by the power of the words we're afraid to say. And so he spoke, and spoke, and spoke the unspeakable to make us freer and better than we are. To employ any sort of euphemism to describe what happened to Carlin, to imply the old man somehow wandered gently into a vaguely-specified good night, is high slander. Without a doubt, at 5:55 PM PST on Sunday June 22, 2008, George Carlin died.
My all-time favorite Carlin riff is "The Planet is Fine", from his 1992 HBO special:
The planet isn't going anywhere. We are. We're going away. Pack your shit, folks.
Carlin was dark, often flat-out misanthropic in his enthusiasm for the intersection of hubris and the Law of Cause and Effect. He didn't warn of apocalypse, he rooted for it. Still, I always felt the perspective of "The Planet Is Fine" is the essential one if the environmental movement is going to galvanize the public to the degree needed to change the course we're on. It's not about saving "the trees, the bees, the whales, the snails," it's about saving ourselves.
He is of course most famous for "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television", which will soon find it's rightful place in American literary anthologies alongside Melville, Fitzgerald, Whitman and Twain (once we figure out how to anthologize standup—the ebook will help). This is the original version from Carlin's 1972 Class Clown album:
He was arrested on multiple occasions for performing that routine, and never convicted. And at age 25, he was in the audience for Lenny Bruce's 1961 obscenity bust in San Francisco. When the cops began interviewing audience members as witnesses, Carlin told them he didn't believe in the concept of "government issued ID"; they carted him and Bruce off in the same paddy wagon.
Supposedly, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams once spent a night in the same bed together while traveling to Philadelphia, because there was no more room at the inn. I imagine Carlin and Bruce's ride to the hoosegow was a somewhat comparable occasion, only with a lot more fucks in it.
|
|
|
|
|
comments |
||||
Follow links in the comments and you're on your own. |
||||
| ||||
( top ) | ||||
post |
||
( top ) |