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George Carlin (split from dead thread)

G-Fafif Jun 23 2008 01:24 AM

George Carlin, 1937-2008, he who broke down the film on the [url=http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/6/23/3758335.html]differences between baseball and football[/url].

Willets Point Jun 23 2008 05:04 AM

Farewell, George. Now you can finally find out if God is omnipotent could He make a rock so big He couldn't lift it.

MFS62 Jun 23 2008 05:44 AM

George, You were one funny motherfucker. You'll be missed. R.I.P. Later

metirish Jun 23 2008 06:28 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 23 2008 07:10 AM

Sad news, R.I. P. Saw him last year at Pace University , very glad to say I did.

themetfairy Jun 23 2008 06:35 AM

I recently made the kids listen to his baseball/football comparison. Great stuff. Carlin was truly an original thinker - RIP George!

soupcan Jun 23 2008 07:04 AM

Wow. Sad news, he was always one of my favorites.

themetfairy Jun 23 2008 07:10 AM

I would always laugh at the concept that George took over the role of Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station from Ringo Starr. You could understand Ringo on that show, but I could never figure out how Carlin got the gig.

Willets Point Jun 23 2008 07:20 AM

It was bewildering how certain comics who were so raunchy that my parents' generation would block their kids from watching -- Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Cheech Marin -- ended up being children's entertainers for the next generation. Not that I'm knocking it, it's just fascinating that there's a thin line between "adult" humor and kids humor.

AG/DC Jun 23 2008 07:20 AM

"We need somebody who's consumed more booze and weed than Ringo. Hmmm..."

Frayed Knot Jun 23 2008 07:29 AM

At first I had to sneak listens of his album 'AM & FM' which my father bought but then wouldn't let me listen to once he found out what was on it. A whole new world opened up. George-isms: - I never eat sushi. I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious. - In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first - If the shoe fits, get another one just like it - I stopped eating processed foods when I began to picture the people who might be processing them - The child molester skipped breakfast, but said he'd grab a little something on the way to work - It is impossible to dry just one hand - I'll bet there aren't too many people hooked on crack who can play the bagpipes - If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to? - If Helen Keller had psychic ability, would you say she had a fourth sense? - When a lion escapes from a circus in Africa, how do they know when they've caught the right one? - Baseball is the only sport that appears backwards in a mirror - George Washington's brother was the uncle of our country

AG/DC Jun 23 2008 07:48 AM

I'll say it. George's comedy seemed so mature when I was young, but I instantly stopped laughing when I got older. I even went back to the earlier material and found myself trying to laugh.

Benjamin Grimm Jun 23 2008 08:14 AM

Frayed Knot wrote: George-isms: - I never eat sushi. I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious. - In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first - If the shoe fits, get another one just like it - I stopped eating processed foods when I began to picture the people who might be processing them - The child molester skipped breakfast, but said he'd grab a little something on the way to work - It is impossible to dry just one hand - I'll bet there aren't too many people hooked on crack who can play the bagpipes - If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to? - If Helen Keller had psychic ability, would you say she had a fourth sense? - When a lion escapes from a circus in Africa, how do they know when they've caught the right one? - Baseball is the only sport that appears backwards in a mirror - George Washington's brother was the uncle of our country It's funny, but if you told me that those jokes were from Steven Wright, I'd totally believe you.

Willets Point Jun 23 2008 08:16 AM

AG/DC wrote: I'll say it. George's comedy seemed so mature when I was young, but I instantly stopped laughing when I got older. I even went back to the earlier material and found myself trying to laugh. Call me an uncouth ruffian, but I'm still laughing.

Frayed Knot Jun 23 2008 08:28 AM

To me his stuff remained not just funny but relevent throughout. Not that that means EVERYthing he did was great - I found 'Angry George' screaming about politics to be less than his best - but he never really underwent any major transformations over the years. His stuff did mature beyond the shock-value jokes from his early days even though he he never really left that stuff behind, just incorporated it into more socially oriented material that had appeal to those outside just the college-aged audiences that were his first stronghold. No one better at using, twisting, dissecting, and turning the English language on its ear.

Vince Coleman Firecracker Jun 23 2008 09:22 AM

I always liked his "goofy shit" material more than his cranky, angry guy material- the Carlin that Mitch Hedberg followed, rather than the Carlin Dennis Leary followed.

AG/DC Jun 23 2008 09:27 AM

Willets Point wrote: ="AG/DC"]I'll say it. George's comedy seemed so mature when I was young, but I instantly stopped laughing when I got older. I even went back to the earlier material and found myself trying to laugh. Call me an uncouth ruffian, but I'm still laughing. Yeah, I won't call you anything. Clearly a lot of work went into his comedy. And while a lot of taboo topics that he took on in the seventies (like my dysfuncitonal and often enough corrupt Catholic church) became easy targets later, he continued to set his gaze on cows that are still sacred, like the "save the planet" movement. I don't want to make more of it than he deerves. It coincides with my growing distaste for a lot of contemporary satirical social critique. I may be the only person you meet that will defend the qualities of Stuart Saves His Family, but Al Franken's act has grown extremely tedious to me. I'm probably just old.

soupcan Jun 23 2008 09:42 AM

AG/DC wrote: I may be the only person you meet that will defend the qualities of Stuart Saves His Family, but Al Franken's act has grown extremely tedious to me. Not the first time you've referenced this. You really liked that movie.

AG/DC Jun 23 2008 09:54 AM

I'm probably just old.

Vic Sage Jun 23 2008 10:45 AM

as a kid, my buddy steve and i used to make .... get this... audio tapes of us recreating his "hippy dippy weatherman" shtick and other comic routines that we listened to repeatedly on ... wait for it... vinyl albums. listening to comedy records was how we discovered not just comedy, but social satire, and the whole notion of an artist having a "point of view". Carlin, Pryor, Cosby, Steve Martin, Allan Sherman, Monty Python... it was like a whole world opened up to us. Of that crew, Carlin was my favorite. Pryor was great, but he was talking about alot of stuff i couldn't understand or relate to. Carlin was talking about WORDS, and how people used, abused and distorted them for their own purposes, or out of ignorance. Notions of individual freedom vs social control (govt, religion); integrity and honesty vs hypocrisy and pretension... it was all there. And i LIKED cranky george. After a bad period in the 1980s, where he was coking himself to death and wasn't very funny, he reinvented himself in the 90s. As he got older, he seemed more and more alienated from the human race and so took on everything. I loved his rants on the environment: "the earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas"; homelessness: "they're not homeless, they're HOUSELESS. Lets take the golf courses from the rich pricks in bad pants, who use golf as an excuse to make deals and divide the world into smaller and smaller pieces amongst themselves, and lets build HOUSES." He took on the left and the right, and tried to provoke his audiences enough to care about something, in between fart jokes and jokes about "stuff". As the Seinfeld-type of observational humor about nothing became increasingly popular, he kept on going out there, further and further. He was one of my heroes. So long George, and thanks for all the fish.

AG/DC Jun 23 2008 11:13 AM

I liked him too. I guess you touch on where I stopped laughing. You're absoultely right about what he did in the nineties. He became a force of nature, beautiful to behold. But, determined to turn the mirror on everybody, he aligned himself with nobody, and seemed so desperately alone up there. His reading of his old, gay, and lonely character in The Prince of Tides captures that, and is maybe the best thing in that movie. That's a tremendous sacrifice for a satirist to make. Even a social upheaver like Dylan ended up saying, "You've got to serve somebody," and Carlin in a sense responded, "No, you fucking don't." He seemed to be burning every bridge possible in a broad self-sacrifice. And funny as it must have continued to be to a campus of young yukkers, I liked him, and in all that bile I felt him hurling himself into an open flame. He worked in comedy, but the cynic in winter can be a tragedy.

Vince Coleman Firecracker Jun 23 2008 01:30 PM

WNYC is playing a bunch of old Carlin interviews. Good stuff.

SteveJRogers Jun 23 2008 07:40 PM

Had to chuckle when a host of a morning radio show claimed to be a fan of Carlin's, but said "God Bless George Carlin." If the host truly WAS a fan he'd know that Carlin would be highly insulted by that line.

metsguyinmichigan Jun 24 2008 09:41 AM

themetfairy wrote: I would always laugh at the concept that George took over the role of Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station from Ringo Starr. You could understand Ringo on that show, but I could never figure out how Carlin got the gig. My son was big into that show when he was a pre-schooler. And the first time I watched it, I thought, "Damn, that guy looks just like George Carlin. Wouldn't it be funny to have him on a show like this?" Then I saw the credits. I figured anything was possible at that point. I wondered if Andrew "Dice" Clay might appear, but then realized they were using multi-syllable words.

MFS62 Jun 25 2008 06:22 AM

AG/DC wrote: He seemed to be burning every bridge possible in a broad self-sacrifice. And funny as it must have continued to be to a campus of young yukkers, I liked him, and in all that bile I felt him hurling himself into an open flame. He worked in comedy, but the cynic in winter can be a tragedy. It seemed to me that his roller-coaster mood swings, and outlook on things in his material, started the final downturn when his wife passed away a few years ago. Later

Vic Sage Jun 25 2008 12:04 PM

="AG/DC"]I liked him too. ...That's a tremendous sacrifice for a satirist to make. Even a social upheaver like Dylan ended up saying, "You've got to serve somebody," and Carlin in a sense responded, "No, you fucking don't." He seemed to be burning every bridge possible in a broad self-sacrifice. And funny as it must have continued to be to a campus of young yukkers, I liked him, and in all that bile I felt him hurling himself into an open flame. He worked in comedy, but the cynic in winter can be a tragedy. Agreed. And beautifully put, may i add.

Frayed Knot Jun 25 2008 01:12 PM

NBC is re-running the very first SNL this weekend - with one George Carlin as host. What I remember from that show was that the 'Not Yet Ready for Prime-Time Players' were introduced as just that rather than individually. Only as the first season went on did those previously unknown players grow in popularity and start becoming names unto themselves in addition to the host and musical guests. I'm sure a lot of the content will be dated, but it's almost a dangerous move for NBC as it'll provide a contrast to what a POS the modern version of the show has become.