I quote him often on here, and for good reason—along with Robin Williams and the late Richard Pryor, George Carlin is probably the most influential stand-up comedian of my generation, and just one damn funny dude. George turns 70 today, if you can believe that. His observations about little everyday minutiae and the quirks of the English language are brilliant, and even though he's turned into a bit of a curmudgeon in recent years, he can still pack a punch with his humor—if you catch him on the right night, that is. I was lucky enough to have an older sister who bought Carlin's albums back in the '70s, so I was exposed to his work at a very early age (probably earlier than I should have been), and it didn't take me long to memorize most of his routines, which I would often recite verbatim to friends and classmates. I even had the temerity to do one of George's bits for a 7th grade Speech class! I hated having to memorize stuff on the fly, and the topic was "humorous interpretation", so since I knew his stuff inside and out anyway, I did his routine "Some Werds" from the Toledo Window Box album (not to be confused with the seven dirty ones bit!), which included lines like, "a bone is like a crumb...if you break a crumb in half you don't have two half-a-crumbs—you got two crumbs!" The teacher had this jaundiced look on her face at first when I announced I was doing a G. Carlin work, but I never uttered one objectionable curse word, and she actually gave me a B+ for my efforts! In fact, one of the funniest Carlin albums you'll ever hear is called Take-Offs & Put-Ons, which was recorded in 1965 before it was fashionable to use swear words in public. Just goes to show that the man was funny, whether he was "dirty" or not...George's "Seven Dirty Words..." bit is the stuff of legend, of course, but his work goes well beyond that. Another Carlin classic is his "Baseball and Football" routine, which never seems to get old, no matter how often you hear it. "Baseball is played on a diamond in a park—the baseball park; Football is played on a gridiron in a stadium—WAR Memorial Stadium!" George also coined another phrase that I just love regarding the sport of lacrosse: "Lacrosse isn't a sport—it's a faggot college activity!" And regarding NASCAR, George sez, "Who cares who wins these things—it's the same five rednecks every week anyway...I wanna see a multi-car pile-up and a car fire!" I could go on and on, but you get the idea...
I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Carlin about 20 years ago and got his otto-graph. My friend Tom and I attended his performance at the Midland Theater in K.C. in 1987, and we were heading back to the car after the show when we spotted a limo parked outside a door marked "Stage Door". I skeptically figured it was a decoy and that George was long gone already, but we waited around a few minutes anyway, and sure enough, George and his entourage emerged from the building, thus Tom and I hastily scampered back across 13th St. to meet him. I remember he was wearing a white ZZ Top ballcap, and I remarked, "Hey, another ZZ Top fan!" George politely signed my show program and said, "I noticed you two skulking across the street, there," and to this day, every time I hear the word "skulking", I think of George Carlin...
Sadly (and perhaps predictably) George's career has soured a bit over the last ten years or so. There was his rather questionable foray into TV sitcom land in the mid-'90s with "The George Carlin Show", where he was very much out-of-his-element. He also put out a CD in 1999 called You Are All Diseased that was so hateful and full of vitriol that I actually deleted it from my collection without even burning a copy first. What was once bitingly satirical humor had turned into mean-spirited rancor. Although he has done some slightly funnier stuff since then, he still seems to want to milk the "bitter old man" shtick for all it's worth. It's somewhat understandible—George's longtime wife Brenda died the day before his 60th birthday, and it's not too hard to see how that could harden one's heart, but I was quite disheartened to read a couple years back when Carlin actually turned on members of his own audience in Las Vegas and started berating them—very uncool, George! These folks paid good money to see you perform, dude—don't be ripping your own people, even if you do have issues with them! Predictably, he blamed it on some pain medication he was on and promptly went into rehab. Sure, right, whatever...
Still and all, none of that diminishes what has been an outstanding career, George is one of those comedians who makes you think after listening to him, and one Carlin routine resonates with me more than all the others, and it's all about religion. I'll just warn you now—those of you who are religious at all would best be advised to steer clear here, lest ye be offended, because it so accurately encapsulates how I feel about organized religion:
"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky, who watches everything you do—every minute of every day—and the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do—and if you do ANY of these ten things, He has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where He will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever until the end of time—BUT, He loves you..."
To paraphrase George's own early '70s bit about the late Ed Sullivan: "Thanks, George!...A little maudlin, gang, but thanks, George!"
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