George Carlin was, is, and will always be my favorite comedian.
The first time I can recall seeing Carlin was on TV around 1987. I was a young child, sitting with my parents in the living room, watching a video tape featuring this long-haired hippie saunter around a large stage, talking about grocery store etiquette. My parents were having a blast. I admit I was too young to really understand anything more intellectually stimulating than "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", but I still liked looking at this lanky, bearded guy on TV. It was odd, but I was almost comforted by his presence.
But a little later, when Carlin began his bit about kids, I got it. Everything he was saying had happened to me. I was that little boy, pointing out the locations of the electrical outlets around Christmas. My big brother had crushed my little plastic chair a few months earlier. Some absent-minded adult accidentally brushed their lit cigarette against my arm at a party. That damned cookie jar was always tantalizingly out of reach. And some family members felt the inexplicable desire to toss me into the air, just for fun.
I was a giggling mess on the carpet. By that time, my mom and dad were getting more entertainment out of their chubby little son rolling around on the floor than Mr. Carlin's act. By the time his infamous "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" routine began, I was hooked for life. From that point on, he was my "Uncle George".
As I grew up, George Carlin was always around. Every few years a brand-new special would air on HBO, and I always tuned in. And as I continued my development from starry-eyed little boy to jaded, misanthropic adult, Carlin's comedy changed right along with me. His earlier stuff was a little ribald, but relatively innocent.
There was very little real vitriol to his material until his 1990 special "Doin' It Again", which spends a lot of time railing against the first Bush administration for the seemingly pointless "Operation Desert Storm". But the sequence that closes the special, dealing with the degeneration and softening of the english language via the plague we call "the euphemism" contained most of his scorn.
Then came "Jammin' In New York", the special that Carlin himself saw as an evolution in his stand-up career. There is a slight overlap in material involving his material on "Operation Desert Storm", only here it's more refined. It's got sharper teeth. But the real sucker punch is in the final act of the special, where he shares his views on entertainment, saving the planet, and the collapse of Western civilization.
In 1996, George Carlin returned to HBO with "Back In Town", which is almost entirely comprised of his increasingly pessimistic views on the human race. This may be my favorite of his stand-up specials. My favorite moments include his own take on "the sanctity of life"...
...and his reasons why he chooses not to vote.
In 2005, Carlin's 12th special (not counting 40 Years Of Comedy), "Life Is Worth Losing" premiered. It contains some of his darkest material, including my personal favorite, "The Suicide Guy":
And from 2008, his final stand-up special, "It's Bad For Ya!" ends with a routine about the illusion of "human rights":
Practically all my life, "Uncle George" was there on TV, stopping by for an hour or so every few years to make me laugh and make me think. As I got older, his comedy developed right alongside my own personal tastes. As I grew more pessimistic about my own species, so did he. He was always around to point out the bizarre and disturbing aspects of our culture that would sometimes slip past me. He was always around to illustrate the hypocrisy of big business, politics, and religion.
Sure, he was preaching to the choir in my case, but George Carlin could better articulate the same thoughts and frustrations that I had. He was a damned poet. I was fortunate enough to see him perform live several years ago. He did not disappoint.
In 2008, I lost an aunt in February. Then I lost an uncle in April. Then I lost George Carlin in June. I'm not one of those people who gets all choked up when a celebrity dies. I never knew these people personally, and I had no serious connection to them. But two celebrity deaths in my life hit me hard. "Saturday Night Live" alum Phil Hartman in 1998, and George Carlin ten years later. Now Phil Hartman's a man I'll probably talk about at a later date on this blog, but today it's all about Mr. Carlin.
My point is that George Carlin had been such an integral part of my early life, and that his comedy remained relevant to my life until his death, when he finally did shuffle off this mortal coil I felt like I'd lost another member of my family on June 22, 2008.
I'd like to end this little tribute to my favorite comedian with a short passage from his posthumous autobiography, "Last Words". If you've never read this book, you really need to. It's fascinating, hilarious, and at times heartbreaking. I still laugh out loud when I think of George Carlin, high on cocaine, thinking the sun had just exploded and that he had eight minutes to say goodbye to his family before the solar shockwave obliterated the planet.
This passage perhaps justifies my reasons for doing this at the cusp of Winter, instead of waiting for the anniversary of his death. The first time I read this piece, I got a little misty-eyed. And I still do.
From Chapter 3: Curious George
"I stayed a night recently in New York and I didn't know it had snowed, so when I opened the drapes I was immediately back in that wonderful childhood world of waking up with snow. All those little things you noticed as a kid: the way the mortar that sticks out between the bricks picks up a little snow on each level. Those weird porcelain insulators screwed into the window frame that the people before you left behind: they have little piles of snow on them. The clotheslines strung between the buildings on every floor have a fine line of snow all the way across. And suddenly, for no reason, a little bit falls off.
There's one other thing with snow. Even when you're fifteen or sixteen and you just want to get laid and snowballs no longer hold the slightest interest for you - or even for that matter if you're never going to see sixty again - when it snows you've always got to make one snowball. Only one, but you gotta.
Just to see if it's good packing."
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