George Carlin died yesterday, which is reasonably sad, because although the dude was 71 and had lived a lifetime saturated in drink and drugs, he was the greatest stand-up comic who ever lived (well, him or Rodney Dangerfield). In my geeky teenage years, I memorized possibly hours of Carlin routines, and to this day, I find it an effective stress-reducer as I walk the streets of New York to repeat the "Ice Box Man" bit to myself. Yes, that was me.
Carlin had an interesting career arc. He started in the ’50s and ’60s as your typical clean-cut observation comic—I think you had to be that way to get anywhere, unless you were Lenny Bruce, and no one was Lenny Bruce. But perhaps no one got closer than Carlin, especially in the ’60s, when he turned relative hippie. He’s read doggerel poetry about his long hair, would gently decry America’s drug hypocrisy, and would impersonate hippie-dippy TV weathermen. He turned up the heat in the ’70s, though; this was the era of "The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television," which brought Carlin’s humor to the Supreme Court. As the ’80s dawned, he toned it down into what I consider his most purely entertaining era, a ruthlessly intelligent style of observation humor ("A Place for My Stuff," etc.), but by the ’90s, he’d become a notorious left-wing crank, which he remained until the end. This incarnation of George Carlin occasionally offended me—I didn’t appreciate the bit about Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd, nor his scornful cynicism about religion, but Carlin was being willfully confrontational, so this was the point. And he was never, ever stupid, and more often than almost any other comic, he could be an absolute genius social critic.
And I was very proud in 2006 when I moved to Morningside Heights, knowing it’s where Carlin grew up during the neighborhood’s rough-and-tumble Irish Catholic days. He once did a bit explaining how he and his friends called it "White Harlem," because "’Morningside Heights’ sounded so faggy." So yes, Mom, I live in White Harlem.
After the jump, some other Carlin witticisms, purely from memory…
"I never fucked a 10, but one night, I fucked five 2s. And I think that should go down as a positive achievement."
"You ever noticed you don’t get laid much on Thanksgiving? I think it’s because all the coats are on the bed."
"Hockey isn’t a sport. Hockey is three activities going on at once: ice skating, playing with a puck and beating the shit out of someone." [He goes on to list a couple dozen other sports and explain why they're all merely "games"; I memorized the whole damn thing.]
"When you make a sandwich at home, do you go down past the first three or four slices of bread, to go down and get ‘the good bread’?"
"Our country has a sick obsession with children. Kids are like everyone else: a few winners, a whole bunch of losers."
"The problem with having long hair is that people might think you’re a Commie fag junkie. Really? What would a Commie fag junkie sound like? [He then declares in a fey, slurred voice: 'Workers of the world unite.']"
"Leftovers give you two separate good feelings, you ever notice that? When you first put them away, you feel really intelligent: ‘I’m saving food!’ And then, a month later, when hair is growing out of them, and you throw them away, you feel really intelligent: ‘I’m saving my life!"
And finally, just because the Internet is not television, let me exercise my First Amendment rights…
Shit, piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.
Ah, that feels good!
