George Carlin 1937-2008
By Brian • Jun 23rd, 2008 • Category: Blog
While this isn’t very comic book related (no shock to our regular listeners) we won’t have a non-Heroes Con 2008 audio update until next week and there was some very sad celebrity news this weekend that we would have made time to comment on if we were doing a show this week. (also no surprise to our listeners)
Comedy legend George Carlin died of heart failure hours after visiting the St; John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday at the age of 71. His last performance was the previous weekend in Las Vegas at the Orleans Casino and Hotel. During his career he produced two dozen comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, multiple bestselling books, was a frequent guest on every late night talk show of note, had his own sitcom and appeared in many notable movies. Carlin also won four Grammy Awards and was nominated for five Emmys. He was a pioneer for many comedians for successfully going well beyond the nightclub stage with his talent.
But Carlin was much more than just that to his chosen profession. Along with other comedy icons like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, he helped to birth new life into a dying and stale artform by showing other performers and their audience what comedy could be. We can and should laugh at anything, everything and everyone. No topics are too taboo, stupid, angry or sad that intelligent people should not be discussing them, learning from them and ultimately laughing from them. If there was a comedy Mount Rushmore, George Carlin would be on it and I really don’t think that statement begins to explain his importance and impact. It was recently announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, to be presented in November and broadcast on PBS. It is a shame we will not get to hear his acceptance speech.
George Carlin - 1937-2008 - RIP
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He will most definitely be missed.
And we would have most definitely given him a proper goodbye on the show.
Sad day.
I’ve been a fan of Carlin’s since long before I should’ve known who he even was.
Thanks to the miracle of HBO, I got to see “Carlin at Carnegie” as it was first released in the early 80’s…my fragile 9 year old brain was never the same again.
After seeing that show so many times I can literally quote it almost in it’s entirety I never get tired of watching that man work.
Some of my favorite Carlin-isms include…
“I don’t get why prostitution is illegal. Selling is legal, and fucking is legal…so why isn’t selling fucking legal?”
“The forecast for tonight is…DARK!”
“Well either it’s 3:15 or Mickey has a hardon!”
“Here’s to sports announcers who breakup my game with useless shit. You can stop telling me about shit like the “Chevrolet Player of the Game”. A thousand-dollar contribution to a scholarship fund in the athlete’s name. Shit. A thousand dollars won’t even keep a kid in decent drugs for a semester. Fuck Chevrolet.”
“Sometimes on television they’ll tell you about a product that’s “good for headaches”. Well I don’t want something that’s good for headaches. I want something that’s bad for headaches…and good for me.”
“I heard on the news that tests on monkeys showed HIV can be transmitted through oral sex. So what I want to know is, who had to blow the monkeys?”
George Carlin was an American treasure, although I’m sure if he ever heard me say that he probably punch me square in the fucking face.
So here’s to George Carlin…a man who once said:
“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating…and you finish off as an orgasm.”
I actually teared up writing that…I love me some George Carlin.
His comedy got me through some really dark stuff when I needed a laugh more then anything in the world.
Time to break out a DVD and show my respects.
One last one…Carlin at his perverse best.
http://gorillamask.net/gm_media.php?show_page=video&page_id=17398
Easily one of my heroes since I was a boy.
This sucks.
My father had Carlin’s Class Clown album from I guess 1973 or thereabouts. Having been born in 1974 I missed out the first time but my father snuck it into my room one night when I was about 10 while my mom was asleep and we both laughed out asses off. I never cared for his later 2 or 3 HBO specials as it was all anger with no real wit behind it but he owned the comedy world for a good long while before then. I saw him twice, once in the early 90’s and he rocked, I saw him 4 years ago and while I could appreciate his observations I laughed only one time. Even with that said it is a sad day for me. Kind of scary how many of the people who shaped my sense of humor ahve died over the last couple of years: Don Knotts, Harvey Korman, George Carlin. This world is getting a lot less funnier by the day.
Losing his wife Brenda to cancer really changed his comedy…and the reasons for that are obvious.
I feel like his later stuff wasn’t so much “comedy” as it was “humorous social commentary”.
He definitely had a lot of anger and aggression in the last few shows I saw. Unfortunately, the wife and I ditched HBO and the other movie channels about 7 years ago so I’ve seen nothing of his recently HBO specials.
He was one of my heroes as well…reading that story this morning was tough.
And you know, I know it’s silly…because I never knew him, never even saw him perform live. But I felt connected to him via a shared quasi-disdain for mainstream society. It was nice to know that I’d see something in the world that I thought was ludicrous, and then he’d validate it by saying he thought it was ludicrous too.
I admired his ability to share his opinions candidly, and without fear or shame.
The world needs more people willing to step up and give a potentially unpopular opinion, and after the events of this morning the world needs at least one more.
Formative and informative.