Hell, even my mother liked George Carlin. Damn.

Another icon passes.   Thanks for the humor and the insight George.

This was a sad thing to wake up to. We have lost a truly great guy.

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71. The cause of death was heart failure. (NYT obit)

He seems a bit young to have died of heart failure, unless some prior "lifestyle choice" might be blamed. Regardless, his wit and wisdom will be missed. My own mother sent me this via email a couple years back:

CONSTITUTION: They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore.

COWS: Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow born in Canada, almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington. And they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give them all a cow.

TEN COMMANDMENTS: The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse? You cannot post "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and "Thou shall not lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians! It creates a hostile work environment!

Last edited by pALEPHx (2008-06-23 12:21:06)

George... Thanks for it all.  Thanks for helping me see language as a playground to be explored.  Fuck, why did you go at this time when we needed that voice and that mind?

Dusty...

George Quotes, and lots of em.  Go fuck yourselves.

   

1. When cheese gets it's picture taken, what does it say?

   2. When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?

   3. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?

   4. When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

   5. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?

   6. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

   7. Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?

   8. What if there were no hypothetical questions?

   9. Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

  10. Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

  11. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

  12. Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

  13. Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

  14. Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It's just stale bread to begin with.

  15. I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

  16. May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

  17. Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

  18. If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

  19. I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer's disease where they slowly began to recover other people's lost memories.

  20. Electricity is really just organized lightning.

  21. Women like silent men, they think they're listening.

  22. "I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

  23. Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

  24. If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

  25. Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

  26. Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

  27. I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.

  28. Why is the man (or woman) who invests all your money called a broker?

  29. I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

  30. There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

  31. At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

  32. As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

  33. The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

  34. Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

  35. Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

  36. I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

  37. The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.

  38. Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!

  39. This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

8. What if there were no hypothetical questions?

I was thinking of his 'blue food' joke ("Have you ever noticed there's no blue food?" or something to that effect) and thinking about how many ghastly blue food products have been created since then, aimed primarily at children of course, and wondered if he had ever had a change of heart about that. Of course, blue fruit roll-ups made primarily of corn syrup and sugar really don't count as food.

Just wondering.

choad wrote:

That's why I stopped listening to him, he wasn't funny anymore - just became another political commercial for whatever his current leanings were.

Sad to see him go now but even sadder to realize his wit and originality died twenty years ago...

No, Dusty, I have to reluctantly agree with Emmeran.  I said as much about Carlin myself on some other long-lost thread.

I don't think that the dimming of his light in his later years should be held against him.  So what if he turned into a crabby old man?  Before that, he was all those words you're going to read and hear about him in the coming week:  pioneer, iconoclast, etc.  And I don't need to remind anyone here of the place "Seven Words" holds in American legal history.  He made me and my friends bust our guts many, many times in his heyday (which was longer than his twilight).

My fave was his Baseball-Football comparison. It's not so great in print:

"In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!"

It was his delivery that made the words gut-busting funny.

He's gone? Jeeze! - he was just here a minute ago...

If anyone here has not already seen The Aristocrats, I suggest you watch Carlin's contribution.  It's far and away the funniest bit in the movie.  It's a rare experience to be simultaneously gagging with disgust and laughing uncontrollably. 

(The rest of the movie is worth watching--mostly--but no one and nothing that follows tops Carlin's bit.)

fuck the fcc.  last time i was in europe, they don't censor their television like we do, (not that they would go out and say everything bad on tv)

pALEPHx wrote:

choad wrote:

Richard Jeni commited suicide Saturday night.

???

Damn.  What a waste of a messiah.  Didn't anyone tell him?

George Orr wrote:

Kevin Smith reminisces in Newsweek.

In 2001, George did me a solid when he accepted the part of the orally fixated hitchhiker who knew exactly how to get a ride in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back."...I thanked him for making the time, and he said, "Just do me a favor: Write me my dream role one day." When I inquired what that'd be, he offered...

Great.  Now what's he supposed to do with a script about a priest who strangles children?  All that wasted time.