he didn’t “die”, he “expired, like a magazine subscription”
George Carlin died. Dammit.
He got the lead story on NPR this morning (not sure what that says about the media…). When I heard this morning on the way to work, I knocked off a quick text to Colleen at a red light. You could actually kind of feel the gasp in her simple “wow” reply. Carlin stand-up specials were a surprisingly big part of our courtship/college experience; I’m pretty sure we rented out every Carlin tape at the local video rental place at one point or another. Now, sadly, we’ll never get to see him live.
Pretty much every humorist/comedian working today owes a debt to Carlin’s groundbreaking (for the time) style. Without Carlin, there’d have been no Bill Hicks, Mitch Hedberg, or Lewis Black.
Carlin’s material was more than simply funny; it was meticulously practiced, worded, and delivered, and much smarter than it probably had to be. Carlin’s facility with linguistics and understanding of word use was staggering. Listen to the “Euphemisms” bit again sometime; not only is it astonishingly clever, it digs through the storm of extra syllables and nerfed language to point to the simple, uncluttered truth.
And since none of the media outlets reporting on this today are allowed to say the seven dirty words (thanks to a Surpreme Court decision based on those words), I, under no such restrictions, shall say shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. (sorry for the language; but in this case, it’s entirely warranted).
I hope he finally finds a place for his stuff.
a youtube tribute…. george carlin on death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PiZSFIVFiU
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:30 PM