George Carlin (1937 - 2008)

I have a difficult time when someone asks, “What’s your favorite...” song, movie, actor or whatever. It depends on my mood and what I’m listening to or thinking about at the time, so it might change depending on when I’m asked. It’s especially true if there are a lot of choices and I’d have a hard time narrowing the list to one.

Such is the case with comedians. The best I could do would be to put a list together. Ranking them one through ten is conditional and unnecessary:

Lenny Bruce
Bill Cosby
Dave Attell
Doug Stanhope
George Carlin
Brian Regan
Patton Oswalt
Don Rickles
Jerry Seinfeld
Mitch Hedberg

If you asked me today, I’d say Regan and next week I might say Stanhope, but at different times in my life I would have said George Carlin. Carlin died on Sunday, and I must admit to losing track of him over the past 10 years or so. I started listening to him in the early 70s when he put out an album called "FM & AM." For a teenager, it was heady stuff - edgy, borderline obscene and full of energy. I saw him on television a bunch of times.

I remember one occasion on one of those old variety shows – it might have been The Flip Wilson Show – where he came out and just stood there and stared back at the audience for two minutes. He changed expression a couple of times, and looked as though he was going to say something, but didn’t. The idea that he wasn’t saying anything made the audience laugh. That was the whole bit.

He was the first host of Saturday Night Live (when it was called NBC’s Saturday Night, because ABC had a rival show called Howard Cosell’s Saturday Night Live). In those days, the host didn’t get involved in the sketches. He did a few stand-up routines and introduced the music.

He changed a lot over the years. Mostly, he got crankier and seemed to be less tolerant of the nonsense that went on in the world. With his gravelly voice and inflections, he made complaining funny.

Mostly though, he made us think about the nonsense that permeates our lives. He stood back and pointed at stuff and said, “Bet you didn’t realize that was going on, did you?” That’s a valuable skill, and it’s more valuable if we can laugh at it, too. It takes insight and talent; two things sadly lacking in most of today’s entertainment. Most of it is based on who can yell the loudest or make somebody else look stupid.

I noticed that the obituaries are referring to Carlin as a “counterculture comic.” It seems as though we need to label people and things. Saying Carlin was a counterculture comic is shortchanging him as a social commentator and comedian.

Counterculture is a throw-away word and probably something that Carlin would have detested.

“The two big mistakes were the belief in a sky god - that there's a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn't want you to do and you'll burn for a long time if you do them - and private property, which I think is at the core of our failure as a species. That's the source of my indignations, my dissatisfactions; however it comes out on the stage. I feel betrayed by the people I'm part of, these creatures, these magnificent creatures.”

- George Carlin