YES, YOU WERE A PROPHET, our long-haired bard, our poet with an out-fucking-standing command of the English language. A rare bird.
The Times called him "irreverent," in their obit headline. Patronizing. If we're going to call George a "rev" anything, it would be a revolutionary.
Carlin, born in 1937, was prescient. What he said fifty years ago about the War Machine, the crucifixion of the First Amendment, the abuses of the Church, industrial pollution, the corporate indifference to. . . well, everything— his speeches could have been written yesterday.
His most radical satire, his decision to take off the suit, grow out his beard, and damn the establishment torpedoes, was his enduring contribution to American democracy.
I've been looking at a lot of my "Carlin Archives" on this anniversary, grieving him, and thinking how influential he's been on my thinking since I first heard him, when I was in 7th grade.
I remember playing "Class Clown" for my mother— a woman whose first twenty years were entirely dominated by the Irish Catholic Church— and it was a comic exorcism for her. She peed in her pants! She was cured in one LP!
Carlin had a real gift for telling the story of his life, and in later years, I enjoyed listening to his reminiscences at the Actors' Studio.
He once ripped at a gigantic Narcotics Anonymous meeting, where he described turning seventy-years-old as "69, with 1 finger up your ass." He eloquently described the virtues of being an "old fuck," and what it's like to go through your address book, "crossing out the dead people."
George always said, "Just because you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town."
Seven months after Carlin passed, he was honored with the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for Humor, the only award he ever thought was worth its salt. Twain was indeed his peer— a critic who could bullseye hypocrisy when he saw it, and leave us in hysterics at our own death wish.
We miss you, bub!
That's a funny line, especially thinking of it as regards the chaos of life vs drug addiction. But, googling it, looks like it might not be from Carlin? https://georgecarlin.net/bogus/monkey.html
I rewatched "jammin' in new york" recently. Too much of his stuff is still too relevant.
Of course I remember when I first heard Carlin, my neighbor Eugene Mosier played an album for me, (I think it was Occupation: Foole, the one where he gets notified about winning a Grammy for Class Clown during the performance.)
And later I worked at WBAI during the time F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978) was litigated and decided. Carlin did a benefit concert for Pacifica at the Beacon Theater in NYC after the SCOTUS ruling.