My good man, George Carlin, died yesterday of a major myocardial infarction. He was 71 (which is a 69 with two fingers up her ass).
The host of the first ever SNL episode, arrested alongside Lenny Bruce for refusing to hand over his ID to the police while being questioned as an audience member, and because of his “Seven Words” skit, was the subject of the FCC v. Pacifica Foundation case which, in a 5-4 decision, the SCOTUS unfortunately found that the government could limit broadcast times for what was deemed by said faceless government bureaucrats to be obscene.
My first exposure to Carlin was none of those things.
Nope, it was a VHS recording of his Carlin at Carnegie show. I watched that over and over and over from the time I was ten. I could (and did) recite it by heart all the way into my junior high school years, causing much laughter for my friends. More than just one visit to the Principle’s Office was caused by my having written lyrics to his “Old Southern Hymn” titled “When my BeerNuts turn to Cotton Balls, I’ll be coming home to you.”
Since then I’ve watched all of his cable specials, bought his CDs and books, got him to autograph a number of them. In the reflection of the glass in the picture frame in front of me, I can see one of the pictures he signed the last time he performed in Seattle.
Though his politics were not always to my liking, he had stingers for folks on both sides of the aisle. And if it hurt them, it only because it was true.
So long George. You had better left us some unpublished shit to read, you fuck.
Here is the opening to Carlin at Carnegie
And here is he rest of it, 11 minutes at a time
Btw, in part six, he expands his “Seven Words” to 105. Yes, I could repeat them all for show and tell day.