George Carlin. R.I.P.

[AllenLowe]

brilliant guy who's work became clouded, IMHO, by self-righteousness and misogyny -

[Larry Kart]

In the same vein as what Big Al and Noj have said, YMMV but after a fairly early point (as early as post-Al Sleet, perhaps), however insightful, clever, etc. Carlin's routines were, they were IMO not very funny. However pissed off you are, the mechanisms of comedy (varied and vast though they are) still must be understood and in some sense respected. Lenny Bruce, even up to the very end, did.

Lenny Bruce died when he was 41. Do you think that had anything to do with it?

No. Besides, Carlin IMO stopped being funny long before he himself was 41.

Larry,

With all due respect, I guess it depends on how you define the word "funny". To my way of thinking, "funny" can run the gamut from a pie in the face to what Carlin was during the second phase of his career. I don't think his rant on religion was funny in the classic sense of the term, but it was humorous in its point of view and, to some, insightful. I like The Stooges because they don't make me think. I like Carlin because he does. Both can be amusing in their own way.

Up over and out.

While I agree with your point that there's a big subjective element in what anyone does or does not find funny, what I was thinking is more along these lines: While not everything that's funny provokes actual laughter, the fact of laughter is really important because genuine laughter is an involuntary response, a step into another realm. Again, not all humor actually steps into that realm, but all humor that works at least refers to its basic principles (two of them being economy of movement [i.e you get somewhere more swiftly than you expected to] and obliqueness [where you end up is not where you though you would] -- actually those two principles pretty much are one). For instance, the weather forecast of Carlin's Al Sleet (I quote from ancient memory): "Tonight [a musing pause] dark ... turning light by morning." By contrast, there is the shaggy dog story, which is kind of a joke about joking, in that the economy principle is denied.

P.S. I see what Al Sleet said was: ""Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning."

[BERIGAN]

Same thing happened to Mark Twain, too.

What, he'd dead too????

[BERIGAN]

I thought he was pretty funny for the most part...and as mentioned before, his stuff sticked more than other folks, even the silly stuff! I couldn't find it on the web, but anyone remember his joke about how he thought gremlins broke into your car when you were away from it, and turned the volume knob way up, just to watch you jump when you started it back up??? They still get me several times a month!

[BERIGAN]

Kind of surprised not to see more of his witisms here, so thought I'd post a few a guy on a Braves blog posted....

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?

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

If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers? 8) What if there were no hypothetical questions?

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

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.

–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.

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

–Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

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

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

–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.

–Electricity is really just organized lightning.

–Women like silent men, they think they’re listening.

–”I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence?

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

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

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

–There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

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

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

–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.”

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

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

Edited June 24, 2008 by BERIGAN

[Alison]

I took my sister to see Carlin at a performing arts center at MSU in March. He was very funny, although it seemed like a bunch of his routine was reworking "skits" I'd heard before. Still very funny and I know I laughed out loud just about the entire time. I was even a bit embarrassed by some of it. Here I was, 8 months pregnant, and he is talking about how having babies is a totally selfish act. I certainly can't say what about it was so funny, but he just had a way at poking fun at any type of person who could be in the audience. No one was safe...but at the same time it gives everyone an opportunity to laugh and be laughed at.

One thing Hillary and I both said as soon as the performance was done is he looked old and frail. He had a whole monologue about being old and all the benefits it can bring. Funny stuff.

I'm very glad I got a chance to see him in person. I won't forget it.

[Tim McG]

In the same vein as what Big Al and Noj have said, YMMV but after a fairly early point (as early as post-Al Sleet, perhaps), however insightful, clever, etc. Carlin's routines were, they were IMO not very funny. However pissed off you are, the mechanisms of comedy (varied and vast though they are) still must be understood and in some sense respected. Lenny Bruce, even up to the very end, did.

Lenny Bruce died when he was 41. Do you think that had anything to do with it?

No. Besides, Carlin IMO stopped being funny long before he himself was 41.

Larry,

With all due respect, I guess it depends on how you define the word "funny". To my way of thinking, "funny" can run the gamut from a pie in the face to what Carlin was during the second phase of his career. I don't think his rant on religion was funny in the classic sense of the term, but it was humorous in its point of view and, to some, insightful. I like The Stooges because they don't make me think. I like Carlin because he does. Both can be amusing in their own way.

Up over and out.

While I agree with your point that there's a big subjective element in what anyone does or does not find funny, what I was thinking is more along these lines: While not everything that's funny provokes actual laughter, the fact of laughter is really important because genuine laughter is an involuntary response, a step into another realm. Again, not all humor actually steps into that realm, but all humor that works at least refers to its basic principles (two of them being economy of movement [i.e you get somewhere more swiftly than you expected to] and obliqueness [where you end up is not where you though you would] -- actually those two principles pretty much are one). For instance, the weather forecast of Carlin's Al Sleet (I quote from ancient memory): "Tonight [a musing pause] dark ... turning light by morning." By contrast, there is the shaggy dog story, which is kind of a joke about joking, in that the economy principle is denied.

P.S. I see what Al Sleet said was: ""Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning."

"In Balltimore it's 6:42. Time for the 11 o'clock report."

Classic irony.

Monty Python's Flying Circus American style.

Edited June 24, 2008 by GoodSpeak

[Shawn]

The first time I saw Carlin I was 8 years old. My Mother couldn't get a babysitter for the show...so she took me along. I must say I didn't "get" much of what he was talking about, but I remember laughing just because everyone else in the audience was laughing. Inspired by that I later begged and pleaded her to buy me his Class Clown album, which I played non-stop for an entire summer...at least when my stepfather wasn't around, because he would have killed me if he had known I was listening to it.

[tkeith]

Just my two cents:

I'll never understand how someone so angry, so bitter, so unrelentingly negative about damn-near everything could make people laugh. Seems to me that as he got older, the more bitter and caustic he got. Now, obviously, I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but that isn't what turned me off of him: it was the fact that instead of letting his audience in on the joke, he turned the audience INTO the joke, laughed at them instead of with them, and then laughed even harder when the audience paid a lot of money to hear his "major, psychotic hatreds."

Hell, if he knew there was a thread dedicated to his passing, he'd piss on that and the fans would just eat it up.

RIP? Only if you wanna, George.

If I offended anyone with this little rant, well.... in the spirit of Carlin, fuck you. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable, I'm not here to make anyone happy campers. and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

After trying to watch some of his later HBO specials I sort of feel the same way. I think he started to take himself too damn seriously and stopped being funny in order to play the role of some kind of "courageous" truth teller. Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on.

And that, friends, is what we call irony.

[Larry Kart]

Just my two cents:

I'll never understand how someone so angry, so bitter, so unrelentingly negative about damn-near everything could make people laugh. Seems to me that as he got older, the more bitter and caustic he got. Now, obviously, I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but that isn't what turned me off of him: it was the fact that instead of letting his audience in on the joke, he turned the audience INTO the joke, laughed at them instead of with them, and then laughed even harder when the audience paid a lot of money to hear his "major, psychotic hatreds."

Hell, if he knew there was a thread dedicated to his passing, he'd piss on that and the fans would just eat it up.

RIP? Only if you wanna, George.

If I offended anyone with this little rant, well.... in the spirit of Carlin, fuck you. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable, I'm not here to make anyone happy campers. and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

After trying to watch some of his later HBO specials I sort of feel the same way. I think he started to take himself too damn seriously and stopped being funny in order to play the role of some kind of "courageous" truth teller. Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on.

And that, friends, is what we call irony.

How so?

[Lazaro Vega]

Carlin on Jazz:

"Jazz musician is the only profession where you work for

four hours and get payed and then you go to something

called a jam session and work for another four hours

for free."

[7/4]

Carlin on Jazz:

"Jazz musician is the only profession where you work for

four hours and get payed and then you go to something

called a jam session and work for another four hours

for free."

Ha!

[Big Al]

Just my two cents:

I'll never understand how someone so angry, so bitter, so unrelentingly negative about damn-near everything could make people laugh. Seems to me that as he got older, the more bitter and caustic he got. Now, obviously, I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but that isn't what turned me off of him: it was the fact that instead of letting his audience in on the joke, he turned the audience INTO the joke, laughed at them instead of with them, and then laughed even harder when the audience paid a lot of money to hear his "major, psychotic hatreds."

Hell, if he knew there was a thread dedicated to his passing, he'd piss on that and the fans would just eat it up.

RIP? Only if you wanna, George.

If I offended anyone with this little rant, well.... in the spirit of Carlin, fuck you. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable, I'm not here to make anyone happy campers. and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

After trying to watch some of his later HBO specials I sort of feel the same way. I think he started to take himself too damn seriously and stopped being funny in order to play the role of some kind of "courageous" truth teller. Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on.

And that, friends, is what we call irony.

How so?

Yes, I'm also interested to hear this one explained.

[tkeith]

Carlin on Jazz:

"Jazz musician is the only profession where you work for

four hours and get payed and then you go to something

called a jam session and work for another four hours

for free."

He's half right.

[Van Basten II]

Kind of surprised not to see more of his witisms here, so thought I'd post a few a guy on a Braves blog posted....

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?

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

If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers? 8) What if there were no hypothetical questions?

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

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.

–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.

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

–Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

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

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

–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.

–Electricity is really just organized lightning.

–Women like silent men, they think they’re listening.

–”I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence?

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

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

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

–There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

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

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

–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.”

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

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

Great stuff, gotta say it was those kind of brainteases and the way he used the language that got me interested in him in the first place.

I enjoyed his schtick on baseball versus football for that same reason, showcasing the warring metaphors used to talk about football while more words of a more peaceful and pastoral nature were used to describe baseball

[papsrus]

Great stuff, gotta say it was those kind of brainteases and the way he used the language that got me interested in him in the first place.

I enjoyed his schtick on baseball versus football for that same reason, showcasing the warring metaphors used to talk about football while more words of a more peaceful and pastoral nature were used to describe baseball

That was a classic:

"Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting, and unnecessary roughness. ... Baseball has the sacrifice."

The entire riff here.

[Joe G]

I like the baseball/football one, too.

A couple more one-liners.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

If God had intended us not to masturbate he would’ve made our arms shorter.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

[Christiern]

...and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

You forgot the apostrophe in "rat's ass."

Ah, shit. I mean, shoot!

Here, ' have one of mine.

Sorry 'bout the color, 'tis all I could spare.

[tkeith]

Just my two cents:

I'll never understand how someone so angry, so bitter, so unrelentingly negative about damn-near everything could make people laugh. Seems to me that as he got older, the more bitter and caustic he got. Now, obviously, I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but that isn't what turned me off of him: it was the fact that instead of letting his audience in on the joke, he turned the audience INTO the joke, laughed at them instead of with them, and then laughed even harder when the audience paid a lot of money to hear his "major, psychotic hatreds."

Hell, if he knew there was a thread dedicated to his passing, he'd piss on that and the fans would just eat it up.

RIP? Only if you wanna, George.

If I offended anyone with this little rant, well.... in the spirit of Carlin, fuck you. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable, I'm not here to make anyone happy campers. and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

After trying to watch some of his later HBO specials I sort of feel the same way. I think he started to take himself too damn seriously and stopped being funny in order to play the role of some kind of "courageous" truth teller. Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on.

And that, friends, is what we call irony.

How so?

Yes, I'm also interested to hear this one explained.

Eeesh... here we go. It's simple, I, obviously, do not agree with the initial post and felt it was in questionable taste. The follow up post supporting that post makes the statement, "Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on." I felt (and feel) you were the pot calling the kettle black. Not trying to start a flame war, but you asked.

[Larry Kart]

Just my two cents:

I'll never understand how someone so angry, so bitter, so unrelentingly negative about damn-near everything could make people laugh. Seems to me that as he got older, the more bitter and caustic he got. Now, obviously, I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but that isn't what turned me off of him: it was the fact that instead of letting his audience in on the joke, he turned the audience INTO the joke, laughed at them instead of with them, and then laughed even harder when the audience paid a lot of money to hear his "major, psychotic hatreds."

Hell, if he knew there was a thread dedicated to his passing, he'd piss on that and the fans would just eat it up.

RIP? Only if you wanna, George.

If I offended anyone with this little rant, well.... in the spirit of Carlin, fuck you. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable, I'm not here to make anyone happy campers. and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

After trying to watch some of his later HBO specials I sort of feel the same way. I think he started to take himself too damn seriously and stopped being funny in order to play the role of some kind of "courageous" truth teller. Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on.

And that, friends, is what we call irony.

How so?

Yes, I'm also interested to hear this one explained.

Eeesh... here we go. It's simple, I, obviously, do not agree with the initial post and felt it was in questionable taste. The follow up post supporting that post makes the statement, "Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on." I felt (and feel) you were the pot calling the kettle black. Not trying to start a flame war, but you asked.

No problem. I thought you meant that Carlin the "self-conscious truth teller" was himself being ironic when he adopted that role, and I couldn't figure out how that could be.

[AllenLowe]

honestly, I found most of Carlin's truth telling - as in examing the meaning of language in the Carlin examples previously cited - to be a bit of a bore -

Edited June 24, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Big Al]

Just my two cents:

I'll never understand how someone so angry, so bitter, so unrelentingly negative about damn-near everything could make people laugh. Seems to me that as he got older, the more bitter and caustic he got. Now, obviously, I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but that isn't what turned me off of him: it was the fact that instead of letting his audience in on the joke, he turned the audience INTO the joke, laughed at them instead of with them, and then laughed even harder when the audience paid a lot of money to hear his "major, psychotic hatreds."

Hell, if he knew there was a thread dedicated to his passing, he'd piss on that and the fans would just eat it up.

RIP? Only if you wanna, George.

If I offended anyone with this little rant, well.... in the spirit of Carlin, fuck you. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable, I'm not here to make anyone happy campers. and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

After trying to watch some of his later HBO specials I sort of feel the same way. I think he started to take himself too damn seriously and stopped being funny in order to play the role of some kind of "courageous" truth teller. Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on.

And that, friends, is what we call irony.

How so?

Yes, I'm also interested to hear this one explained.

Eeesh... here we go. It's simple, I, obviously, do not agree with the initial post and felt it was in questionable taste. The follow up post supporting that post makes the statement, "Most self-conscience truth tellers are usually bores as are the people who cheer them on." I felt (and feel) you were the pot calling the kettle black. Not trying to start a flame war, but you asked.

That's cool.

[Big Al]

...and I certainly don't give a rats ass what you think.

You forgot the apostrophe in "rat's ass."

Ah, shit. I mean, shoot!

Here, ' have one of mine.

Sorry 'bout the color, 'tis all I could spare.

Sure, but you couldn't give me one of those last two you used?

[BruceH]

Funny, that football/basball routine is one I've been remembering since his death. A prime example of his approach.

[tkeith]

This is from a local paper, and I think it's pretty good. The author is sort of a Carlin apprentice in terms of his ranting style.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dl.../NEWS/806240419