Monday, June 23, 2008
You're Not Gonna Like This...
Word came late last night that George Carlin died. I sort of saw that coming; when I happened - by chance - to catch him on the Dennis Miller Show four years ago - and the promos that ran for his tour at that time - he was already looking pretty frail. In his self-authored obit, he thanked nature - not God - for allowing him to stick around so long. Considering all the drugs and alcohol that went in and out of that man, he had reason to be thankful.
I'm not a fan. I was when I was a teenager. Sure, it was great in 1975 to be able to drop the fang on your cobra and hear all of the words you were supposed not to say. And I found the earlier "Take Offs and Put Ons" album and listened to that quite a bit - it's still my favorite among his works. But George Carlin is not my favorite comic - far from it.
There is talk of his "legacy" and that he was a "counterculture icon." What legacy is that? That now you can't hear a comic who doesn't use a layer of profanity so thick you wonder where the comedy is supposed to be? George Carlin was a straight, buttoned down comic until he realized his friends and his fans were coming from two different cultures. So he switched cultures, switched his look, and played to the younger crowd and was a far greater success. The use of coarse language was more in line with that culture, though that was something that he picked up from Lenny Bruce.
Lenny, I think, realized that his comedy was not for everybody, but went through the legal agony of doing it as a matter of principle. You get that from reading the court transcripts of his trials, such as where he offers to bring in his Aunt Zelda to testify that the word "schmuck" was not obscene. Carlin, though, didn't have to go through anything like the degrading hearings that Bruce endured; for him it was a matter of publicity, and ultimately the high court upheld the law in that over the air broadcast outlets could not air indecent material when kids were liable to be up and around. Now, of course, the whole idea of "over the air" is at its nadir and the matter is moot. Lots and lots of stuff on cable is indecent, and it airs at all times of day. Who cares about protecting the kids anymore?
Not George - he didn't care about anything. He was fond of commenting that he felt the human species was circling the drain and the faster the spin and tighter the circling, the happier he was. He was an advocate for atheism who didn't suffer the kind of societal stigma that, say, Mrs. O'Hare did. Now that Carlin is dead, I can almost hear the routine: "Holy shit! There IS a God - what the fuck am I going to do now?"
I HATED the Dennis Miller Show. Why did I watch, do you ask? Well, I decided to give it a try and didn't know what I was in for - pro-Bush, right wing screed of the most noxious kind. And Carlin, to my surprise, was right along with him, saying that Pat Buchanan is a "beautiful guy." Damn - I guess beauty is really in the eye of the beholder.
Al Franken - no angel himself - has said that people ask him "What happened to Dennis?" Franken says, "Nothing. He's always been a little conservative on certain issues." The same is true of George Carlin - here was a guy who felt like he was living a lie playing to the leisure suits in the Catskills, and changed his routine. But he remained essentially buttoned-up mentally, so he was living a different lie going out and playing to the post-hippie crowd. He made more money and became more famous; so much for being a couterculture icon.
They showed a bit of his comedy routine on that show; he was talking about fucking 14-year-old girls - "hear their little cherries go pop! pop! pop!" I was completely disgusted. What the hell's so funny about that? Well, stepping into the shoes of his audience for a minute -- it's partly in the way he delivered it, and that it was SO outrageous. Clearly Carlin was up against competition in the dirty words arena in comedy that his 1970s material was pretty weak up against that. So he had to go beyond everyone in order to reclaim some of that mantle. Whatever, but pederasty is not funny and never was. Especially coming from an old reprobate like George Carlin; for me, it was the Micheal Jackson-like transition of going from a guy me and my brothers used to admire when we were teens to the teen inside me saying, "Gee Mister, I'm sort of scared of you."
Worst of all, it wasn't funny. Sure, there was lots of stuff that Lenny Bruce said that wasn't funny either. But there was a Swiftian element that made it very satisfying - in a sense, that was the part of Bruce's humor that was inspired by Mort Sahl and one of the best parts of it. With Carlin, the Mort Sahls and Bill Cosbys were out of business. They couldn't keep up with the level of profanity people expected; it was raising the bar too high, and risen precisely with the intention of reducing the competition. For Carlin, though, it only meant more competition from elsewhere, so in a sense he got what he asked for.
I guess the thing I like least about George Carlin is that his work - admittedly in retrospect - is so disingenous. That first album he did is not so; he was a really good buttoned down comic and I think it remains honest. The little eulogy to himself - also - sounds honest in a sense, although part of it feels practiced and I'm sure he thought about it a long time. He was afraid of death, but I think he was more afraid of God being out there somewhere. He didn't want to be wrong - for a guy who presented himself as a humanist purist, this is an ever so slight contradiction in terms. Before Carlin the best gig a stand-up could have was to be on the Tonight Show. Now that has become a progression from Comedy Club to television to movies to media mogul. I don't blame THAT on George Carlin, but I say it is a corrupt system - Down with Comedy! Up with Performance Art!
An online outlet to which I am contributor produced a glowing eulogy today to Carlin which says, in part, "he left behind the most impressive, voluminous, and influential body of work any stand-up comic has ever produced." If that's the case, then God help Comedy.
Uncle Dave Lewis
Word came late last night that George Carlin died. I sort of saw that coming; when I happened - by chance - to catch him on the Dennis Miller Show four years ago - and the promos that ran for his tour at that time - he was already looking pretty frail. In his self-authored obit, he thanked nature - not God - for allowing him to stick around so long. Considering all the drugs and alcohol that went in and out of that man, he had reason to be thankful.
I'm not a fan. I was when I was a teenager. Sure, it was great in 1975 to be able to drop the fang on your cobra and hear all of the words you were supposed not to say. And I found the earlier "Take Offs and Put Ons" album and listened to that quite a bit - it's still my favorite among his works. But George Carlin is not my favorite comic - far from it.
There is talk of his "legacy" and that he was a "counterculture icon." What legacy is that? That now you can't hear a comic who doesn't use a layer of profanity so thick you wonder where the comedy is supposed to be? George Carlin was a straight, buttoned down comic until he realized his friends and his fans were coming from two different cultures. So he switched cultures, switched his look, and played to the younger crowd and was a far greater success. The use of coarse language was more in line with that culture, though that was something that he picked up from Lenny Bruce.
Lenny, I think, realized that his comedy was not for everybody, but went through the legal agony of doing it as a matter of principle. You get that from reading the court transcripts of his trials, such as where he offers to bring in his Aunt Zelda to testify that the word "schmuck" was not obscene. Carlin, though, didn't have to go through anything like the degrading hearings that Bruce endured; for him it was a matter of publicity, and ultimately the high court upheld the law in that over the air broadcast outlets could not air indecent material when kids were liable to be up and around. Now, of course, the whole idea of "over the air" is at its nadir and the matter is moot. Lots and lots of stuff on cable is indecent, and it airs at all times of day. Who cares about protecting the kids anymore?
Not George - he didn't care about anything. He was fond of commenting that he felt the human species was circling the drain and the faster the spin and tighter the circling, the happier he was. He was an advocate for atheism who didn't suffer the kind of societal stigma that, say, Mrs. O'Hare did. Now that Carlin is dead, I can almost hear the routine: "Holy shit! There IS a God - what the fuck am I going to do now?"
I HATED the Dennis Miller Show. Why did I watch, do you ask? Well, I decided to give it a try and didn't know what I was in for - pro-Bush, right wing screed of the most noxious kind. And Carlin, to my surprise, was right along with him, saying that Pat Buchanan is a "beautiful guy." Damn - I guess beauty is really in the eye of the beholder.
Al Franken - no angel himself - has said that people ask him "What happened to Dennis?" Franken says, "Nothing. He's always been a little conservative on certain issues." The same is true of George Carlin - here was a guy who felt like he was living a lie playing to the leisure suits in the Catskills, and changed his routine. But he remained essentially buttoned-up mentally, so he was living a different lie going out and playing to the post-hippie crowd. He made more money and became more famous; so much for being a couterculture icon.
They showed a bit of his comedy routine on that show; he was talking about fucking 14-year-old girls - "hear their little cherries go pop! pop! pop!" I was completely disgusted. What the hell's so funny about that? Well, stepping into the shoes of his audience for a minute -- it's partly in the way he delivered it, and that it was SO outrageous. Clearly Carlin was up against competition in the dirty words arena in comedy that his 1970s material was pretty weak up against that. So he had to go beyond everyone in order to reclaim some of that mantle. Whatever, but pederasty is not funny and never was. Especially coming from an old reprobate like George Carlin; for me, it was the Micheal Jackson-like transition of going from a guy me and my brothers used to admire when we were teens to the teen inside me saying, "Gee Mister, I'm sort of scared of you."
Worst of all, it wasn't funny. Sure, there was lots of stuff that Lenny Bruce said that wasn't funny either. But there was a Swiftian element that made it very satisfying - in a sense, that was the part of Bruce's humor that was inspired by Mort Sahl and one of the best parts of it. With Carlin, the Mort Sahls and Bill Cosbys were out of business. They couldn't keep up with the level of profanity people expected; it was raising the bar too high, and risen precisely with the intention of reducing the competition. For Carlin, though, it only meant more competition from elsewhere, so in a sense he got what he asked for.
I guess the thing I like least about George Carlin is that his work - admittedly in retrospect - is so disingenous. That first album he did is not so; he was a really good buttoned down comic and I think it remains honest. The little eulogy to himself - also - sounds honest in a sense, although part of it feels practiced and I'm sure he thought about it a long time. He was afraid of death, but I think he was more afraid of God being out there somewhere. He didn't want to be wrong - for a guy who presented himself as a humanist purist, this is an ever so slight contradiction in terms. Before Carlin the best gig a stand-up could have was to be on the Tonight Show. Now that has become a progression from Comedy Club to television to movies to media mogul. I don't blame THAT on George Carlin, but I say it is a corrupt system - Down with Comedy! Up with Performance Art!
An online outlet to which I am contributor produced a glowing eulogy today to Carlin which says, in part, "he left behind the most impressive, voluminous, and influential body of work any stand-up comic has ever produced." If that's the case, then God help Comedy.
Uncle Dave Lewis
Comments:
Kristina said: (and it posted to the wrong post)
Yea, I hear you on that. I actually don't "get" a lot of his stuff. I more just appreciate how he gets so analytical and heady in ways comics don't anymore. Its so one two punch. I listen to him ramble and am reminded of my own ramblings. Was listening to lily tomlins old stuff, where have the long ass monologues with no edits gone? All replaced with adhd.that's why I put an rip to him on my site. I am not a super fan, I just appreciate the aesthetic. - k
Yea, I hear you on that. I actually don't "get" a lot of his stuff. I more just appreciate how he gets so analytical and heady in ways comics don't anymore. Its so one two punch. I listen to him ramble and am reminded of my own ramblings. Was listening to lily tomlins old stuff, where have the long ass monologues with no edits gone? All replaced with adhd.that's why I put an rip to him on my site. I am not a super fan, I just appreciate the aesthetic. - k
My ex-wife says:
"I met George Carlin at a funeral for one of my old boyfriend's dads. There were a lot of famous people there and most of them were kind of stressed out and acting like pricks. George was the only one to take time out to talk to me. He was a really nice guy."
And I agree that this is in keeping with every comment that I've heard in terms of George Carlin on a personal level.
"I met George Carlin at a funeral for one of my old boyfriend's dads. There were a lot of famous people there and most of them were kind of stressed out and acting like pricks. George was the only one to take time out to talk to me. He was a really nice guy."
And I agree that this is in keeping with every comment that I've heard in terms of George Carlin on a personal level.
My brother Chris writes:
No, I don't agree with you, but not for the reasons you might think.
I don't buy into the whole counterculture thing. I don't think George Carlin defined anything in comedy, but it was his art of language and delivery that really got my attention. Sure, when we were kids it was great to say the seven words. I still know them in order right now. The words themselves weren't the point; it was what he chose to do with them, not just in that routine but in countless others. The whole reason I think Dad is so funny sometimes is that his timing is brilliant, and George Carlin had that ability.
For subject matter, he's not really railing on anyone or anything that hasn't been hit before. His take on things is interesting, but I don't agree with all of it. Some of it is there for shock value (the "Fuck the Children" routine comes to mind), and some of it is his genuine disgust with the world around him. Though I found him funny, I also found him fatalistic, and I don't dig that line of thought. He was too far to the left and dangerously close to the edge, and sometimes it made me uncomfortable.
Are there comics who owe him a lot, stylistically? Sure, just look at Robert Wuhl and Lewis Black. But neither of those guys (and no one else I have ever seen) had the timing, the rhythm, the alliteration, and the deep understanding of the English language itself, and how to use it. Carlin did, and I'll miss that. - cml
Post a Comment
No, I don't agree with you, but not for the reasons you might think.
I don't buy into the whole counterculture thing. I don't think George Carlin defined anything in comedy, but it was his art of language and delivery that really got my attention. Sure, when we were kids it was great to say the seven words. I still know them in order right now. The words themselves weren't the point; it was what he chose to do with them, not just in that routine but in countless others. The whole reason I think Dad is so funny sometimes is that his timing is brilliant, and George Carlin had that ability.
For subject matter, he's not really railing on anyone or anything that hasn't been hit before. His take on things is interesting, but I don't agree with all of it. Some of it is there for shock value (the "Fuck the Children" routine comes to mind), and some of it is his genuine disgust with the world around him. Though I found him funny, I also found him fatalistic, and I don't dig that line of thought. He was too far to the left and dangerously close to the edge, and sometimes it made me uncomfortable.
Are there comics who owe him a lot, stylistically? Sure, just look at Robert Wuhl and Lewis Black. But neither of those guys (and no one else I have ever seen) had the timing, the rhythm, the alliteration, and the deep understanding of the English language itself, and how to use it. Carlin did, and I'll miss that. - cml