JimK:  George Carlin is dead.

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television,” died in Los Angeles on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

The cause of death was heart failure, according to Abraham.

When a famous person dies, everyone forgets all the bad shit and says only wonderful things about them.  Well fuck that.  George Carlin would have been offended at the very notion, so I’m gonna tell the truth: He fucking pissed me off for the last fifteen years.  I couldn’t fucking stand his material or his concerts or the bullshit he would write for various magazines and op-ed columns.  It was unfunny, paranoid ranting at best and hate-filled obsessive diatribe at worst.Somewhere in getting old, Carlin forgot what made him laugh and concentrated solely on what made him genuinely angry.

However.

There is not a single human being alive for whom I have more respect in show business.  I love the way he loved words.  I loved him as an observational comic.  That’s what he was when he was at his best.  He observed behavior and talked about it, or he observed the weird peccadilloes of our fucked up language.  When he was on, he made us laugh at the way we torture words and the way we torture each other using words.

In 1972, Carlin release Class Clown, and the world was forced to take notice of this previously staid comic.  Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television became like a rallying cry for subversive comedy, for free speech, for an entire generation who didn’t quite get Lenny Bruce.  George took up Lenny’s cause and made it accessible.  That routine also made him a lightning rod.  In 1978 the US Supreme Court ruled that the FCC had the power to regulate content broadcast over the public airwaves during hours that children could be expected to listen/watch programming.

That really fucked things up.  We’re still fighting the cocksuckers over that one.

There are many, many people over the years that I could point to and say “That’s an influence” or “Yep, she showed me what my tongue was really for” or “He taught me how to love puppies and sunflowers.”  I had what can only be called a nightmare of a time growing up.  Same old story: abuse, drugs, booze, violence, crime, bikers, drug dealers…wait, that is the usual story, right?  No?  Well fuck me.

When other people stopped fucking with me, I started fucking with myself.  Made for a real fun transition into adulthood.

I think the thing that kept me sane and alive during the first quarter of my life was my sense of humor.  I can trace my sense of humor DIRECTLY to George Carlin.  Around the time of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, I remember hearing his name everywhere.  I didn’t know dick about the court case, I mean I was eight.  I just heard that guys name all the damn time.  Maybe he wasn’t everywhere.  Maybe the truth is, I had a counter-culture-wannabe pot-smoking druggie mom and Carlin was a favorite in our house.  It’s probably a mixture of both, but when I was eight I heard Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.  It’s one of the clearest memories I have from childhood, and given my childhood you’d realize that is a bold fucking statement.  I know it was a Saturday, in the summer, and my mom was cleaning her bedroom.  I was in my room, playing Star Wars with my action figures. She had the record on so loudly I could hear it at the other end of the house.

It’s the single greatest thing she has ever done for me.

By the end I was sitting on the floor, staring at the wall just listening.  My entire concept of what was funny changed that day.  I no longer thought that poop and fart jokes were the end all of comedy.  I started thinking that funny stuff had a purpose.  I started to see the point.  By the time I was twelve, I was obsessed with stand-up albums.  I wrote hours and hours of bad stand-up routines in notebooks.  I watched as much HBO Comedy as I could get access to.  I stole, borrowed and bought tapes and records of everyone from Cosby to Pryor, but it all started with Carlin.  Specifically the Seven Words routine.

I still think that might be the single greatest seven minutes of comedy ever devised.  Bet you can’t eat just one.  I usually switch off.  Fuck man, I must have said that six million times.

George Carlin is also the person that can be credited with giving me an appreciation for Shakespeare.  It was loving Carlin’s wordplay that led me to understand, and later love, the weird, subversive and often dirty things The Bard wrote.  The dirty, foul-mouthed hippy comic gave me an appreciation for the finest writing this world has ever seen.

George, you will be missed.  By fans, by those you inspired, by those who loved to hate you, and although they may not know it, by those who never gave you a moment;s thought.  You changed things for them as well.  Sure, you were a crotchety old bastard for the last few years, but I’ll be dipped in dog shit and whipped with a horse dick if you didn’t earn the right to be whatever the good god-damn you wanted to be.

Thank you, George.  You inspired me, and I’ll never forget it.

Seven Words routine from Class Clown: