Movies Daily by Zach Cannon

Every year since I was in high school, my mother has bought me a page-a-day calendar. They’ve ranged from sports trivia to recommended reading, but most often, they’ve been An Orgy of George. They were a collection of 300-or-so (Saturdays and Sundays are put together on one page) mostly random musings from the brain of George Carlin.

Sometimes they were dark: ALL SUICIDE ALL THE TIME: I’m convinced in this depraved culture that so devalues human life and dignity, and where reality television has convinced everyone they belong on national TV, I’m convinced that if you added in the excitement of a brand-new All-Suicide Channel debuting with maximum publicity, you could get five hundred of these hopeless people to hold hands and jump into the Grand Canyon.

Other times, random, as in this example, in which he expounds on language, one of Carlin’s favorite subjects: There is a tendency these days to complicate speech by adding unnecessary words. The following phrases all contain at least one word too many.
belief system
seating area
facial area
daily basis

No matter how wide the range of Carlin’s comedy, it was always pointed, critical, most often true, and above all hilarious.

The first time I saw Carlin was on one of his 14 HBO stand-up specials when I was in middle school. I didn’t know his history, the Seven Dirty Words, other than that I wasn’t supposed to say them, or his influence on pop culture. I caught every one of his comedy specials since then, and Carlin has influenced me both politically and personally. His constant diatribes on euphemisms, redundancies and political correctness fueled my own affinity for language and the way society shapes it rather than the way it shapes society. Seeing this old guy on TV speak so passionately about the idiotic idiosyncrasies of American culture during my formative years taught me to question and challenge much of what I saw around me (especially since I forcibly attended Catholic Sunday School once a week), but to always do it intelligently with a sharp tongue and quick wit, not loud and brash like Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh.

I don’t want to pepper this too much with my own memories of Carlin; I have no real connection to him other than being part of his massive fandom, so making this about me would rather than him would be a bit narcissistic. In reality, his influence is far spread and incalculable. When I look over all the obituaries of Carlin in various publications, I can’t even begin to fathom how much Carlin changed U.S. culture. Of course, he inadvertently created “family hour” on TV and the much-maligned FCC indecency rules. He’s inspired countless comics and, along with other counter-culture comedians like Lenny Bruce, forever changed stand-up comedy.

I feel like Carlin would probably have (or did have) something hilariously critical about the way people and publications flock to celebrity deaths and report on it as much as they can to “pay respects” to the person, but actually profit off his or her death as quickly as possible. With that in mind, I’ll stop here, but leave you with a few articles about and interviews with him.

An article from Time, explaining the importance of George Carlin.

An interview and remembrance of Carlin from NPR.

A photo slide show of Carlin from Variey.

The Kennedy Center, which recently announced it would give Carlin the Mark Twain Prize, will still give him that award posthumously.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS