June 24, 2008
Edgy comic George Carlin dies in L.A., aged 71
There are a few things I can blame George Carlin for, my generally twisted way of looking at things being one. Oddly enough, the fact that I cuss too much (the title above notwithstanding since it's a reference) isn't his fault, since I was cussing up a storm well before I ever heard any of his routines. I developed that bad habit all on my own.
George Carlin often said that he viewed humanity as an outsider, having fun watching the rest of us circling the drain. I can understand the cynicism and frustration, but I doubt he was as detached as he wanted us to believe. After all, comedy requires a connection to the audience, and if he was truly that much of an outsider there would have been no connection.
I figured it was his way of trying to effect at least some kind of change -- get us to laugh at our collective idiocy, then maybe we'll actually try to do something about it once we leave the theater, or put away the CD. Dunno if it worked or not; our species' spiral seems to have gotten somewhat tighter over the last several years. Or at least, the US's has.
Maybe despite his protestations, Carlin was actually an optimist at heart. The line between an optimist and a cynic, after all, is really just a matter of how disappointed you are with everyone else failing to live up to your ideals.
The retrospective on Countdown Monday night seems to bear this out -- Carlin mentored young comedians behind the scenes, and specifically asked not to be credited. Of course, if you're cultivating an image as a bastard you'd do well not to let on that you're actually a good guy.
Of course, there's the fact that he hadn't been funny for at least a decade, so maybe I'm right about that connection thing, and he finally tipped the scale from "curmudgeon" to "misanthrope". But if you want some of his best material, check out anything from the early 1970s (when he started doing the "seven words" routine) through the mid-1990s (whenever "You Are All Diseased" came out). Everything before is too generic, everything after is too pissy.
In my perusal of various sites Monday afternoon, I saw that his first wife died about the time he was doing "You Are All Diseased." That may explain why he made the transition from cranky to angry. I'll have to look as his most recent work to see if he ever got his balance back.
So if someone gives you grief today, try to imagine the institutional stupidity at play there, and chuckle to yourself instead of letting it get you down. Or tell the guy to go fuck himself; either one can work.
