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Back in March, a tribute to George Carlin was held at the New York Public Library. Not sure why March. That is neither the month in which George Carlin was born (May), nor the month in which he died (June), but there you have it. In a video posted after the jump, Louis C.K. offers a 10 minute tribute to this comedian who clearly influenced him tremendously (I say clearly because he talks about it for 10 minutes, not so much because I think Louis C.K.’s act sounds like George Carlin). Personally, I’m not that big of a George Carlin fan, which might have as much to do with my age as anything else (89). For me, he will always be Rufus from the Bill and Ted movies, which is only partly a joke. I don’t know, he just always seemed too grumpy to me, which is ridiculous, because I lean STRONG GRUMPY to say the least, but he always sounded too bitter and a little preachy. But so what who cares what I think. Really. George Carlin was an incredibly successful and more importantly influential comedian and I’m sure that compared with his body of work, my tossed off snap-judgement of him based on seeing something on Comedy Central when I was in Junior High and turning it off because Prince’s “Get Off” video was on MTV (and my hand was on the remote in case my mom walked in) is worthless. What is not worthless is listening to someone talking humorously but also very earnestly about a person who influenced and inspired them. So let’s do that:
Nice speech. (Via TheDailyWhat.)
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I know what you mean, Gabe. Part of the reason I love Videogum so much is that it is never grumpy, bitter, and preachy.
What is this, Louis CK-gum?
(I would read Louis CK-gum every day, btw.)
I hope it comes with a comic, like Bazooka Joe.
The Seven Words/Phrases You Can’t Say on Videogum:
1) V for Vgum
2) Jeff Dunham
3) Intern Lauren
4) Brokencyde
5)Da Cake Eatur
6) Braff
7)GOOP
Gabe “STRONG GRUMPY” Delahaye
Grumpy Strong is the Asylum version of Country Strong, which makes Gabe the poor man’s Goop.
The day George Carlin died, I left a shit in his honor.
So that’s two videos that made me cry before noon. Nice work, guys.
I think George Carlin suffers from the same malady that the Beatles or Velvet Underground or Pet Sounds or Seinfeld or Die Hard does—they were so influential that to brand new audiences who have grown up saturated with imitators of the greats, the originals just no longer can have the same impact.
I truthfully don’t find Carlin that funny either, but I think it for that reason.
i completely disagree. the guy’s work has largely standed the test of time, and much of what he talked about are still problems we face and issues we deal with today. his work is still relevant, and most importantly still funny.
his last 2 specials, i will concede were increasingly dark and grumpy, and not all that funny. but the other 16 [ or so? i can't count] are still hilarious. the great thing about GC is that he isn’t just an “angry guy” comic, he was an innovator and a master of nearly every major “type” of comedian – he did the angry stuff, but also topical, absurdist, obersvational, cultural, political, etc. and even delved into beat poetry.
i really don’t think he gets enough credit for how incredibly diverse his material was. he gets pigeonholed as “the angry comic”, but he rarely – if ever – shouted.
I don’t see how we disagree? Nothing you said discounts what I said, or vice-versa.
Anyone who isn’t blown away by The Beatles, Velvet Underground or The Beach Boys needs to refine their taste in music pronto; I don’t care in what decade you were born.
I was a huge George Carlin fan when I was a kid, he changed my whole way of thinking. As I got older, his preachy-ness and oppressively cynical perspective started to bother me (and I just didn’t think he was that funny any more) but I still appreciate his courage and brilliance and was sad when he passed as he did have a huge impact on me during my formative years.
He came into town when I was like fourteen (9 years ago) and was really excited to go see him, I was planning on just going by myself thinking my family wouldn’t enjoy it. But they all thought it would be fun and, full disclosure, this is was during my older brother’s emo, depressed, angsty period (complete with suicide attempts) so we were all kind of in a weird place and my dad thought this would be a good way for us to bond or something. Sure enough, George does over an hour of pure, bleak as fuck suicide, masturbation and death material and achieves only a handful of laughs during the whole set. We were so uncomfortable. My childhood hero just looked bitter and old. By the end the audience was practically silent except for the occasional tepid giggle. Maybe that’s the cost of brilliance though, you run the risk of just going off the deep end.
I wrote this after Carlin died as a tribute to him:
Language Games: The Legacy of George Carlin
June 24th, 2008
George Carlin, one of the most important social critics of the last half-century, is dead. Carlin, like he was for millions, was a formative influence on my youth, and via the collective youths of multiple generations, the national consciousness. He will forever be remembered for being part of the wave of comedians that turned simple humor into biting social commentary — the children of Lenny Bruce.
It strikes me that, in many ways, Carlin had turned himself into a modern Socrates, always questioning our words, thoughts, and actions, and finding himself disappointed in the lack of reflection in the rest of us. Carlin acknowledged this in perhaps his most important routine:
“I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love, as I say, they’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have really.”
The Seven Words routine was a milestone not just because Carlin managed to highlight the dilemma at the core of the modern condition, but also because it gave us a landmark Supreme Court case on freedom of speech that highlights how dangerous words can be to the guardians of mainstream mores, FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation. Carlin’s monologue, played on Pacifica Radio in NYC, engendered a dispute as to what constituted decent speech on broadcast media — and the Court decided that the population needed to be protected from hearing those “deadly” words spoken by Carlin, who had done so in an effort to help us enlighten ourselves about the power of speech.
Justice William Brennan, writing in a stinging dissent from the majority on that decision, stated that: “because the radio is undeniably a public medium, these actions are more properly viewed as a decision to take part, if only as a listener, in an ongoing public discourse.”
Censorship of language is an attempt to silence this public discourse, to stifle thoughts, actions, and ideas. George Carlin understood this perfectly well.
Carlin was concerned with pointing out how we, as a society, have started using euphemistic language as a way to avoid dealing with tough concepts. This is a corollary — and perhaps more dangerous than the official censorship — to the FCC’s abrogation of speech on TV and radio: self-censorship. In one of his books he noted:
“I mentioned several reasons we seem to employ so much of it [euphemistic language]: the need to avoid unpleasant realities; the need to make things sound more important than they are… but no matter what the purpose, the one thing euphemisms all have in common is that they soften the language. They portray reality as less vivid. And I’ve noticed Americans have a problem with reality; they prefer to avoid the truth and not look it in the eye. I think it’s one of the consequences of being fat and prosperous and too comfortable.”
Of course, the easy political examples are those we’ve been familiar with for a time now: George W. Bush’s “enemy combatants,” the “homicide” bombers, collateral damage. Carlin was adept at pointing these out along with the more common expressions we use between friends and colleagues. Religious, political, and cultural hypocrites were not spared his withering gaze — I once noted how a portion of his audience left during one of his anti-religious diatribes at a concert of his that I attended.
So what, then, is Carlin’s legacy? At the end of another of his famous routines he said that “the planet is fine, the people are fucked.” He was amused with our capacity to, essentially, kill ourselves off as a species. He said that:
“… it amuses me. Because it means the system is beginning to collapse, beginning to break down. I enjoy chaos and disorder. Not just because they help me professionally; they’re also my hobby. I’m an entropy buff.”
We are inundated with food yet prices are rising and people starve; we are awash in oil and prices have never been higher; we are aware of the effects of human-caused global warming and most of us choose to do nothing except complain about the weather; our government openly lies and violates Constitutional rights and all we do is shrug. Carlin’s choice was not to simply laugh at the downward spiral we were all on (by our choice); that is too superficial a reading of his humor. He was deeply concerned by the stupidity and violence we do to each other through laws, morals, and simply not acting.
His legacy, I think, is that our understanding of speech, of words, and our constant questioning of their meaning and use is our only outlet to discovering potential truths, to exposing lies, and perhaps building a world that’s a little nicer to live in, or at least, a little more amusing. It is, perhaps, a call to action, to understand that he was bitterly disappointed in how passive most people are in the face of injustice. In that respect, those of us who are political activists, or even those of us who are just trying to make small changes in our lives, could learn from Carlin to keep thinking and to be the gadfly that won’t let things rest, to tell the truth about the world in which we live.
Carlin, of course, put it best:
“Here’s the Secret News:
All people are afraid.
No one knows what they’re doing.
Everything is getting worse.
Some people deserve to die.
Your money is worthless.
No one is properly dressed.
At least one of your children will disappoint you.
The system is rigged.
Your house will never be completely clean.
All teachers are incompetent.
There are people who really dislike you.
Nothing is as good as it seems.
Things don’t last.
No one is paying attention.
The country is dying.
God doesn’t care.
Shhhhhh.”
I feel like “tl;dr” was made for this very moment.
this was a “tl;mr”, as in, “too long, mostly read.”
Whenever I hear a comedian being interviewed and they get asked who their top comedians are, if Carlin doesn’t get a mention I dismiss them immediately.
good policy?
Better than a Carrot Top or Judy Tenuda policy.
Carlin was overrated
So is your existence.