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Post by KNOWTHIS on Jun 23, 2008 14:52:03 GMT -5
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Post by Swamp Gas on Jun 23, 2008 17:22:13 GMT -5
We have lost a great mind and rebel rouser. There is literally no one to replace him, much like a John Lennon.
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Post by Swamp Gas on Jun 23, 2008 22:56:29 GMT -5
tbknews.blogspot.com/2008/06/george-carlin-changed-world.htmlMonday, June 23, 2008 George Carlin Changed the WorldToday is a very sad day, indeed. One of the greatest masters of all time has left the planet, joining the other late comic geniuses in what must certainly be the only true heaven, where laughter reigns supreme. Those of us of a certain age surely feel as if George Carlin was one of our dearest friends. My own memories of George are long and deep, dating back to when he burst onto the scene for good in the 70s, with his breakthrough album containing the taboo-shattering "Seven Dirty Words." I recall vividly the whole brouhaha over those fucking obscenities. I can hear that album - and it was an ALBUM, scratchable vinyl and all - in my head right now. I was technically too young to be listening to it, but my siblings were playing it, much to my glee. As I think back, I remember being impressed all those years ago by Carlin discussing product names for condoms or other birth-control devices, one of which he deemed "Baby Maybe!" and another "Junior Miss!" George Carlin's impact is multigenerational. Even my little boy knows George from the cartoon movie "Cars." Carlin was the voice of Fillmore, the hippy VW bus who used organic fuel and said, "It's a conspiracy, man!" and "Respect the classics, man!" And that description perhaps sums up George Carlin best - Classic. A true sage who unblinkingly examined reality without blinders on, George Carlin dripped with enlightenment and wisdom, brilliantly using comedy to help the human race along in its evolutionary path. With all the talk about "spiritual masters" who deserve our reverence, in my opinion Carlin was a real master who truly loved the world and worked to better it by raising up the issue of individual freedom and personal creativity. In fact, I hold George Carlin in such high regard that I like to "joke" that he is my prophet (pot be upon him). With all that is happening in the world today, including the end of the fossil-fuel era with serious deprivation on the horizon, I'm thinking that George's passing truly signals the end of the era - the end of the party, in fact. Rest in stitches, George, my friend. We love you, man.
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Post by Thetaloops on Jun 24, 2008 11:53:59 GMT -5
 I had the privilege of meeting him after a show in Fairleigh Dickenson Univ. in Rutherford NJ back in 1970. He as usual was hilarious during the show. Afterwards back stage I offered him some fired chicken ( which I was not a Vegan as yet) and he said to me 'I don't eat no burnt bird' funny I didn't quite get it until later on. I wish he had followed his body engineering a little more carefully. We need all the visionaries we can find to get through the cultural meltdown that we are going through. www.skeptic.ca/george_carlin.htm |
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Post by KNOWTHIS on Jun 24, 2008 16:53:18 GMT -5
From what I've heard he's actually a pretty kind and understanding person.
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Post by Thetaloops on Jun 25, 2008 14:50:53 GMT -5
That is what I felt about him also. Here are a few of this thoughts.
What I've Learned: George Carlin
Comedian, 64, Venice, California
By Larry Getlen
The Blog of Lists: The Most Entertaining Blog in the World. Ever.
Back in January 2002, George Carlin revealed his intimate thoughts on censorship, racism, and how the IRS saved his comedy career. With his recent passing, we represent his words here.
I was in my mother's belly as she sat in the waiting room of the abortionist's office. Dr. Sunshine was his code name. I was fifty feet from the drainpipe, and she saw a painting on the wall that reminded her of her mother, who had recently died. She took that as a sign to have the baby. That's what I call luck.
My father drank and was a bully. For the first five years of my brother's life, my father beat him with a leather-heeled slipper. Had I been subjected to that kind of treatment, all bets are off. His absence saved my life.
My mother had great executive-secretarial jobs in the advertising business and raised two boys during the Second World War. She used to say, "I make a man's salary." That's heroism.
I'm sure Hitler was great with his family.
I don't like authority and regulation, and I do my best to disrespect it, but I do that for myself. It's self-expression only.
Sex without love has its place, and it's pretty cool, but when you have it hand in hand with deep commitment and respect and caring, it's nine thousand times better.
If it's morally wrong to kill anyone, then it's morally wrong to kill anyone. Period.
It's amazing to me that literacy isn't considered a right.
I was arrested for possession and cultivation of marijuana in the early '70s, and it was thrown out. The judge asked me how I felt about it, and I said, "I understand the law, and I want you to know I'll pay the fine, but I cannot guarantee I will not break this law again." He really chewed me out for that.
Censorship that comes from the outside assumes about people an inability to make reasoned choices.
The first thing they teach kids is that there's a God -- an invisible man in the sky who is watching what they do and who is displeased with some of it. There's no mystery why they start that with kids, because if you can get someone to believe that, you can add on anything you want.
I would die for the safety of the people I love.
I wish that we could measure how much the potential of the mind to expand has been stunted by television.
Because of my abuse of drugs, I neglected my business affairs and had large arrears with the IRS, and that took me eighteen to twenty years to dig out of. I did it honorably, and I don't begrudge them. I don't hate paying taxes, and I'm not angry at anyone, because I was complicit in it. But I'll tell you what it did for me: It made me a way better comedian. Because I had to stay out on the road and I couldn't pursue that movie career, which would have gone nowhere, and I became a really good comic and a really good writer.
I stopped voting when I stopped taking drugs. I believe both of those acts are closely related to delusional behavior.
There's no morality in business. It doesn't have a conscience. It has only the cash register. They'll sell you crappy things that you don't need, that don't work, that they won't stand behind. It's a glorified legal form of criminal behavior.
If everybody knew the truth about everybody else's thoughts, there would be way more murders.
There's nothing wrong with high taxes on high income.
Lenny Bruce opened all the doors, and people like Richard Pryor and I were able to walk through them.
Given the right reasons and the right two people, marriage is a wonderful way of experiencing your life.
I think that the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King showed that all of the wishing and hoping and holding hands and humming and signing petitions and licking envelopes is a bit futile.
Blacks are deliberately kept down. Poor communities are deliberately underfunded.
I don't think people should get credit for being honest and brave. I think there's a lot of genetic sh** going on there.
Someday they'll find a gene for putting on your overcoat.
There's a pulse in New York, even on the quietest street, on the quietest day. It's full of potential.
If there's ever a golden age of mankind, it will not include men over two hundred pounds beating children who are less than one hundred pounds, and it will not include the deliberate killing of people in a formal setting.
I did something in a previous life that must have been spectacularly good, because I'm getting paid in this life just magnificently, more than one would dare imagine or hope for.
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Post by KNOWTHIS on Jun 25, 2008 19:05:31 GMT -5
Artie Lange, a comedian/actor/entertainer (whom I don’t care for because of his ignorant views) and co-host of the Howard Stern show talked about a prior experience that he had with George Carlin at a late show appearance. I guess there’s an unspoken rule amongst stand-up comics that you never follow another act when that comedian is better known than you are because it’s anti-climatic and tougher to win over the audience. We’ve all heard the expression, “That’s a tough act to follow”. Carlin somehow found out that Lange was scheduled right after he was and he voiced his displeasure about it to those in charge. Artie said that even though Carlin figured that he was more famous than Lange, he was very humble about his position and apologetic about the conflict. Carlin told him that he hoped that he’d really nail his performance that night and even stuck around to watch it himself. Lange was very impressed with Carlin’s demeanor and willingness to express his concern for a relatively unknown comic in comparison.
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Post by Swamp Gas on Jun 29, 2008 23:00:14 GMT -5
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Post by Thetaloops on Jun 30, 2008 10:02:17 GMT -5
The more I read about him and listen to his routines the more I love him!!
Maher and Shandling honor George Carlin at service
June 30, 2008, 6:33 AM EST
He was the comedian who actually said the seven words you can never say on television, but close friends and family members remembered George Carlin as a man who, when he was off stage, had only a kind word for everyone he met.
At a private memorial service Sunday attended by some 150 people — "That was as small as we could keep it," chuckled Carlin's daughter, Kelly Carlin McCall — her father was memorialized by comedians Bill Maher, Garry Shandling and others as someone who had no enemies, in part because he was nice to everyone he spoke to.
"What everyone said tonight is if you spent time with my father, whether it was five seconds or five hours, he was kind, attentive, very connected to you, compassionate," said Carlin's daughter.
Among those who spoke at the service, which was closed to the public and news media, was Shandling, who told of being a teenage college student when he sought out Carlin nearly 40 years ago.
"My dad read his material and encouraged him to continue on, which was a life-changing moment in Gary's life," McCall told The Associated Press after the service.
Overall, Carlin's daughter said, the service was a happy event, one presided over in part by her father himself, who spoke from a montage of video clips assembled from his 51-year career.
Carlin, who died June 22 of heart failure, recorded nearly two dozen albums, 14 HBO comedy specials, wrote three best-selling books and appeared in numerous movies and TV shows.
"It was a very, very light event, as he wanted it," McCall said of the two-hour service. "He wanted a lot of laughter. I'd say 90 percent of it was laughing and just remembering what he brought to us in his funny way."
Although his standup routines were often filled with four-letter words — so many that early in his career Carlin was sometimes hauled off stage and taken to jail — his dead-on ability to highlight the absurdities of everyday life, and do so in such comical voices and faces, made his humor come across as anything but harsh.
And although famous for four-letter words, Carlin, 71, did not always use them. He was also Mr. Conductor on the children's show "Shining Time Station," Fillmore the hippie van in the 2006 children's movie "Cars," and the guest host of the first "Saturday Night Live" episode ever broadcast. That 1975 show was replayed by NBC on Saturday night in his honor.
There also was more to Carlin than just the comedian, said McCall, and that too was reflected at her father's funeral.
He loved music, and his service was attended by Kenny Rankin, who sang "Here's That Rainy Day," and Spanky McFarland of the 1960s pop group Spanky and Our Gang, who performed the song "Coming Home."
Other speakers included Carlin's older brother, Patrick, his partner, Sally Wade, and his former standup partner, Jack Burns. Carlin's wife, Brenda Hosbrook Carlin, died in 1997.
Carlin and Burns had met in 1960, and although they worked as a comedy duo only briefly they remained lifelong friends.
In an earlier AP interview, Burns recalled Carlin calling him several times a year to remind him of such things as the anniversary of the day they met, the day they did their first show together and, in one less-than-joyful incident, the day they were jailed for armed robbery in Texas in a case of mistaken identity.
That's just the sentimentalist he was, said McCall, who is Carlin's only child.
"He went out of his way to make sure friends and family members, if they needed anything, he was there for them," she said. "He was a complete man. He was more than just the seven words you can never say on television."
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