22nd
George Carlin: One Year Gone
A year ago today, I awoke at 2:30 in the morning to my phone ringing. It was my good friend Stephen Boatright calling. He said “I know I’m waking you up, but I figured you’d want to know immediately.” “It’s all good, what’s wrong?” “George Carlin just died.” “Thanks for telling me. I really appreciate it.” I hung up the phone. I got up and wandered into my kitchen, in a weird state of shock and disbelief. Part of me was telling myself that he had just heard some rumor and that it didn’t happen. But the feeling in my gut, that sick to your stomach feel like you’re going to vomit because you know something has gone terribly wrong feeling, was far too strong for it to have not happened. I turned the tv on in the living room and changed it to CNN. No mention of it. Fox News. Obviously not. Msnbc. Nope. Then I log online to CNN’s website. There it was. The big yellow “breaking news” bar above a picture of George making one of his signature goofy faces. Then those 7 words that I never wanted to read: “Comedian George Carlin Dead at age 71.” I grabbed a bottle of red wine off the top of the fridge and a big tall glass and didn’t go back to sleep.
People say you should never meet your heroes, because you’ll always be disappointed. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a lot of people who I look up to as artists, such as Mel Brooks, Penn & Teller, The Amazing Jonathan, David Copperfield, Jim Norton, Martin Short, Lance Burton, Richard Griffiths, Daniel Radcliffe, William H. Macy, Tony Clifton, Carl Ballantine, Criss Angel, David Blaine, Dave Caplan, Barney the Dinosaur, Sharon Lois and Bram, and the Black Power Ranger when I was in 2nd grade. Nearly all of them have been extremely nice, minus David Blaine… he was a douchebag. But I was never really nervous meeting any of them. Sure, I admire them greatly for their work, but when it came down to it they were all just really talented people in my mind.
Carlin was different. There are 2 people who I consider to be my all time heroes as performing artists: Andy Kaufman and George Carlin. Well, obviously, meeting Kafuman was impossible, since he died 3 years before I was born. I got turned on to George my freshman year of High School by my drum line instructor Chip Hancock in the summer of 2001. He knew of my love of spicy language, and asked if I’d ever heard Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television.” I hadn’t, so he told me which album it was on, “Class Clown”. The next week, our marching band took a trip to a marching festival in Gadsden, Alabama, and part of the tradition is to stop at a mall outside of Gadsden and eat at the food court and shop around. So I ran into F.Y.E. and looked through their comedy section. I immediately picked up Class Clown and another one at random, appropriately titled “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content.” The fates obviously knew what they were doing. In both albums Carlin dove deep into the thoughts behind the way we use words, and how a word in and of itself is not offensive. He made you think, but damn did he ever make you laugh while he was at it. He is the only white comic I’ve ever seen get away with saying “nigger” over and over and has the entire audience on his side. In his “Seven Words” routine, he points out how people say “I’d much rather my child watch a movie where 2 people make love, instead of where 2 people kill each other.” So what does he do with that? He replaces the word “kill” with the word “fuck” in old western quotes, resulting in hilarious phrases like “Alright, Sheriff, We’re gonna fuck ya’ now… but we’re gonna fuck ya slooooow.” He was incredibly ahead of his time in pointing out how the pressure to be politically correct in culture was getting way, way out of hand. And so he busted down walls and told everyone that it was bullshit. That’s what he was best at… pointing out the stupid bullshit that we are all guilty of.
Many people mistakenly refer to George Carlin as a shock comedian. In a recent comment thread on a previous writing, a person said to me “the George Carlins of this world have relied greatly on foul language and crudeness to shock people into laughter.” And while Carlin would jump at any chance to indulge his 12 year old inner self by making fart noises with an accompanying masturbatory gesture, he never was one to try to shock people into laughter. Were his observations crude? Quite often, yes. Vulgar? But of course. More than anything, though, he was honest. You never, ever questioned whether or not Carlin meant what he said. Even when he got outlandish and extreme, the backbone of his argument was always as solid as steel. Often, his routines didn’t require the use of fleeting expletives. Look at his “Place for My Stuff” and “Baseball vs. Football” routines. Listening to Carlin do those routines is like listening to a symphony. His words were the notes, twisting and turning, rising and falling, never losing your complete attention for a second. And just when you think you know where he’s going with a joke, he’d hit you with a punchline you would never hear coming. No comic has been or will ever be able to use words, clean or profane, the way Carlin did.
October 15, 2006 will always remain in the top 5 of the greatest nights of my life. Even if I have 5 children, one of their births will have to take a back burner to the night I met my hero. I went with one of my best friends dad, Martin Ward. Our tickets were shit. We were in the 2nd to last row of the orchestra. I was bummed, but still thrilled to be getting ready to watch the show. The lights went down, and bouncing in my seat, I waited for him to come out on stage, and as the spotlight turned on, I immediately sunk in my seat with great disappointment. I had forgotten there was going to be an opening act. And it was a singer songwriter named Vance Gilbert. He was great… but he was making me wait 45 mintues longer than I had anticipated to see George. But this turned out to be a blessing. All during Vance’s act, I kept noticing that there were 2 seats on the isle of the second row from the front. After Vance sang “King of Rome” a capella and unmiked (something I will also never forget) there was an intermission. I got up and told Martin to follow me. He asked, in that voice that if you’ve heard it you can hear in your head when you read this, “Where the hell are we headed?” Luckilly, he just went along with it, and we sat down right as the lights were about to fade. We just upgraded from the worst to best seats in the house. There was no introduction, he just came out, right up to the mic and said “I’d like to begin tonight by saying Fuck Lance Armstrong.” He then told the audience that he hadn’t perfected the material he was going to perform, so to assure that he did his best, he’d be reading most of it from papers he’d printed out. He then said “I hope that’s okay with you, and if not… BLOW ME!!!” with a big goofy grin on his face. This blew my mind. Then and there I had an epiphone. I had always known he was brilliant with words, but it was at that moment I realized that he wasn’t just good at talking… he was an actor reciting a script, with every word meticulously crafted to achieve their maximum effect. So until he had the show memorized, he performed a staged reading. Equally effective, just to insure perfection. An hour and a half later, I felt the show drawing to an end, and I had a gut feeling that this was going to be my only chance to meet my hero. So I did something that killed me inside, I got up and left the show. Anyone who knows me well knows that there is little that annoys me more than people who get up and walk out of a movie, or leave during the middle of a play. Had it not been for those isle seats I found, I would have never gotten up and disturbed other people, and I would have never met George. But the fates were on my side. In school, our Theatre Production teacher had taken us on an all access backstage tour of the Tivoli, so I knew where the stage door was the Carlin would be exiting from. I had also heard from someone that he never sticks around after a show, he gets in his car literally right after he finishes his set. So I arrive back by the stage door and am told to step back by a gentleman in a black suit. One thing I’ve learned in life is if a gentleman in a black suit tells you not to stand somewhere, you do what he says. I heard through the loading dock door George say “Thank you, everyone. Goodnight!” Not ten seconds later the door flew open, and there he was, hurrying to his car. He looked up as he was about to head to the door, and saw me standing over to the side, and stopped and walked over to me. Then it occurred to me, the biggest moment of my young adult life, and I hadn’t thought through what I might say. So, like a tool, I said “Will you sign this?” holding out my first edition of Napalm and Silly Putty. “Sure thing, kid.” he said. Holy fucking shit, George Carlin just talked to me. I then decided to grow a pair and say “I really admire your work, especially the way you use words. You’re my biggest inspiration.” How the hell I managed to make a cohesive statement will always be beyond me. But I did, and he was so genuinely gracious in saying “Thank you so much.” He noticed the camera around my neck and said “Alright, cmon, lets hurry and get a picture so I can be gone before the foot traffic gets here.” I wasn’t going to dare ask for a photo, a signature and handshake was more than adequate for me. But since he offered, I threw my camera strap off of my neck, held it out as far as I could, and snapped one photo. I said “Thank you so much. I’ll never forget this.” And he said “You’re welcome.”, smiled, got in the car, and rode away. I immediately called my best friend Jonathan and told him all about it. Then everyone else I could think of. I had to share this with as man people as possible, because it was too much excitement for me to contain all by myself.
The night George died was one of the hardest, worst nights of my life. It was doubly bad for me, because within 12 hours of finding out about Carlin, my high school U.S. History teacher, Ron Arp, died of a sudden heart attack (what other kind is there?). I sat, watching tv all night. I saw a collection of comedians on Larry King that night, ranging from Bill Maher to Jerry Seinfeld to Lewis Black, all of them fighting with every muscle in their bodies to not just break down and lose it on national television. I realized that I wasn’t being so stupid for being so upset. He was a real inspiration to every comedian I’ve ever talked to. He was the best there ever was, or will be.
