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penfield"Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that shit."
- George Carlin (1937-2008)
George Carlin was a pretty big influence on me when I was growing up. The idea of that is kind of strange, since Carlin was a foul-mouthed counter-culture mass-misanthrope and I have always been a mild-mannered product of the mainstream whose misanthropy is usually either selectively targeted or selectively enforced.
But I always admired his precise, calculated use of language and his broad, almost existential scope. (He was in many ways a direct ancestor of Jerry Seinfeld, who sanitized the same schtick and made a billion dollars.) The technique that first captured my imagination when I heard his comparison of baseball and football. I was similarly enthralled by his "stuff" routine at the first Comic Relief -- it was silly, but it still had an electric undercurrent of conscience and rationality. I also enjoyed his trademark attacks on the sacrosanct, like the Ten Commandments for example, because he was able to deconstruct things in a way and at a volume that I could only envy.
Somewhere around the late 1990s, he went from comical observations to incisive commentary. His act became angrier, meaner, dry to the point of being burnt. You could tell, because even when he nailed it, he was getting more claps than laughs.
I enjoyed that for a while, but he lost me when he morphed into a full-fledged polemic and started talking about how he rooted for natural disasters, terrorist attacks, global catastrophes, etc. In the wake of September 11, 2001, his maniacal glee seemed ghoulish. To wit: his 2005 HBO special, "Life is Worth Losing," which was originally titled (I am not making this up) "I Kinda Like It When a Lot of People Die."
So, like I do with most old people, I won't take too seriously the things they say in old age, and I'll remember him for the earlier stuff, the stuff that made me laugh and made me think at the same time.
(That does not include his work in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.)
- George Carlin (1937-2008)
George Carlin was a pretty big influence on me when I was growing up. The idea of that is kind of strange, since Carlin was a foul-mouthed counter-culture mass-misanthrope and I have always been a mild-mannered product of the mainstream whose misanthropy is usually either selectively targeted or selectively enforced.
But I always admired his precise, calculated use of language and his broad, almost existential scope. (He was in many ways a direct ancestor of Jerry Seinfeld, who sanitized the same schtick and made a billion dollars.) The technique that first captured my imagination when I heard his comparison of baseball and football. I was similarly enthralled by his "stuff" routine at the first Comic Relief -- it was silly, but it still had an electric undercurrent of conscience and rationality. I also enjoyed his trademark attacks on the sacrosanct, like the Ten Commandments for example, because he was able to deconstruct things in a way and at a volume that I could only envy.
Somewhere around the late 1990s, he went from comical observations to incisive commentary. His act became angrier, meaner, dry to the point of being burnt. You could tell, because even when he nailed it, he was getting more claps than laughs.
I enjoyed that for a while, but he lost me when he morphed into a full-fledged polemic and started talking about how he rooted for natural disasters, terrorist attacks, global catastrophes, etc. In the wake of September 11, 2001, his maniacal glee seemed ghoulish. To wit: his 2005 HBO special, "Life is Worth Losing," which was originally titled (I am not making this up) "I Kinda Like It When a Lot of People Die."
So, like I do with most old people, I won't take too seriously the things they say in old age, and I'll remember him for the earlier stuff, the stuff that made me laugh and made me think at the same time.
(That does not include his work in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.)
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Pre-deceaser?
Date: 2008-06-24 10:05 pm (UTC)Re: Pre-deceaser?
Date: 2008-06-25 03:24 am (UTC)