George Carlin R.I.P! No More Brain Droppings.

June 23, 2008 by Jason Mogavero  Send to a Friend

George Carlin died last night and the void left was so big that 2 of our writers felt an undying need to write something:
First up Jason:

Really, Death, you couldn’t have taken Carlos Mencia?

It seems like we’ve had to eulogize a lot of talented and beloved people in recent weeks- Sydney Pollack, Tim Russert, Stan Winston- and now George Carlin, who was probably the funniest and most influential standup comedian around, has succumbed to heart failure.

What a great legacy he’s left behind: The seven dirty words. A place for my stuff. Rufus, the time-traveling guide to Bill and Ted. His part in “Dogma” as a Roman Catholic cardinal (even funnier considering Carlin’s famed anti-religiosity). And, one of my personal favorites, the best possible way to deal with a heckler:

Carlin always said that he was “here for the show,” brilliantly observing and commenting on the spectacle of mankind’s folly and never failing to call us on our bullshit. His satire was biting, uncompromising, and dead-on, and in the era of Dane Cook, its potency has only increased. He’s no longer here for the show, but thanks to him, we can laugh about it just a little bit more.

and now John Foster:

Driving into work, listening to Howard Stern, I was stunned to hear that George Carlin has died. It certainly seemed to be the right place to hear such news and having Richard Belzer on as a guest allowed me to gain a perspective I couldn’t possibly have on my own. As Belzer extolled his love of the more recent Carlin breakdown of the ten commandments and his riffing on religion, I smiled knowing that we shared an admiration for the same aspects of his comedy. The most stunning aspect of this, after the fact, is that Belzer and I both would have chosen jokes from the last decade from a comedian with nearly 50 years of material behind them.

No comedian has managed to remain as relevant as George Carlin has, over such a long period of time. His astute observations carried him through nights as a supper club comic on to the talk show circuit into playing enormous venues and he altered and reinvented his material with each tour. Stern and Belzer shared stories of how important it was when Carlin made the change from wearing suits (as all comics at the time did) into jeans and sweaters and growing his hair out. It was a sign of the times of course, but it was Carlin carrying the sign. He brought the connection to the comedian into your daily existence as a commentator and completely erased the barrier of a smoking nightclub banter and helped establish the way we view comedians today. No longer a guest playing against a straight man, but rather as the host of an engaging and brilliant conversation. It was a role that would carry him to appear over 130 times on The Tonight Show among others. From Grammys to film to voicing Thomas the Tank Engine, his acceptance by the public never dulled his edge.

Forever linked to the legal case around his “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” and his arrest in 1972 for performing the bit, Carlin was never the type to rest on his notoriety. Producing 23 comedy albums, each one filled with original wit and always timely, and 14 HBO specials - Carlin delivered time and time again. I have listened to his earliest work and laughed my ass off and have done the same just recently with his most recent HBO special. Who else is this funny for so long without treading water on their old material? His highs may not outshine the ultimate bellyachers of the comedy kings but his look into our daily lives ring truer than any of them and it is not an understatement to say that we may not be privy to the unleashed comic genius of everyone from Howard Stern to Eddie Izzard without him.

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