My sophmore year of high school, a friend of my mother's brought the album Class Clown to our house. My sister and I listened to that LP probably a hundred times over the next few weeks, until we had every line memorized (even though we weren't allowed to say a good many of them outside the house).
Not too many years later, I twice had the opportunity to see George Carlin perform live on stage. Both times I laughed until I cried and my sides ached for days afterward. George was a genius at holding up a mirror and making us laugh at ourselves, and especially in his later years, speaking truth to power. On the foundation laid by Lenny Bruce, he built a whimsical, angry, manic, meditative, truthful, fantastical, lighthearted, heavy-handed palace of funny.
But I was surprised to find recently that he also did narration and character voices on my son's "Thomas the Tank Engine" videos. He managed to bring that little strain of sardonic to even a children's story.
Thanks for this articulate tribute. In the eight-channel universe of my teens, in a small, provincial city, Carlin offered a glimpse of subversive possibilities cloaked in a humour that let him slip into our homes framed by that all-important TV. At a time when Ed Sullivan controlled the amount of pelvis action we were allowed to see and the lyrics we were allowed to hear, Carlin was a powerful, wry challenge. We'll miss him.
ReplyDeleteI loved your homage, and I love this kind of humour. Let's hope his fans pay it forward by searching out more of his kind, though he is irreplaceable.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how so many of the blogs Miss J visits are featuring GC tributes (including Miss Janey's own). Carlin was certainly a comic with his finger on the pulse of the now. They're aren't really that many comics you can say that about- who stick around for as long as he did and continue to be as hip as he was.
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