If I start linking to articles about George Carlin, this page will have more links than Google. But I will direct you to this announcement of HBO rerunning all of George's fine specials for the over the next week or so. Good stuff.
Also, if you can deal with the photos of naked women in the margins, you might enjoy reading his two Playboy interviews — one from January of 1982 and one from October of 2005.
A few other things to say about George Carlin, above and beyond the fact that he was funny and revolutionary and just plain important. Everyone's saying that about him already on the Internet. Someone should say that he had just about all the gifts that a great comedian could have. He had a wonderful speaking voice and, when necessary, he could do characters and impressions and even verbal sound effects. He didn't do a lot of physical comedy but every now and then, he'd do a little…just to let us all know he could if he wanted to. I seem to recall one night on Mr. Carson's show when Carlin came out and, as his stand-up spot, just did funny faces for a five minutes. The audience was not disappointed.
He was also brave. You had to be to say some of the things he did…to be quite willing to piss off people that, I'm sure, he felt should be pissed-off. But he was also brave when he went just as a comedian. The first time I met him — this would have been around '72 or thereabouts — he told a group of us that he was doing The Tonight Show the next night and his opening line would be, "Ladies and gentlemen, I've decided to try and do my spot here tonight without getting one single laugh."
Just what response that would get, he had no idea…so he had two punch lines planned. If the audience didn't laugh, he told us, he was then going to say, "Looks like I'm off to a good start." If they did laugh at the opening line, he'd just just snap his fingers, mutter "Damn" and go on from there. As it turned out, they laughed a tiny bit…not really enough to prompt either line. It was one of the few times I ever saw him bomb but it was only for a moment. He just made a left turn, went into a tried-and-true routine and had the audience howling in seconds.
That was his secret weapon. He could always be funny. He had literally hundreds of routines and could always summon one up for the occasion. Armed with that, he felt free to try new things, say new things, venture into new territory. The worst that could happen was that he'd have to make that quick left turn. It was rarely necessary.
Onstage, he often came off as cranky, angry and contemptuous of the entire human race. Offstage, he was a decent, friendly guy to everyone…and one of those comedians who never felt he had to "perform." Nor did he stand on his celebrity. One time, I was waiting in the line to get into the buffet at Bally's in Las Vegas when I noticed a small commotion amongst the staff. They'd spotted George Carlin — who later that evening would be headlining in the main showroom there — waiting, all alone, in the same line as the rest of us. He didn't even get into the V.I.P. line…just took his place with the peasants.
The manager scurried over and invited Carlin to bypass the line and be seated, a.s.a.p. George thanked her politely but explained, "I'm in no big hurry and all these people were here before me." You could put a thousand professional entertainers into that situation and I'd be surprised if three of them would decline the perk…but George Carlin did. One of the reasons he could speak for the common man was that he never got too far from being one.
He was completely non-competitive with regard to other comedians. There are no stories of him trying to "one up" another guy or squeeze someone else out. There are certainly no stories of him stealing jokes…though there are many tales of him being the burglary victim. He wanted his work to remain his work and he respected the property of others just as fiercely. I wrote on a pilot he did in the seventies and he only asked for one line to be changed. It was a good line, he said, but it sounded a teensy bit like a joke in Robert Klein's act and it made him uncomfortable to come even within spitting distance of doing someone else's material. The line was quickly changed. A year or two ago when we spoke at a memorial service, he was complaining about how so many things he didn't write were e-mailed all over the Internet with his name affixed.
All in all, he was just a great comedian who did what he did about as well as anyone could do it. I feel so bad that he's not going to be doing it any longer. He was still fresh and innovative at age 71 and I wanted to see how long he could stay that way.
One of the funniest, most brilliant comic minds ever. The guy who reinvented stand-up comedy for everyone.
It's my fault. This kind of thing always happens when I'm too busy to write a long post.
Seven words come immediately to mind. All are appropriate for the occasion.
Several people have sent me this and it's so important, I'm going to break my Soup Silence and post it…
I hate it when people forward bogus warnings, and I have even done myself a couple times unintentionally…but this one is real, and important. So please send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list.
If someone comes to your front door saying they are checking for ticks due to the warm weather and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!! They only want to see you naked.
I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid!!!!
You and me both.
If you don't know the meaning of the above image, read this. And I'll be back to you (and answering e-mail) as soon as I finish scripts for this coming Wednesday.
Here's about twelve minutes of George Carl, one of the funniest man who ever lived. This is very similar to the act I saw him perform one night at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. I was in town with my friend Len Wein and I told him as had to go see the show there and see George Carl. Len said, "What does he do?" I said, "He gets tangled in the microphone cord." Len didn't get it but since I also assured him the show contained topless showgirls, he agreed to go, wondering all the time why I was interested in a guy whose act was getting tangled in the microphone cord. As we sat there howling at Mr. Carl, Len — gasping for air — managed to say, "I get it." You will, too…
This is for those of you who live in Florida, particularly around Coral Springs…
Go see my friend Jim Brochu in his one-man show, Zero Hour, which is at the Stage Door Theatre through July 27. The one man in this case is Zero Mostel, who gets brought back to life for two hours via Jim's masterful portrayal. I've written about this show before (here, for instance) and it has my highest recommendation. For whatever that's worth.
Hey, I made it onto a right-wing talk radio station! A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for a show called By the Book with Matthew Worley, which runs on SuperTalk WFHG in Bristol, Virginia — a station whose main lineup features the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Bennett, etc. The subject was, of course, my book on Jack Kirby and they're broadcasting the chat this weekend.
The show airs Saturday with an encore performance on Sunday, and you've already missed Saturday. The Sunday broadcast is at 1 PM Eastern Time so you can figure out when that is for you. What you might not be able to figure out is how to listen live through the links on the station's website. I think this is the streaming link but I can't get it to work for more than a few minutes at a time. If you can, let me know.
As you might deduce from the time stamps here, I'm pulling a near all-nighter to get a script finished. I'll resume work in the morning. Don't expect a lot of postings here this weekend. Good night, Internet.
We have a piece of film history here: The screen debut of George Burns and Gracie Allen, doing a hunk of their vaudeville act as an 8-minute Vitaphone short called Lambchops. This came out in October of 1929…and just to save you doing the research and the math, Mr. Burns was 33 years old at the time, and he and Gracie had been married since January of '26.
Gracie's age is a little more difficult to peg. When asked her birthdate, she gave a wide array of answers, including "None of your business." When she died in 1964, George told reporters she'd been born in 1902. Historians have since concluded that 1895 is more likely…but not proven. If she was born in 1895, she was a year older than George.
This short did not catapult the team of Burns and Allen to movie stardom. They made a few more like this one and it boosted interest in their act. But it wasn't until they got into radio that they became famous. Here's a great artifact of the days of vaudeville…
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times has a review of Blake Bell's new book, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. I got to page through a copy at the Book Expo a couple weeks ago and what I saw and read looked pretty good to me. If you wanna pre-order one, here's an Amazon link that will help you…and also net me a tiny commission.
Over in the New York Times, Michael Cieply has a nice piece on the promotional aspects of the Comic-Con International in San Diego. And I don't say it's a nice piece just because he interviewed me for it.
Yes, I am disappointed today in Barack Obama and all the Democrats who caved in on the issue of telecom immunity. And like a lot of you, it's especially annoying because we have nowhere else to go. In November, I'm not going to be able to cast my ballot for someone who thinks that our government should not be able to break its own laws and then retroactively make it okay. We have truly arrived at the day when, as Richard M. Nixon once said, "If the president does it, it's not illegal."
And you've got to wonder: If Congress will bend over backwards to overlook the excesses of a spectacularly unpopular administration, what are they going to do for one that America actually trusts?
I don't know who April is…but someone put this on YouTube for her birthday present and it's the funniest, laugh-out-loud clip I've seen there in weeks. It's Joe Cocker at Woodstock…but with subtitles. Thanx to Dawna Kaufmann for telling me about it.
A couple of folks have written to ask if I ever resolved the problems with my Time-Warner digital phones. The answer is yes. Someone high in that company, it turns out, is a reader of my weblog. He read what I wrote and contacted the right people, causing technicians to come dashing over here to undo all the damage that the previous installers had done. Now, not only does everything work fine but an average of once a day, someone from Time-Warner Cable calls to make sure everything is functioning properly…which it is. I am a satisfied customer — at the moment.