So, my thirteen year old son…going on 18, is sitting in the kitchen playing with the iMac and pulling up a few comedians and laughing is ass off… Now, normally I tune this stuff out, but it caught my ear…and I sorta recognized the style…from a universe far, far away…
So I pushed him over and pulled up the Carlin videos… The kid is seriously digging it, all the way. Told him this crap was 30 years old…he was still digging it.
It was a bonding moment.
Very cool! I have a 7 cd set of Carlin’s early stuff, 68-75, and my step daughter (17) absolutely loves it. Great to find a common ground with your kids…
Carlin was brilliant…and a really great guy to boot.
I had the pleasure of working with him on TV, in a PBS children’s series (!) in the 1990’s.
I managed to catch up with him a few times over the years after that when he would appeared in concert near where I live. A real gentleman, and one of the great and wonderfully insightful comic minds of the 20th Century.
R.I.P. George…
Thomas the Tank Engine?
My wife and I saw him a couple of years before he died. His act seemed very rehearsed and memorized. We later saw him on a TV special and it was like a recording of what we had seen, although it wasn’t. He was still funny, but I guess I prefer comics that ad-lib a little.
One of Carlin’s great strengths was his incredibly tight writing. Every bit that you saw was polished over and over again. In a way that makes sense given his experience as an older school “take my wife” sort of comic initially.
Usually he could pull of the skill of making you believe it was off the cuff, but there’s just no way to pull off that flow without the strict adherence to writing.
One of my other bits that I loved about Carlin was the way that he impacted comedy behind the scenes. Two off the top of my head are Garry Shandling. Shandling apparently drove 2 hours to a Carlin show in 1968 and offered him his material that he wrote while goofing off in college. Carlin declined but told him to come back the next night and he’d review the material with him. Sure enough, Shandling shows up the next night and there’s his material marked up and dissected. Even though the material was green, Carlin apparently saw enough there to encourage Shandling to go for it. The other is Louis CK. He routinely credits Carlin during interviews as being the guy who shook him out of his “safe” malaise when Carlin opened one of his shows straight out of the gate with an abortion joke.
“Napalm and Silly Putty” is a staple in our throne room :) He had a mastery of words and word play that was genius.
Love Carlin, love Bill Hicks, love Louis CK. Carlin is like the Granddad of them all, but I don’t think Carlin was really doing his most recent style of comedy, with the questioning of the govt, anti-religion, anti-politics, etc. type comedy until Bill Hicks took that leap. And Carlin credited Bill Hicks often for the influence Bill had on us all. Hicks is a little abrasive, I think for a 13 year old, but hey, the truth really does hurt sometimes.
I enjoyed Carlin a lot in his younger years, but in his last few he wasn’t funny anymore - just angry and critical. He stopped doing comedy and did political commentary instead.
That’s the one. “Shining Time Station”, technically, which was the USA/Canada produced show that wrapped around the Thomas films. I spent several happy years working on the show (65 episodes total) in NY and Toronto in the late 80’s/early 90’s. When Ringo left the show, I remember the surprised look on the faces around me when the producers revealed that Carlin would be stepping into the Mr. Conductor role.
In the end, George fit right in and did a great job.
While this will probably get deleted, his jokes about pussy farts were neither political or critical, just funny as hell. ;D ;D ;D
+1 Last time I saw him was at Symphony Hall in Boston. I was pumped up to see him. Alas it turned out to be a night of a bitter George ranting about politics for the evening.
a bunch of great comics have been named but i just wanted to mention Brian Regan. My son and I absolutely love him and totally bonded listening to his CDs and watching his shows. he is a total goofball and does alot of silly voices/faces and talks alot about being a stupid kid plus as a bonus he is totally clean which makes it great for young kids. highly recommended!