A World Without George

George Carlin died this past weekend, and it seems almost surreal, like entering an alternate universe. I'm sure even now the web is peppered with tributes and essays about him that will tower over my humble little collection of words in memorial. On his own website, the standard digital tombstone was already in place, even moments after I heard the news. But let me share a few thoughts from my own perspective – someone who dabbles in comedy myself, and who grew up under Carlin's influence.

First, let's get these rolling, in George's honor: Shit. Piss. Fuck. Cunt. Cocksucker. Motherfucker. Tits.

George had a couple of qualities that were possessed by only one other, Richard Pryor. First, he could utter any taboo without the slightest hint of the hatred connected to it. "Rape is funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd. Why do you think they call him 'Porky,' eh? I know what you're going to say. Elmer was asking for it. Elmer was coming on to Porky. Porky couldn't help himself, he got a hard- on, he got horny..."

Second was his immense magnetism – you hung on his every word, even when he was bombing. His command of the language, the ideas connected to words, and all possible abstracts connected to those ideas, held you spellbound. It was something more than a stand-up act – it was a college lecture given by the hippest professor on earth.

No comedian today possesses those attributes. There is no one left to pass the torch to. Sure, this or that comedian's fan base may protest that their hero is Carlin's successor. I beg to differ. The Whoopis, Ellens, Robins, Eddies, Chris's, Carlos's, etc. Sorry – they're all pale. None of them really get the entire formula that Dr. Carlin administered.

Please don't bring up Mitch Hedberg. I know he's dead too, and let's show a little respect, but I've heard Hedberg, and frankly am still mystified as to what his cult-like fan following saw in him.

Bill Maher? Maher is to political-social commentary what Jeff Foxworthy is to redneck jokes – the best current practitioner.

Bill Hicks? Well, alright, perhaps Hicks came the closest. Done. Granted. I'm not here to rate your favorite comedian, but to pay homage to mine. Motherfucker.

George Carlin got it. Fully.

The torch was lit by Lenny Bruce – that stand-up comedy demanded to evolve. It could be adult, as opposed to just vulgar. If vulgarity alone was the revelation in stand-up, then we're honoring the wrong guys. Let's dig up the raunchiest burlesque comic and erect a statue to him. Let's canonize Redd Foxx.

Foxx was performing at the same time as Bruce, with an act ten times as dirty, yet it was Bruce whom the police harassed, cuffed, threw in jail, hauled before a judge with Irish red hair and a glass eye. Foxx himself even commented, "Why they keep bustin' that white boy all the time?"

He knew the answer. First, those white cops wouldn't go near the clubs that Redd performed in. Second, Bruce wasn't just saying dirty words into a microphone, like any of a thousand drunk Rotarians at an annual hooch & hooker fest – he was reaching into their world with ideas they couldn't handle, with words that made them feel like he was exposing their darkside to the rest of humanity. Revealing their duplicities. Pulling the skeletons out of their closets and rattling them on the front lawn at the neighbors. "Adult" humor wasn't necessarily dirty, but too honest – it felt like being made to own up to something unsightly, perverse, just wrong. And that's exactly what it was. The fact that it was laced with potty-mouth, was what connected the dots. Sold it as an idea worth examination, to an audience who came to laugh.

The real, untold reason that Bruce was arrested for saying "cocksucker" on stage, was that none of the policemen could get that at home from their wives. A word becomes truly offensive when it brings the sting of the truth home to roost. When it rubs a scab off.

The trick was to divorce the sting, without sacrificing the truth. Bruce blazed a huge trail. Carlin paved it, put up road signs, built onramps and overpasses – made it a legitimate road that we all could navigate on, if we had the guts.

Carlin had his share of detractors, and in the beginning a smaller taste of the bullying from the police, the morality brigade and the censors, that Bruce had taken the full brunt from. But Carlin kept sculpting a new reality, and the new generation embraced it. And embraced him. Because they heard something real – not the cover stories that their parents' favorite comedians were still babbling.

In 2004, I wrote and co-produced a stage show that was a tribute to Lenny Bruce, called, "Mr. Bruce, Do You Swear?" In the program notes, I wrote something that I'm sure made the feathers of a few ruffle.

If Lenny Bruce were Jesus, that would make George Carlin his Paul. From Jew to Gentile. From Gentile to the world.

I'm glad I can say I saw Carlin perform in person. What made the show more than special, was that he was breaking in new material, and hadn't fully memorized it yet. He had a sheet of crib notes on stage, that he placed on a stool, and would quite visibly refer to glancingly throughout the show. Did it slow him down? Not a step. Did it dampen any of the humor's power? Not an atom. It was a thrill just to get to see his wheels turning. A 60s Corvette revving with the hood up. And after he'd given us two hours of rib crunching laughter... he asked if we would accept, as compensation for the "rough" quality of that night's show, another 30 minutes of "classic" stuff from his arsenal. Did we turn him down? Wipe your mouth! No. We sure as fuck-shit-piss did not!

There are a few ironies. George spent his last few years roaring against religion, and died on a Sunday.

George passed away mere days before receiving the Kennedy Center's 11th annual Mark Twain Award for humor – an honor of which he should have been the very first recipient. In my opinion. The cocksuckers.

He left us during the final months of the presidential administration he hated most. George will miss seeing a "world without George." Something you gotta believe he was probably looking forward to. It's a bit like Moses; leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, but not getting to enter it himself.

He had a memorable routine about death, called "Two Minute Warning." I wonder if he got one? Or if he got his movie? The movie of your life, that flashes before your eyes seconds before you go... the movie of course must include the moment just before you die and see the movie start, then cycle through again and again... endlessly. "Thanks to the movie, we can never die!" You'll never really die, George.

And finally, allow me to show-n-tell my one genuine connecting point to George, my official degree of separation. In 2005 I won the Aristocrats contest, with my cartoon slideshow, "Ball Sack Follies." You can see it on the "Aristocrats" DVD. In this documentary, about the world's dirtiest joke with its lineage going all the way back to vaudeville, Carlin goes back to his own roots, and actually tells a joke. A set-up, and a punchline. It's the very style of humor that he, and Bruce, and Pryor, evolved stand-up comedy away from. You'll never see it anywhere else... and elsewhere on the DVD, I get to tell the same joke. So at some brief moment, along an edge almost microscopic, my world and Carlin's overlap. We never met, but it's something.

He would have seen me as a rube, with little if anything to say. But I hear he was a nice guy in private. We could have talked about his dogs.

R.I.P.