RIP George Carlin
I should have written about this yesterday. It’s hard when anyone passes away that you feel like you had a connection to. And by connection, I am speaking of a personality, not someone close to you. Someone who is good enough at being a personality that, in a tiny way, seems to allow you into their life. Even if it is through a screen or speakers. Tim Russert was like this. His passing was a shock because he was so young.
George Carlin? Well, I was a little less shocked, I guess, when I heard on Sunday that he had passed away. After all, he had endured a few open heart surgeries, had bouts of drug addiction throughout his life, and so on. So from a health perspective, I wasn’t shocked.
But it has really saddened me to see him pass on.
For three or four New Year’s Eves when I was in my early teens, my best friend Jamie and I would stay up to watch the ball drop from Times Square, and then, magically, George Carlin would appear on HBO. It wasn’t a live show. It was one of his most famous performances at Carnegie Hall. The one with all the chairs stacked up behind him on stage.
I loved that performance, and not just because I was 12 and he was saying all the words that would have resulted in my mouth being washed out with soap. It was more than that. Anyone can get up on stage and say the word “fuck”. Fuck, Eddie Murphy practically reinvented the word’s pronunciation. But George Carlin was a linguist. He was fast. On the one hand, his routine seemed totally improivational. On the other hand - more amazingly - you knew he had been thinking and rehearsing it for months in advance.
So thanks for the memories, Mr. Carlin. And thanks for your competely unique love of the English language.
