George Carlin

 
The great comedian George Carlin died yesterday. 

I'm not going to bother writing a historical bio of George with birthplaces and dates, accounts of his transformation from a button-down vegas comedian to counter-culture firebrand and free-speech symbol, stories of his arrests for obscenity, battles with drugs etc, etc. These can all be found easily enough and with much more detail on the net. Nor am I going to try to compose an elegy on the social impact that he had on our language and culture and the influence on nearly every comedian that came after him, for there are many who can do that with far more eloquence and depth than I can.

Usually, when someone whom I respect or even revere dies, the eventual mini-flood of emails and phone calls from friends make the rounds, comments and testimonials are written and glasses of wine are lifted and toasts are made. And more often than not, the daily business of life will shortly push the death out of one's mind. Not so with Carlin, I believe.  It isn't just the huge influence that his humor had on me growing up, or how his observations on the absurdities and hypocrisies of modern life, religion and language were always a righteous and hilarious crystallization of the things I had (or hadn't yet) thought, but that he was still going strong up until the end.  Sure, his hair was all white and he moved a little bit slower (a couple of heart attacks will do that), but he was still out there, touring, making his 

HBO specials, his scalpel for dissecting and exposing ourselves as sharp as ever. The closest analogy I can think of is a jazz musician, honing his craft over years and years, trying to distill his art to a more pure essence.

As a kid, I remember hearing his records like Class Clown and AM/FM, and while I was mostly entertained by his funny voices and bits about blue food and dirty words, I also could pick up on his wry commentary on class, religion, race, social institutions and specifically language that coincided with and reinforced my nascent understanding of the world and the people around me. Carlin was the Great Bullshit Detector and was always the paragon of calling all of us out on our stupidities, hypocrisy, what set us apart and what bound us together. Like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, Carlin's genius was making us laugh our asses off while showing us the truth. To me he was a hero, and he'll be missed.