Calm down. Have some dip.
In the archaic days of the mid-1980s, weird kids like me didn’t have a lot of ways to receive new, weird information — especially weird kids who lived out in the middle of nowhere, like I did. Some time in or near 1986, I stayed up late one Sunday night to listen to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 and discovered that good ol’ WMDM-FM didn’t stop existing after #1 got announced and Casey signed off till next week. This is when I discovered even better ol’ Doctor Demento — the oft-ridiculed host of a 2-hour syndicated novelty music show. To this day I can’t figure out why so many good comedians — everyone from David Cross to the writers of The Simpsons — portray the guy as some kind of idiotic simpleton. Without his careful remote guidance, I may never have taken the interest I did in comedy, and you might not be reading this now. (This is not to say that the world would have lost anything special — just that I’d probably feel much less fulfilled as a human being without this early nurturing influence. I mean, chances are you aren’t reading this anyway.) It was he who, using the already familiar gateway drug that was “Weird Al” Yankovic, introduced me to the likes of Monty Python, The Frantics and a vast assortment of one-hit parody artists lost to the mists of time. Oh yeah, and George Carlin.
I distinctly recall the first time I heard Carlin. It was his “Ice Box Man” bit off the 1981 album, A Place for My Stuff. If you’re a follower of Carlin history, you know this routine was recorded sometime between his two great political periods: after the infamy that followed “seven words you can’t say on television,” but before the angry, downright hostile rants of the 90s. And though I would grow to adore the man’s entire catalogue, “Ice Box Man” was exactly the thing for an intelligent, misunderstood adolescent — strange, insightful, hilarious. It was the funniest thing I’d heard in my entire life. Dr. Demento was on from 10 PM to midnight on Sunday, and I can’t remember if my convulsive laughter alerted my parents to my unauthorized nocturnal adventures, but I do recall being unable to hold it back. If I got in trouble, it was worth it.
I eventually tracked down a few of his albums, and I made a point of seeing his HBO specials. I did my best to follow his career in the years that followed, and when I began regularly writing what I hoped were humorous political observations in the mid-to-late 90s, he was on my short list of true influences. Unlike the others from whom I drew inspiration (Dennis Miller, Douglas Adams, a few others), Carlin had it all: not only did he intelligently present a world view that was both unique and relatable, but he also had a hell of a work ethic. And he was astoundingly consistent. You show me a single other writer/performer who stayed relevant and funny for as long as he did. I dare you. I bet you can’t.
On top of that, you show me anyone — anyone! — who could express sentiments like “fuck the children” or “I like it when a lot of people die” and still get the broad acceptance he got. Sure, there might be people more shocking than he was, but I don’t think anyone’s gotten mainstream America to swallow such an uncompromising vision of unpopular sentiment.
I have said many times before in this forum that I don’t really care when celebrities die, because I don’t really know them. And I stand by this. The death of George Carlin doesn’t make me sad like, say, the death of my dad might. I’m more… disappointed than sad, really. I had tickets to see him in Seattle last fall, but my job at the time forced me to take a business trip and forfeit the tickets. So I never had the chance to watch the guy perform. More than that, though; as I mentioned a minute ago, he never stopped working. You never went more than 2 or 3 years without getting some new Carlin material. And it always gave me a little kick in the ass to see just how much further I had to go before I could even approach a master like him. He was to standup comedy what the Beatles were to popular music. I will miss him not because I knew or truly cared for the human being that was George Carlin, but because now I won’t get anything new out of him.
And I’d like to think that that sort of selfish affection is something he would have understood. So long, George. Thanks for making my life, and my writing, a little better.