George Carlin - A Modern Man: The Best of George Carlin

George Carlin.

If you do not know who he is, close this book now and buy it. Im not telling you this to make money for George. Sadly he has passed on. Im not telling you this to make money for me. I wont make a dime off a sale. Im telling You this for You because You need to go home now and sit down and read this book from cover to cover.

WHY?

It will change your life, that is why.

REALLY?

Yes it will. Even if it totally offends You, which it just might. And how will that help You? You will be forced to understand and defend what you believe in that makes what George wrote so offensive to You. He will have made You think about your beliefs, and there is no greater gift one can give than to make another person actually think. Except for the other great gift he will give you if you are not offended, an even greater gift: You will laugh and You will think. Or You will think and You will laugh. And You will laugh really hard.

HOW DO I KNOW THAT?

Because he made me laugh so hard that when I stopped laughing I had changed. I saw the world in a different way. George made me realize something that I already knew but didnt know how to express. That just because someone was an authority figure didnt mean you had to trust them. It didnt even mean they were much of an authority. He pointed out for me all of the hypocrisy that was so much a part of the fabric of the society I was a part of and yet felt separated from. His voice made me feel that there was nothing wrong with that feeling. He had fine-tuned my mind to be able to understand and cope with the madness of the times I was living through. Still, as you will find in this compendium of his writing as he points out over and over, as much as things change the more they stay the same.

And extraordinarily, even now, every day, every single day someone somewhere will see something that will leave them speechless and ask: What would George Carlin have to say about this? After his death, he became more than just a man. His name became synonymous with a change in consciousness. His words gave us, then and now, a new way to see the world. He has been missed every day by countless folks everywhere looking for a really hard laugh at the darkest possible moments.

HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?

Because he was more than just a comic. He was a sage, a philosopher, and a prophetand most importantly, as you will learn when you read this book, George was a writer, wonderful, profound, and funny, so fucking funny. There was nothing fancy in his writing. It went straight to the gut.

With a spectacular wit, he showed how hypocritical our lives had become and he did it by going after the hypocrisy he saw in his own act. In front of our eyes he went through a metamorphosis that reflected the culture he was living in, that we were living in, that I was living in. He went from being a comic who was a part of the establishment to one who was anti-establishment. To put it more simplistically, we watched his hair go from short to long.

But it was more than being representative of the changing times: he sensed we could be better than we were. He didnt use dirty words (idiotic to call any words dirty, as he and others before pointed out) to shock us but to teach us. By us , I mean all generations, young to old, from me to my dad. Parents and their kids together would watch the early, mainstream George Carlin in his numerous TV appearances. Later on, parents might wait till the kids were asleep to listen to those first groundbreaking albums of his and the kids might grab them and listen to them in the basement. Theyd both listen and keep George a secret. The parents didnt want their kids to find the album and listen to him, and the kids didnt want their parents to know they were listening to him. And thats how you know he was special.

My father (who had seen Nichols and May, Lenny Bruce, and other comedy legends perform live) was a huge fan of George Carlin. To give you an understanding of just how big a fan he was, when I was nominated for an American Comedy Award in 2000 for Male Stand-Up Comic, I asked my parents if they wanted to go to the awards ceremony with me. My father said no. It was in Los Angeles, so I thought maybe he wasnt up for a long flight. Then I told him that George was being given a Lifetime Achievement Award that night. My father said, Thats well deserved. If I went, do you think I could maybe meet him? I said, I think so. My father said, Okay, then, Ill go. All of a sudden it wasnt that long a flight. My father loved me, but hed fly out there to meet George. I approached George that night to see if he could take a moment to meet my dad and he graciously said yes. He was generous with his time. My father got to meet George Carlin. It took a few days for him to stop smiling and it wasnt because I won the award. I wasnt jealous.

There are a few comics whose writing is as strong as their performance is. Georges performances were brilliant as he was a wonderful physical comic, but his writing was magical. He chose his words meticulously, not only for the sound but for the precision of their meaning. George had a deep love of music and his acts were scored like they were music. Words were his notes.