You never see a big tall fat Chinese guy with red hair

George Carlin's support from HBO has been long-standing since the channel's origins in the mid '70s, dutifully airing each stand-up special Carlin produces. Recorded in 1990 and entitled Doin' It Again, the material on this special is Carlin's 7th with HBO, and later evolved into material for his album "Parental Advisory." Carlin provides the audience with the boundaries of speech he will be using during the show, followed by a hilarious diatribe on the common intelligence level of man ("Just think that of all the stupid people; half of them are stupider than that!"). What follows next is a series of jokes that leaves political correctness in the dust. When a fifty-three year old comic can makes jokes about rape and feminism and gets away with it like Carlin does, it's a testament to his genius. He then touches on things you never see ("You never see a big tall fat Chinese guy with red hair.") or hear ("Do what you want to the girl, but leave me alone!"). He even touches on things you don't want to hear ("I'm pregnant, you're the father, and I'm going to kill all three of us!"). He wraps up the hour long concert with a perfect illustration of what society has done with the language. While words are just words (in Carlin's opinion), they are still powerful things. When war veterans go from being "shell-shocked" to experiencing "post-traumatic stress disorder," doesn't it give you the perception that the illness isn't as bad? The performance is a reminder of just how remarkable Carlin is.

Life is worth losing - George Carlin

"Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits."
The George Carlin engine runs on three types of fuel: humor, rebellion, and drug use. A bit of a discipline problem who ran away from home more times than he can remember, Carlin attended a parochial high school on and off for less than six months until the age of sixteen - when he officially abandoned any pretext of fitting in with society. His need to uproot the establishment took a poignant turn early in life, when he joined the United States Air Force.
On July 29, 1957, Carlin was dishonorably discharged for failing to report for guard duty. And driving while intoxicated at 0030 hours. And disrespecting Air Policemen, failure to comply with lawful instruction, and refusal to obey direct orders. And driving government-issued vehicles with the deliberate intention of causing disruption and property damage. Carlin was regularly counseled by supervisors and his First Sergeant concerning not only his personal appearance but his inability to maintain his bunk bed in the prescribed manner. He consumed alcoholic beverages to such an extent that he could neither control his movements nor fully explain his responsibilities as an Airman. At age seventeen, he decided to pursue a career in comedy.

"There are 400,000 words in the English language," Carlin mused. "And there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. You know the seven don't you? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war. I can dig why some of those words got on the list, like cocksucker and motherfucker. Those are heavyweight words. There's a lot going on there, man. Besides the literal translation and the emotional feeling. They're just busy words. There's a lot of syllables to contend with. And those K's. Those are aggressive sounds, they jump out at you. Forget those seven, they're out. But, there are some two-way words. You can prick your finger -- but you can't finger your prick."

Old Fuck Is Bad for Ya

George Carlin is still packing venues with fans who crave his legendary brand of observational, cantankerous wit.
At 70, he isn't just mailing it in, either. He performed about 80 shows across the country in 2007, and is still razor-sharp and very much on his game.
But with a record 14 live HBO stand-up comedy specials under his belt -- most recently a Saturday outing dubbed "It's Bad For Ya" -- Carlin admits to having a different take on things now.
It's not that he has exactly mellowed. Mellow isn't in Carlin's makeup. But no longer is he motivated to push the comedic envelope as a pioneer, as he did so memorably as a barrier-busting, hypocrisy-exposing rebel of the Las Vegas stage and the man who would become a Supreme Court test case via the famed "Seven Dirty Words" television furor in 1972.
"I accept it as someone looking in from the outside that the culture is destroying itself, and as someone who is no longer part of the human race, I can be fascinated by it rather than mourn it," he says.(more...)

Saul Bellow- and Rudolf Steiner

In the early 1970s, novelist Bellow discovered anthroposophy, the "spiritual science" developed by Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). According to Bellow biographer James Atlas, the wiseguy Chicago writer regularly attended Windy City sessions of the Anthroposophical Society, kept a photo of Steiner on his desk, practiced Steiner's meditation exercises, bought his books by the bagful, and pursued the Steiner scholar Owen Barfield for further illumination. Charlie Citrine, the Bellowish protagonist of the future Nobel laureate's next novel, Humboldt's Gift, could be found intently studying Steiner's Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment in a Madrid hotel room.
Steiner believed modern materialism blinds us to a spiritual world we can reach through our senses and inner consciousness, yet he also declared a variety of more controversial and bizarre beliefs over his decades of frenetic lecturing and writing. Steiner warned against a devilish spirit named Ahriman, who threatened the world; discussed the activities of the Buddha on Mars; advocated reading to the dead; accepted reincarnation and karma (the idea that actions in past lives affect present ones); and proclaimed acquaintance with the Akashic records of everything that has happened in the universe.
Bellow wrote a foreword to The Boundaries of Natural Science, a book of Steiner's lectures, and often spoke warmly of anthroposophy, remarking: "It puts back into life a kind of magic we've been persuaded to drop. ... When Steiner tells me I have a soul and a spirit, I say, yes, I always knew that."
Atlas argues that the novelist never became a full-fledged "mystic." Ruth Miller, another Bellow biographer, recalls Bellow confiding that he didn't believe in clairvoyance, the Ouija board, or spirits, but did accept the spirit and soul and an afterlife, just like Whitman and Tolstoy. Citrine appeared to express Bellow's selective engagement with Steiner, remarking: "There were passages in Steiner that set my teeth on edge. I said to myself, this is lunacy. Then I said, this is poetry, a great vision."
Steiner's amalgam of humanistic warmth, love of nature, and oddball occultism exerted a similar push-pull effect on other 20th-century artists. The brilliant Russian novelist Andrei Bely said Steiner could "transform every situation into an unforgettable moment," broke with Steiner, then returned to the fold. Painter Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Kafka also experienced their Steiner moments. Today practical upshots of Steiner's anthroposophical movement Waldorf schools, Camphill schools for the disabled "in need of special care of the soul," biodynamic farming, and Anthroposophical Societies themselves keep his name alive, though not at the household level he enjoyed in the first quarter of the 20th century ( more from cronicle by carlin romano)

Leonard Alfred Schneider

An American counter-culture icon from the 1960s, Lenny Bruce's obscenity-laced social satire paved the way for modern stand-up comedy. Bruce served in the navy during World War II (1942-45) and began performing stand-up comedy in 1946. As he gained popularity in New York night clubs, his brand of comedy shifted from impersonations to free-wheeling monologues satirizing religion and politics. He released several comedy albums and appeared occasionally on TV, especially as a guest of Steve Allen and Hugh Hefner. In 1961 he was arrested after a performance in San Francisco and charged with obscenity. Bruce was acquitted, but for the next few years he was frequently in trouble with the law for using raw language on stage -- a no-no back then. In 1964 he was convicted of obscenity in New York and jailed for a few months (in 2003 Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned him). As his legal troubles mounted, he performed less and less and used drugs more and more. He died of a drug overdose (probably either heroin or morphine) at the age of 40, but his style went on to influence the next generation of comedians, from George Carlin and Richard Pryor to Robin Williams and Chris Rock.

Carlin Dies at 71

posts on my blog

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...
...and you finish off as an orgasm.”