Since the posts aren't timestamped, I am wondering how much time transpired between this, and Stanley realizing. "Hey! I don't have to be content with just mentioning this at the end of some smelly thread."?

Not much, I can assure you.

Can't see the link. Is it this? Genius.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits

Not much one can say to this sad news except: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

I knew it. I knew I would not be first off the mark. Oh well, time to go to work.

In other sad news, the theater where I've seen some of the best performances, and most exhilarating stagings, ever in my life, is closing. It was long rumored, but having it actually happen is a real drag.

"You can prick your finger, but you can't finger your prick."

I liked Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure as much as anyone, but I'm surprised at what an outpouring of emotion there is for Rufus' passing.

I first saw him on HBO in his "Carlin at Carnegie" special when I was about 8, and that was the first time in my life I laughed so hard it hurt.

Later, I dabbled in stand-up and did a few open mike nights. I got lots of laughs with heavily Carlin-inspired material, and one of the other comedians said something to me like, "Hey, I could be funny too if I acted just like George Carlin."

In my opinion, his bitterness started to outweigh his funniness about 10 or 15 years ago, beginning a decline that, speaking as a fan, was sad for me to watch. But what the hell, he had earned the right to be bitter. RIP, George.

Through the unfathomable awesomeness of YouTube, you can see the entire Carlin at Carnegie special right now:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

I may be biased because of my fond memories of this special, but this, IMHO, is the man at the peak of his powers.

In only 95 years (thanks to the new copyright extension), Ben Domenech can begin appropriating Carlin's material without legal consequence.

Hmm, I just watched the Carnegie special again and it wasn't as funny to me now as I remember it being when I was a kid. Damn.

12: Bill Maher seems already to have ripped off the entire routine that Stanley posted here. Maybe that's why Carlin was so bitter?

He had a routine in the early nineties that included a bit about how language was amazing, because you could string together words in a new way hat no one had ever said before. The conclusion of that bit (which I won't repeat here, cuz it needs to be appreciated in context) had me laughing so hard I had tunnel vision.

Carlin was the first comedian I fell totally in love with, too. Probably when I was about 12.

"I'll tell you one good thing about herpes. Finally, people from Brooklyn have a disease they can mispronounce. Hoipes. They haven't had one like that since tuboiculosis."

15: I remember that one! I still like both "Please cut off my leg" and "Do what you want with the girl, but leave me alone!"

Batshit!
Ratshit!
Dirty old twat!
69 assholes,
Tied in a knot!
Hooray,
Lizardshit,
Fuck!

Let this be the thread of sad passings: I see that Cody's Books is closing, which I can hardly believe even though it's seemed inevitable for a decade.

A quote from a recent Salon interview with George:

You've been pretty consistently grumpy over the years. Do you hate a lot of people?

Not really. The word "hate," that's a convenient word we use. But I don't live angrily. I don't live with hate. I don't have any grudges in life. I've never held grudges. I've never had resentment. I see people who have that and I think, "What a waste of time." I've really never been in a fight.

Really?

Never, never. And I don't lose my temper. I mean, I can get irritated, I can get mad and angry about something, which is a good, healthy thing, I guess, but no. Anyone who's been around me for five minutes or five years would have to say that I'm pretty even-tempered, and I'm pretty open with strangers and fans and stuff.

The closest I can get to that [anger] is to say that, at some point there leading into the '90s, I divorced myself from any stake in the human adventure or the American adventure. That sounds kind of pompous so let me just break that down. What I decided was that I didn't give a fuck about what happens on this planet to these people. I mean, I see the nice things in people, I see the good things, but I also see what a depraved, sick species we are, the only species that kills its own for personal gain.

Sounds like a sensible, enlightened, all-around nice human being. RIP Mr. Carlin.

hey, cerebro!

Awww, Carlin. That was a depressing way to wake up.

20: Please to be reading the archives.

Best line from a friend re Carlin: He's telling St. Peter what the 7 words are you can't say in HEAVEN. (Uh, how about Scientology, for starters?)

And re 20 - I will REALLY miss Cody's. It was one of the things I missed most about living in the East Bay, one of those increasingly rare bookstores where you got the sense that everyone there had actually read all the books in the joint. Made you feel smarter just by walking in the door.

That's not a very good line.

Cody's was my least favorite of the notable East Bay bookstores, but I'm a big crank. I'm much sadder about the dwindling movie theater options in those parts.

Also, I imagine that committed athiest Carlin would be pretty annoyed at the suggestion that he would be hanging out at the pearly gates.

Cody's was OK, but there are other bookstores like that in the world. What I miss since leaving the east bay is Moe's. Why don't they have a Moe's in Los Angeles? Where do all of the academics and book reviewers in LA go to dump off their useds and unwanteds?

The great Andy Ross vs. street kids battle of the late '90s was one of those fights where I wished both sides would annihilate each other very quietly and far away from me. Or perhaps they could have been trapped forever in a gateway between dimensions strangling each other, like in that episode of Star Trek.

Truly, Moe's is fabulous. I also would like a copy of University Press Books to follow me to every city I live in.

RIP indeed.

I'm much sadder about the dwindling movie theater options in those parts.

Other than the UC and the Act I & II, most of the art houses here still seem to be doing pretty well. The Albany Twin, for one, is consistently packed (at least for opening films). I do miss the UC, though, if not the disgusting seats.

The Fine Arts is also gone.

My God, how I loved the UC Theatre. I would sit there for eight hours at a time during their incredibly stupid monster movie marathons, drinking Coke and bourbon and listening to my brain cells dying off one by one. Then the ushers would run around in furry monster suits, screaming, and shake us all out of our stupors. Fuck, that place was amazing.

The Fine Arts are also gone.

Presumably because of The Poison D'arts.

Or maybe the Poisson d'Arts.

aka Carp.

37: Reminds me that I forgot to post this Western PA carp freak show in the carp thread. "Where the Ducks Walk on the Fish."

I have go there someday. The carp is an impressive, blue collar fish.

some video.

Until the Democrats capture the carp vote, they're doomed.

Truly, Jesus was the fisher of men, Barack can be the fisher of carp.

(Self-edited Freudian slip: "Jesus was the fister of men")

Somehow I didn't know what the seven words until this thread...I am actually distantly related to the original Cody's books owners, but I've never been there, or to SF at all.

I wonder if there's a name for the phenomenon of the cultural signifier—a comedian in this case, but it could be anything—that you credit, and acknowledge the importance of to people like yourself, but who for some reason don't do so much for you.

This is not rejection, it is not disagreement, exactly, just noticing that somebody/thing that is important to some people doesn't seem so to you.

I'm sure we all have some of these, and patterns of them might tell us interesting things, but mostly it's just a fact of life. Carlin and Dylan are two examples for me, but I've enjoyed the music of one, the comedy of the other. It's not dislike, just a different valuing.

How do you deal with this kind of disconnect, and does it ever bother you?

I kinda feel that way about Beck. I attribute it mostly to jealousy.

Yeah, Carlin made me laugh until I cried when I was a teenager, but as I got older I couldn't tell if he'd just pulled a Vonnegut (gotten more bitter than funny) or if he wasn't really as funny as I remember. In retrospect, I think it's a little of both.