Word: carlin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Carlin clearly believes his contact with Columbia's students and bohemians during the smoldering '50s shaped both his humor and intellect. "There were all kinds of ruffian elements in our neighborhood, and then we had the college kids, intellectuals...'faggots'. I can't believe that whole spirit of erudition just passed through our existence. I'm sure it was a force on our lives--it can be measured some day when we have the right instrument...
...parents and grandparents were fascinated with words and poetics, and seemed to foster that same affinity in their family. "I'm sure there's cellular truth to this, too," Carlin interjects, "but my mother's father was an original New York cop, and he had written out long-hand all of Shakespeare's written works--he quizzed my mother at the dinner table. And my mother was always careful to let us know how we could free ourselves through expression...
...mother bought him a tape recorder when George was in the eighth grade and he started recording short comical skits--"news, sports, all the stuff that established my comedy"--and visions of radio and music and disc-jockey slick distracted Carlin from his studies. He eventually quit school...
...Carlin always enjoyed breaking rules, crossing race and ethnic lines, mimicking Blacks and Italians and Jews. He's listed his "Seven Words" in auditoriums for ears all over America, and has completed a very astute study of the unspoken street culture that parents try desperately to shelter their kids from. Carlin sees his comedy and rebellion as his self-expression, his way of freeing himself from his emotions and feelings--a liberation. It started, he says, "when I was a kid and I ran away from home and told all the institutions to go and fuck themselves. I was smoking...
...every "parental" restraint he defiled, Carlin found he was opening up his mind to the world, understanding other perspectives on life. Drugs had opened his "doors of perception," he says, and "they had an influence I wouldn't deny...