Word: carlin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...grew long hair and a beard and began doing different kinds of material - about drugs and Vietnam and America's uptight attitude toward language and sex. Fans of the old George Carlin weren't ready for it. Carlin got thrown out of Las Vegas twice for material that today would seem tame (one offending routine was about his own "skinny ass"). At the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wis., he so riled up a conservative crowd with his jokes about Vietnam that he nearly caused an audience riot. Even Johnny Carson banned him as a Tonight Show guest...
...early '70s Carlin had completed a remarkable change, opened up a new audience for stand-up comedy and helped redefine an art form. Like Lenny Bruce - whom he idolized and who helped him get his first agent - Carlin saw the stand-up comic as a social commentator, rebel and truth teller. He challenged conventional wisdom and tweaked the hypocrisies of middle-class America. He made fun of society's outrage over drugs, for example, pointing out that the "drug problem" extended to middle-class America as well, from coffee freaks at the office to housewives hooked on diet pills...
Most famously, Carlin talked about the "seven words you can never say on television," foisting the verboten few into his audience's face with the glee of a classroom cutup and the scrupulousness of a social linguist. While his brazen repeating of the "dirty" words caused a sensation (and prompted a lawsuit that eventually made it to the Supreme Court, resulting in the creation of the "family hour" on network television), his intention was not just to shock; it was to question our irrational fear of language. "There are no bad words," said Carlin. "Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And woooords...
Fuzzy language and fuzzy thinking were always among Carlin's favorite topics. He marveled at oxymorons like "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence," and pointed out the social uses of euphemism: "When did toilet paper become 'bathroom tissue'? When did house trailers become 'mobile homes'?" He reminisced about his class-clown antics and Catholic upbringing in the rough Morningside Heights section of New York City. He took on all taboos, even the biggest one, God. How could the Almighty be all-powerful, mused Carlin, since "everything he ever makes ... dies...
...1970s Carlin was selling out college concerts, releasing best-selling records (his breakthrough 1972 album, FM & AM, spent 35 weeks on the Billboard pop charts, revitalizing a comedy-record business that had fallen on hard times). When NBC introduced a new late-night comedy show in 1975 called Saturday Night Live, Carlin was the comedian they turned to as the first guest host. And when HBO began rolling out its influential series of "On Location" comedy concerts, Carlin was among its most popular stars, headlining a record 14 one-man shows for the network, the last just a few months...