Word: comical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...comic who spent much of his career railing against America's war culture, George Carlin had some pretty good war stories of his own from his tour of duty on the 1960s cultural battlefield. Once a popular, short-haired comedian who did parodies of commercials and fast-talking DJs, Carlin saw the counterculture revolution and decided he was talking to the wrong audience. So he grew long hair and a beard and began doing routines about drugs and Vietnam and uptight middle-class values...
...Carlin's career and his comedy were anything but a downer. He was unique among his contemporaries in remaining a top-drawing stand-up comic for more than 40 years, with virtually no help from movies or TV sitcoms. His influence can be seen everywhere, from the observational comedy of Jerry Seinfeld to the political rants of Lewis Black. He helped take stand-up comedy to the very center of American culture. It has never left...
...funnier. "I'm always a proponent for the comedy involved in people who are under the influence," says Apatow. "I just think it's fun watching anyone acting like an idiot." Alcohol, the comic intoxicant of choice for generations of filmmakers, is now too strongly associated in people's minds with spousal battery and drunk driving to be truly hilarious...
...cultural disconnect between marijuana (the illegal drug) and pot (that stuff that lots of regular people consume) is the comic fulcrum of Pineapple Express, in which a process server (Seth Rogen) and his pot dealer (James Franco) earn the ire of risibly bloodthirsty marijuana kingpins. Their escape is hampered, of course, by the fact that they're stoned. It's a high action comedy. Literally...
...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...