George Carlin, 1937 - 2008
George Carlin died yesterday. Pay tribute to him by remembering your favorite joke or routine of his, and laughing at it all over again. You know you have one; George was the Bob Hope of the last few generations of Americans, he was always there. My favorite bit of his was “Baseball and Football” - which, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, is yours for the clicking right here:
I saw George perform live 4 times over the years; he “killed” at all 4 of them.
I got to meet him, one-on-one, when I was a freshman in college. I had written a short comedy routine (which slavishly, even painfully, aped the style of the late comedian Lenny Bruce…but had some good jokes in it); and I decided that, since George would be performing at a local nightclub anyway, he would be the perfect person to: a) read my routine; b) swoon; and c) recommend me to all his big comedian buddies who didn’t already have material of their own (?!!). Anyway, George couldn’t have been nicer: after the show, he invited me in the dressing room, chatted with me at length about comedy, and read my entire routine — really reading it, not just politely scanning, because the first thing he said was, “Hmm. Kind of like Lenny Bruce’s stuff.“