Comedian George Carlin dies in Los Angeles at 71

[~Laura and Nick~ 5]

oh wow...RIP George...

[Mags 112]

RIP, George.

(I've merged all the George Carlin topics together, btw!)

[eric&gen 0]

LOS ANGELES (June 23) - George Carlin, the frenzied performer whose routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" led to a key Supreme Court ruling on obscenity, has died.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. He was 71.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin's jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" - all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 - noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" - and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 - a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body.

It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs including a carnival organist and a marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. He left with $300, but his first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in - the 1950s - with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin lost the buttoned-up look, favoring the beard, ponytail and all-black attire for which he came to be known.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

[eric&gen 0]

George inspired me to talk about my ####### loool.

[Henia 11]

I am real sad about his death. I enjoyed his 'real' offbeat humour. He was not afraid to tell it like it is (was) Sure miss George! My heart goes out to his family! But his memory and humour will live forever, so hopefully that will light their hearts!

[eric&gen 0]

The good people aways go out. RIP buddy.

[Mrs. BB 0]

He was the last of the trifecta...one of the Godfather's of modern comedy....Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, now George Carlin.

R.I.P. George.

[Empress of Groovy 373]

He had had a history of heart problems, right?

Yes...in fact, in Carlin at Carnegie, which I believe was from 1982, he jokes about his second heart attack. In one of his specials from a few years ago, he doesn't look well at all, but he had heart surgery not long thereafter and seemed like a new man. I think he was living on borrowed time, though.

I remember clandestinely listening to George Carlin records (records! yikes!) when I was a kid. He was a true original and just got better (and crankier) with age.

This is one of my faves from recent years. It's short:

[Mrs. BB 0]

Some great Carlin Quotes

When cheese gets it's picture taken, what does it say?

When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?

When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?

If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It's just stale bread to begin with.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer's disease where they slowly began to recover other people's lost memories.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

Women like silent men, they think they're listening.

"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.

Why is the man (or woman) who invests all your money called a broker?

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.

Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!

This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

[Sister Fracas 5]

I wish I'd seem him live just once. My mum saw him ooodles of times live...

Thanks for the laughs George

[Jessica777 0]

He was a fuuny ####### ///

Miss you George

[symbiosis 0]

This was a classic routine. One of the few (first) comedians to not mince words when it comes to religion.

End of an era!

[Sister Fracas 5]

Awww George...

"I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it. "....GC

[yogib37 3]

what I liked about George Carlin was the way he did his joke.

I always say that 'that is his polical opinion' and his view on world events. He was a very smart and very outspoken. I do not think he like the way the goverment ran and other things.

He always was looking up words in the webster, to find out what word meant, even as a little kid.

He had two long marriages and never divorce. Both of his wife's passed away. he was a great person and very smart.

I listen to him on XM Comdey about his life. It was a interview. He went to a catholic school, born in New York

RIP George. You left a lot of people behind who loved you

Peace

yogi

[warriorprincess 0]

Rest in Peace George. Continue with the laughs in Heaven.