From the silly to the cerebral, George Carlin was a true master stand up comic

Is there another word for synonym? Regular readers know both Alan and I love comedy and comedians. This weekend we lost one of the true grand-masters and certainly one of my personal top comic geniuses, George Carlin. Where many comedians have a specific area where they focus, Carlin seemed to effortlessly cover the full spectrum from the very mundane everyday observations to the childish, from the thought-provoking to the topical. He had a masterful command of language - Get on the plane? I don't want to get on the plane, I want to get in the plane...  I remember seeing Carlin for the first time on TV when I visited America in 1979 and he was a guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. I was an immediate fan. I also saw several others of his contemporary comedians such as Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Don Rickles etc, and to my mind Carlin was in a class far above the others. "I went to the bookstore and asked the saleswoman where was the self-help section. She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose."

I saw Carlin a couple of times perform live when I lived in New York City and I taped most of his HBO shows and just loved his way of moving the themes along with his jokes. A new Carlin TV special was always a great upcoming TV event for me and I find myself watching his old shows time and again, laughing and laughing. Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practise." Carlin did try his hand at acting and was not very successful at it, mostly playing bit parts where they needed an old weird geezer in some movie or TV show. He has released a long list of DVDs (am still working on finishing that collection) and he's been published in book form as well, where his comedy works very well. And where most comedians tend to burn brightly for a few years and then seem to fizzle out and move onto other things, like acting in their own sitcoms like say a Jerry Seinfeld or Tim Allen hosting a game show Howie Mandell or a talk show like Jay Leno or move to the cinema screen like Eddie Murphy, George Carlin continued doing stand-up over five decades remaining fresh and thought-provoking, as well as side-splittingly funny all through the ages. I will greatly miss George Carlin. Perhaps his own words summarize it best, "Age is a very high price to pay for maturity."

Comments

[Alan Moore]

or as someone said - " If you want to feel your age feel someone younger"

Nice one Tomi

Alan