MyWestworld

Exit … Stage Left

Posted on 16. Aug, 2008 by Anne Rose in Travel Blog

Comedian George Carlin once observed: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” Here are a few more nuggets from Carlin’s repertoire:

“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”

”Ever wonder about those people who spend $2.00 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backward.”

“If a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.”

“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.”

“I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me–they’re cramming for their final exam.”

Well, I wonder how George fared. As you may have heard, Carlin died on June 22 in Los Angeles of heart failure at age 71. I expect he is keeping everyone in stitches in the Great Beyond.

Carlin began his career in comedy as a jacket-and-tie kind of guy, with a partner, Jack Burns, but in the 1960s, he went solo with his act, donning a beard and a ponytail, and went on to redefine standup comedy, shattering taboos and becoming a counterculture icon. He constantly pushed the envelope with his humour, particularly with his famous routine, “The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV.” When Carlin uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested for disturbing the peace. And when they were played on a New York City radio station, they resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1978 upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language. “So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he said earlier this year.

During his long and productive career, Carlin produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies. He also hosted numerous episodes of Saturday Night Live, including the show’s first, on October 11, 1975, about which he noted on his website that he was “loaded on cocaine all week long.”

The targets of Carlin’s acerbic and cerebral commentary were many: organized religion, political correctness, unscrupulous advertising, baby boomers, politicians, hypocrisy, and the English language, to mention just a few. Two of his funnier diatribes were about the airlines and their silly announcements and the absurdities of airport security. In case you haven’t caught these two routines, I am including the links to the pages on YouTube where you can view them. Take note: They include a few words and phrases that some people may find objectionable.

Click to watch the video on airline announcements

Click to watch George Carlin on airport security

Tags: Videos