Published: June 25, 2008 10:07 pm            

B-Sides: ‘Boom! There he goes, God love him’

TERRE HAUTE — I remember scanning the audience as my wife and I found our seats for George Carlin’s performance in Tilson Auditorium back on Sept. 24, 2000.

Baby boomers (myself included) in sharp clothes, ready for 90 minutes of laughs and relaxation on a night out.

I suspected, though, that George would have other plans. And, indeed, any hopes of a comfortable stroll through hippie nostalgia vanished immediately. Within minutes, he had the crowd squirming with a rant — punctuated with F-bombs — about white people playing blues music. “What the [oh, let’s use ‘heck’] do white people have to be blue about — Banana Republic running out of khakis?” Carlin wondered aloud.

It was his indelicate way of saying, “Now that I’ve got your attention …”

George Carlin made a career out of pointing out the incongruities of human nature. In fact, I blame him for the first thought that popped into my mind when I heard the comic genius had died Sunday of heart failure at age 71. Instantly, I was mentally replaying his routine on death and funerals, where the deceased is suddenly more popular than ever. “I don’t want a funeral like that,” Carlin insisted, “and I don’t want to be cremated, either. I want to be blown up. ‘Boom! There he goes, God love him.’”

Knife-sharp social and political commentary made Carlin both a mainstream outcast and a counterculture legend. His “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit got the U.S. Supreme Court’s attention, for cryin’ out loud.

Still, while his swim upstream through American society was entertaining and admirable, it’s hard not to remember George best for his comedy. He was, after all, a comedian. As such, Carlin could brilliantly deconstruct a phrase or concept that somehow blended into acceptance.

Take flamethrowers, for example.

Their sheer existence, Carlin said, “means that at some point, some person said to himself, ‘Gee, I sure would like to set those people on fire over there, but I’m way too far away to get the job done. If only I had something that would throw flame on them.’”

Kind of makes you think.

He loved absurdity, too. A few headlines from his classic faux newscast included, “Out at the lake at City Park today, police arrested a one-armed man who was bothering the other boaters by continuously rowing in a circle,” and, “The Food and Drug Administration has announced that saliva causes stomach cancer; however, only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.”

He never lingered long, though, inside a purely comedic comfort zone, especially later in his standup career. Carlin explained his caustic side in a memorable interview with late Tribune-Star correspondent Gordon Walters, prior to Carlin’s Oct. 17, 1993, concert in Hulman Center. His expressions of outrage were an onstage fulfillment of an everyman’s fantasy.

“Everybody is full of all sorts of repressed anger,” Carlin told Gordon back in ’93. “It comes out in different ways. It’s been said that standup comedy is a socially acceptable form of aggression, even if you’re a mild-mannered comedian.”

Many tried to pin political labels on Carlin, seizing upon his rebel attitude and graying ponytail. Yet he never fit neatly into a “liberal” or “conservative” box. During his ’93 concert tour, he lashed out against everything from the Gulf War to golf to environmentalists. Thus, the label Carlin preferred for himself was “anarchist.”

“I have kind of a contempt for my species,” Carlin told the Tribune-Star. “Most individuals are pretty cool, but when they get into groups, they sacrifice their individuality and become ignorant and stupid. I’m angry about our potential and our performance.”

Critics often contended that the nature of Carlin’s work as a comedian naturally allowed him to live outside conformity, while the rest of America toiled away, selling or building widgets. Perhaps. But it’s still important, in a free country such as this, to have someone reminding us that some of our human accomplishments are really, well, just a little silly, and that it is possible to take ourselves too seriously.

For instance, we’ve softened our language. “Sometime during my lifetime,” Carlin said, “toilet paper became bathroom tissue … constipation became occasional irregularity … the dump became the landfill.”

“Landfill” makes us feel more comfortable than “dump.” Carlin never tried to make us feel comfortable. His goal was to make us think about the things we do, and have the courage to laugh at it all.

Near the end of his interview with Gordon Walters, Carlin said people often approached him at airports and actually thanked him.

“I don’t know if they’re overdoing it, but a lot of people come up to me and say their point of view on something I’ve talked about in my show has changed, or a relationship with another person has changed because of what they heard in one of my routines. Guys who have never gotten along with their fathers will say they and their fathers have started talking,” he said. “That’s nice, obviously. It seems I can make little changes by presenting a new angle on something.”



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

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