“I don’t know how you feel about it…”
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on June 23, 2008 – 2:15 PM43 Comments
“…but I am getting pretty sick and tired of these fucking church people.”
My boyfriend uses that Carlin quip in response to anything and everything — he can’t find his keys, he’s lost his train of thought, a movie we’ve just seen really sucked — and the less the situation has to do with church people, the funnier it is. My favorite is when he says it in reference to the cats, especially when Little Joe is trying to hump the Hobe.
Update: I’ve located the bit on YouTube, and corrected the quotation accordingly. It’s at about 3:50.
I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’ll miss that old cocksucker.
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I actually gasped when I heard the news this morning. I knew he was getting up there in years, but it never even occurred to me that he was 71 and might actually DIE someday.
I hope there’s room up there for all of his stuff.
@Tisha_
I had the same reaction…the gasp and the disbelief.
I remember when I first heard the 7 dirty words routine, I made sure to learn them all, in order, as quickly as possible. I can still recite all of them, too, if asked.
He was one of the smartest people out there…he will be missed.
RIP, Carlin. I remember listening to his tapes in the car on roadtrips when I was a kid. Not only did my vocabulary expand, but boy was it colorful. He made us all laugh, and he made us all THINK, which is more than you can say for a lot of people.
RIP George. I have to say that I just snorted Diet Coke out of my nose laughing at the image of Little Joe trying to hump the Hobe. Ow. :)
I can’t decide which was my favorite routine of his, the comparison between baseball and football, or the piece about “Stuff.”
It’s very sad that I remember the 7 Words better than I remember most of the other stuff I learned as an undergraduate.
RIP.
I think the “church people” quote is from the “What Am I Doing in New Jersey” CD, in the track about Reagan.
Shit! I’m pissed! Damn my cunt and tits, that fucking cocksucker wasn’t supposed to die before I had a chance to see him live!
I’m gonna miss the old cocksucker myself.
He made critical thinking funny and cool. And he never lost his relevence. He was just as funny to me as he was to people three or four generations after me.
RIP you old fart. :(
My favorite bit of his was about not wanting to obey regular traffic laws because it was ruining his gas mileage. You know, from all the ridiculous slowing down and stopping. I think about it almost every day while driving.
RIP, George.
I just spent the last hour on YouTube listening to some of his old stuff and laughing so hard I have a headache. I predict a run on all of his DVDs. The reminiscing about swimming in the Hudson River (“that’s right!! We swam in raw sewage!!”) almost put me over the edge..
I hadn’t heard the news yet, but: sadness!
RIP, Mr Conductor!
@ Tisha_ & rayvyn2k: Me too. Had no idea he was that old.
I remember being a teenager and watching one of Carlin’s bits on TV, which got me a reprimand from my Dad. I knew right then & there that if Carlin was disliked by my parents, he was the man for me.
I remember having this conversation with my cousin, the stay home dad after I scored passes to the Thomas the Tank Engine movie:
Cousin: I’m just pissed that they replaced George Carlin with Alec Baldwin as the conductor.
Me: Wait, George Carlin is on Shining Time Station.
Cousin: Yep.
Me: George. Carlin.
Cousin: George Carlin.
Me: Woah.
Cousin: Yep.
Me: And they replaced him with Alec Baldwin. That’s bad.
Cousin: Yep.
I know, I was caught completely off guard when I heard about this. I still listen to his routines all the time.
My coworker and I have decided to say the 7 words as often as possible today as a memorial.
I can’t go more than a week without reciting part of Carlin’s “Icebox Man” routine, and it isn’t even dirty. I’m having a hard time believing he’s really gone.
@Tisha: a place for all his stuff, brilliant!
I wore out an 8-track of “Class Clown” when I was in highschool. I still have the VHS my dad taped of “Carlin at Carnegie”. I was at his 1997 concert that was his first back since he lost his wife Brenda; while he was still funny, you felt like you had shared a catharsis with him. I had just received an email about George and passed it on to friends on Friday.
@Tisha – my husband and I reacted the same way you did.
@George C – enjoy the ride, say ‘hi’ to Brenda, Joe has the heavenly CNN on the widescreen cloud for ya!
Aw. What rotten news to start the week with.
As a recent breeder, I have to give George C. special props for helping make repeated viewings of Thomas the Tank Engine bearable; I love that he took his narration work for that show seriously and did it with evident care and sincere fondness for little ones.
Although part of me has always watched those shows with the secret hope (fear?) that George will bust out the “Seven Words You Can’t Say To Sir Topham Hatt‗not to mention the intoxicating idea that Alec Baldwin might say “It takes BRASS BALLS to sell real estate on the Island of Sodor!‗I will always be touched and grateful that Carlin never condescended to that material or to its audience. What a classy guy.
I love the baseball/football bit; it’s in the Ken Burns series. I’ve always gotten the feeling Burns didn’t quite get that Carlin was taking the piss out of both sports, but it’s still awesome.
A truly awesome man… from the Seven Words You Can’t Say to Thomas the Tank? How much more awesome could a guy get?
I was so sad to hear of this last night. I just saw him last month for the first (and now last) time and I now feel even more priveleged. I loved him so much all my life.
The man taught me how to swear. Talk about a childhood hero.
I first saw Carlin when I was a little girl, back on the Ed Sullivan Show, when he was still doing the Hippy Dippy Weatherman. It was incredibly cool to see him morph into an angry/funny counterculture icon–I was just entering high school when “Class Clown” came out, and it kind of felt like we were growing up together. In fact, I was tending bar in a hotel full of ballplayers when football vs baseball came out (still my favorite, favorite piece), so he was like a smart, funny, friendly shadow all through my life.
He always stayed true to himself. A class act.
For my money, I’m hoping Jesus pulled a Buddy Christ for Carlin, just to make him laugh. Happy trails, George! Hurray, lizard shit, FUCK!
I had no idea he passed away until just now when I’m doin my catch up reading. Why aren’t all the flags at half-mast? Why isn’t there national news coverage?
Don’t answer that…. (grin)
Thank you, George, for the perspective, for the slap in the face, and for making me laugh until I peed.
They played baseball v football to close out Daily News Live on Comcast Sportsnet (at least the Philadelphia version) tonight. Awesome.
And he believed he’d be gone gone when he died. So all that’s left is us talking about him. Which ain’t half bad if that’s the way it goes.
What Kama Cath said. Damn you, Mr. C., for “passing away,” “leaving this life,” “shuffling off this mortal coil” or any other euphemism for death you’d have been pissed off about, before I got to see you live. If there is an “up there” I hope you’re chilling with Belushi and freaking out the heavenly host.
My agency is a nonprofit that deals with celebrities (in a weird way), it’s my job to keep up with the daily stuff and this made me sad. I love that I “get” to read the random sites all day and it’s “work” and I love that my boss and I talked buddy Christ and dirty words. Then I marked him deceased in databased and we discussed how many sited referenced which relatives he left behind. So odd.
My coworkers and I spent a great deal of the day discussing George Carlin. I’m a copy editor and one of my coworkers stayed late enough last night to get this very sad news in the paper at the last minute. He claims to have said all seven dirty words when he heard the news.
I have an affinity for that bit, as I got to use it in a presentation for one of my graduate courses. Even better than the original is the one where he discusses the fact that it is redundant for the list to include both “fuck” and “motherfucker.”
Stormy, I had a very similar conversation today, although I’d forgotten that the show Carlin was on was actually called “Shining Time Station.” I just remembered the Thomas the Tank Engine characters and thought the show went by that name.
Me: That’s so sad. I remember him on Thomas the Tank Engine!
New guy: That’s right. And Ringo Starr played that role too.
Coworker With Young Kid: George Carlin was on Thomas the Tank Engine?
Me: Yeah! On the old show back when I was a kid.
CWYK: There was another TV show?
Me: Yeah. It was live action. On PBS. I think. And I think Thomas was a real train. And George Carlin was on it as the conductor. And he was like this big *holds up fingers* and lived inside a model of the station or something like that.
CWYK: George Carlin?
Me: Yup. Love him.
“Can God make a rock so big that He Himself cannot lift it?” Heh.
Toledo Window Box was the first album of Carlin’s that I purchased (yes, album…33 1/3 with the hole in the middle…). I was 13 at the time. The Gay Lib piece was really the first time I ever thought about the idea of “normal and natural” of heterosexuality and homosexuality. His explanation “if you’re standing in a room, stripped, and it’s dark, and you’re hugging a person, loving…..and suddenly the light goes on and it’s the same sex, you’ve been trained to go AHHHHH! But it felt okay…” always made sense to me after that. I like that George really opened my mind beyond the ideas-and-values-slot into which my parents tried to pigeon-hole me.
@Tusha: awww! You know there has to be room for him AND his stuff.
The one comfort about having too much stuff myself is that it’s a little reminder of George, every day.
Well, that and giving the Seven Words a workout every day.
I’ll be honest – I’m not a fan at all of obscenities/swearing in pretty much anything. So I wasn’t a fan of some of Carlin’s most famous routines. That said, I still liked him very much. I found something very likeable about him in general; he really came up with some fantastic stuff. I was shocked to hear he’d passed, and I’ll definitely miss him.
To quote Jon Stewart, “I’m really getting tired of the people we need going away” (correct me if you can get the exact wording somewhere, I’m at work).
He was here in Orlando a few months ago and I desperately wanted to take my husband for his birthday but, alas, did not have the money. Now I’m kicking myself. The hit to the credit card would have been absolutely worth it. :-(
Yahoo had a snippet of a radio interview on the site yesterday. It was an AP interview from 1997. If someone can find a link to the real thing, please post it. He was talking about wanting to see his obituary and when he looked back, he was always pretty impressed with what he’d done, both because he gave himself credit for being young, but because he thought it was good. He ended the interview with “Gee, he was just here a minute ago. That’s the way I want to be remembered.”
Why do I get the feeling that Carlin and Jesus H. are commiserating right now over the FCP? I have this image in my head of the King of Kings (after giving George the requisite Buddy Christ finger-guns) with His head in His hands, moaning, “Georgie boy, you have no idea, man!”
RIP, George.
I love George Carlin. Not past tense, LOVE. *sniff*
I’m a much better swearer than I used to be, thanks to George.
RIP George. The final version of your house will be AWESOME.
I was so sad to hear of Carlin’s passing. He was so much like my Dad…liberal, wee, and really pissed off! Love!
So brilliant, and so unwilling to let anybody undermine his right–and ability–to think for himself. The world is a little…less..without him here.
HBO is remembering Carlin tonight and tomorrow night, everyone! Tune in!
http://tinyurl.com/648sgu
Also, SNL will rerun the first ever episode, which Carlin hosted.
http://tinyurl.com/5sydl4
I first saw George at around age 14 on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His bit was (obviously) PG in nature but he hooked me anyway. The entire 5-10 minutes was on the English language and how difficult it is to understand. I’d butcher it if I tried to give you all a transcript, but it was very smart and very funny.
Only later in life did I learn about Carlin’s earlier career, the 7-words and his overall rebelliousness. I enjoyed his acts, his small roles on TV and in movies, and his books. I would say he was definitely the first comedian I considered myself a “fan†of. I had listened to, and enjoyed Cosby and Prior earlier in life….but only because my dad liked their albums. So, George felt different because I decided I liked him on my own.
So, before I write anything else, please understand that I liked George Carlin very much and always will. But I won’t “miss†him. Not in the way most people seem to be with the general outpouring. I think we have to acknowledge that none of us “knew†him personally. And even if we had, mourning and loss are more selfish emotions than we like to admit. Sure, I’m saddened that he won’t have any more sunsets and so forth; in a very vague human bond kind of way. But to say I “miss†him to me means that I feel something has been taken from me. That on any level, I will now NOT be able to enjoy his genius any longer. The perfect and opposite example for me, is Phil Hartman. I STILL remember where I was when I got that news. It still makes me sad to think about it. But mainly it does so because I know his murder took hundreds of future laughs and good times away from me. And I CAN’T say that about George because if I’m brutally honest I admit to myself that I don’t/didn’t find him funny any longer. Not for a long time in fact.
I saw George in Milwaukee (home of his famous arrest) maybe 10-15 years ago. You cannot imagine how excited I was to be seeing him in person. Unfortunately, the act was largely recycled, disjointed, bitter, angry and sad. Not the kind of anger he was known for either…but seemingly angry at us the audience. He was heckled (a fact which embarrassed me as a citizen of this fair town) but he let it get to him and quit the show early. Shouldn’t a veteran of his intellect and experience be more than able to deflect the random shouts from some drunk? In one bit (prior to the heckling) he went on a rant about America’s youth wearing baseball caps backward. I couldn’t help but think….â€George, you are wearing a ponytail RIGHT NOWâ€. Does age really render us all so universally unable to remember what it was like to be so young ourselves? You wore a ponytail to avoid conforming…the same reason little punks wear their hats at annoying angles now…to make their parents and teachers cringe.
I liked his roles in Dogma and Jersey Girl. But I don’t think I laughed one time during viewings of his final 3-4 HBO stand-up specials. And don’t think I didn’t WANT to laugh. I would tune in to Real Time every week that he appeared alongside Bill Maher…looking for some glint of my old Georgie. All I got was sort of tangential, unspecific ranting. I think he was still “with itâ€. I think he was still very smart. And I think he was still mad at very much the appropriate things to be mad about in this world. But I also think he was no longer willing or able to put in the effort to distill those thoughts into actual concentrated comedy at this stage of his life. The razor wit (and frankly hard work) involved in his “make you think†body of work was no longer visible. And as I wrote earlier…I think it had been some long years since I last saw it.
In George’s defense, comedy (like rock music) is young persons work. I firmly believe that for many the cultural “window of relevance†is a small one. And to his credit, George’s window was FAR wider than most. When I think of all the performers who were really funny stand-ups for a time….maybe THE funniest alive…and for whatever reason(s) simply aren’t anymore..(Denis Leary, Dennis Miller, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld even… just to name five) it boggles the mind. What happened? Did I change? Is it me who’s sensibilities are different as the viewer? Or is it, as I suspect, that age and responsibility soften even the most edgy performer? You can’t make good music if you’re in love and everything is great. Likewise, you can’t make great comedy if you are happy and live in a mansion. And that’s where I come back to George. He wasn’t delivering to me anymore. And so I can’t truly “miss†something that I no longer believe was forthcoming. His role in Cars? Could that not have been dubbed by Tommy Chong without anyone noticing the difference? But man, he sure did bring it for a good long time…as I said…longer than most. He helped teach me it was OK to question and analyze things and for that I’ll always be thankful. Now, it’s a different phase or him and for me. For now, I need Louis C.K. telling me it’s OK to think of my kids as little A-holes even though I couldn’t stand a day without them. Nothing stands still. A new decade. New comedic voices leading the way. All of whom owe Carlin a great debt.
Rest In Peace George. You’ve earned it.
I just realized my first sentence was incorrect. I made it seem as though Carlin was on the Tonight Show at age 14. D’oh!
My bad. I was 14. He was older. I watched him (from my living room) perform on the Tonight Show.