Have you ever not laughed at something others did laugh at?
Obviously some people,lots of people,find Carlin funny.More power to them.I do not.
Who does the Porky Pig/Elmer Fudd? Carlin?
And so we swirl around the drain of wondering whether making people laugh makes somebody funny or not…
I was around in 1967 when Take Offs and Put Ons came out. I thought it was hysterical then. Later, after hearing all the great comedians of the day, I would elevate it to one of the funniest albums ever recorded.
The Seven Words routine is the kind of brilliant that comes along only once in a lifetime. It said everything about our society at the time. It just towers over so much of the rest of his humor, like finding “jumbo shrimp” funny.
And that’s really the issue. Like every other great artist, he had a few years at the peak of his profession, a number of years when his professionalism and hard work carried him, and a number of years when his name carried him.
Remember the bits at the peak. Most artists never see the peak from where they stand, much less ever scale it. If you’re doing a complete assessment of his entire life and career, the rest come into play. But never funny? That is like saying that the Beatles weren’t a good band. They were, objectively, or else the term doesn’t have any meaning. And Carlin was a great stand-up comedian, or else the term doesn’t have any meaning.
I think the finest comedians that this nation has ever known - Bruce, Carlin, Pryor, and Rock, to name a few - actually were more wry social commentators than “ha ha funny!” comic types. I mean, the best riffs from all of those guys could be reprinted in a sociology textbook and it would fit perfectly.
To be honest, true comic genius is humorous, but it isn’t always funny. I’ve only known Carlin since the 80s to present, and I always enjoyed his HBO shows and appearances on the late night shows.
I think if you are proud of America and think American society is just fine, you wouldn’t like Carlin.
I think he is the best standup comedian EVER.
Funnier than he will ever be in the future.
In the 60s I was a comedy wonk (that the only thing people today know of Jackie Vernon is “Frosty the Snowman” is a crime against humanity) and the first Carlin I heard was like a dopeslap into the future. Then his Catholic schools albums came out and “it was funny because it was true”-- someone in my own class (may (may?) have been me) had tried the International Dateline trick on Faddah. As time went on Carlin became less edgy and more wry, then started to verge on really effing annoying. As career moves go his latest could’ve come 10 or 20 years ago and my reactions, “It’s sad but he stopped being funny or relevant ages ago,” and “Who knew he’d live this long?” would be the same.
I thought his early work was reasonably funny, but when I saw him a few years ago, I left before the end of the first act. He was merely vulgar and misanthropic, and the group I was with decided that we didn’t want to spend more time with a crowd that thought he was funny.
I wouldn’t.
(Now Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig … )
I’ve never heard those examples used in defense of a good sense of humor. (Though I must admit, while I like where he’s coming from, Carlin reminds me too much of one of my friends’ hippie dads to find too funny. Just not my thing).
Yes he was that funny. I may be atypical on this board as my introduction to him was 'You Are All Diseased" which came out in 1999, when I was 19. I thought it was the most hilarious thing I’d ever heard. After that I went out in search of all his earlier works. IMHO, everything before “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” is not that funny. My favorite Carlin was the cursing, misanthropic Carlin. Also IMHO, he pretty much stopped being funny after “Complaints and Grievances”.
Favorite Carlin memory:
After discovering 'You Are All Diseased", I downloaded another album. The album I downloaded started with:
“Why??! Why!?!? Why is it most of these anti abortion people are people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place?!”
On a more disappointing note, I once bought tickets to a George Carlin show in Great Falls, MT (pretty much the closest US city of any size to my hometown) and dragged a friend to go see his show. Turns out I had the dates wrong and missed him by a day. I still feel shame to this day for fucking that up.
I’ll miss ya you old cocksucker.
If you aren’t already familiar with the strip, you might take a look at Tundra, which at times rivals The Far Side for quirky humor.
[QUOTE=Cat Fight]
I’ve never heard those examples used in defense of a good sense of humor. QUOTE]
For a young boy whose love of comic strips was just beginning they were priceless,I read the books over and over.
It was part of a bit about how rape jokes have become unacceptable. George Carlin and Sam Kinnison are the only comics I know of who could pull off really funny material about violence against women.
Well said. And yes, IMHO, as most other posters have indicated, he was that funny and insightful and influential.
If Lenny Bruce was, say, the Bob Marley of introducing a whole new approach to a wider audience, Carlin was like The Police - taking parts of that new approach but tying it to pop craftsmanship and accessibility to much bigger commercial success vs. Marley. Not sure who Pryor would be in this analogy - most likely Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix - an innovator on a whole 'nother level.
(don’t tug on that too hard, okay? I am sure it will fall apart at the slightest prodding… 
)
Speak for yourself! Just to take one example, the dialog in Comedy of Errors where Dromio compares a fat serving-wench to the globe, placing countries in various locations of her body, is side-splitting. Also, the Brannaugh Much Ado About Nothing keeps me rolling on the floor.
Oh my lord, yes. The mere thought of his euphemism treadmill routine–shell shock to combat fatigue to post traumatic stress syndrome–makes me smile; reading it makes me giggle; and actually seeing it reduces me to a laughing idiot.
It must be an age thing, because I don’t find him funny, either.
It’s kind of like that thread from a while ago where people were talking about how funny an episode of Mama’s Family or something was, and I didn’t get it at all.
I was trying to remember the rest of that progression. One of his smartest points, in my opinion.
Without being derisive, MadTheSwine, a big fan of comic strips and joke books probably is not going to like George Carlin. He is probably just too abrasive for you. And I used to read a lot of jokebooks as a kid.
The Porky Pig joke really loses something in the explanation, but he was doing an aside about taste and the assertion that some things can never be funny. He used that example to prove you can make a funny joke about rape, and in my opinion, he’s right and it’s funny.
I picked up a compilation of FM & AM, Class Clown, and Occupation: Foole last night (as it happened, I needed some stand-up I hadn’t heard before anyway). It’s fairly tame so far, but his delivery is pretty good and is funny enough. The hair poem was fun. What’s surprising me is his voice; I’m so used to the older George Carlin that it’s just odd to hear his voice as yet untouched by cigarettes. I presume that’s why his voice was so gravelly in his later years, anyway.