I call Carlin a comedian but in many ways he was so much more…It’s kind of revolting to give him the same job title as say Ron White. I had the honor of seeing and hearing Carlin once just around the same time this clip is from… I was volunteer ushering at the Warner Theatre and once you helped seat everyone you could see the show… Anyways it was the only time I saw him - I don’t really do comedy shows-and I wasn’t that familiar with him other than him being a cranky old man in Dogma and also I think in the 90s he had some sitcom on TV…. In any case saw him about 2005 and he was so sharp, incisive and impressive…(I think him and Gore Vidal are my favorite observers of this at times infuriating country. Miss them both.. I think they would have seen the Trump years as the crystallization of their lifetime of social and cultural observation. I don’t think it would have made Carlin happy but Gore probably would have felt vindicated and….happy.)
A couple of years after seein Carlin at the Warner I swear to god he ran by me on the street in a tracksuit around 15th and N NW about a block from where I lived about four in the afternoon. I think it was a few months before he died of yet another heart attack… my theory was he was staying at a hotel nearby while performing his last shows at the Warner but I never researched any of this so maybe I made it all up. I know I already wrote this on this board but am writing it again as a way to remember it.
I think Carlin saw and understood the US as it really is as opposed to how we are socialized, conditioned and, frankly, brainwashed into seeing it…as opposed to how we want - no - need to see it to not go insane….because this place is a little crazy. We want to believe we matter and our life has purpose and hope
