Death Comes a Knockin'

George Carlin died yesterday. I can't say I feel sorry for him. He isn't around to feel sorry for. If I knew his family and friends I could say I feel sorry for them. But, really I feel sorry for myself. He was funny, very funny. But I can't say I ever paid to see him or that I sought out his shows. I saw some routines and thoroughly enjoyed them. I read a couple of his book. Really enjoyed those. What I can say is I feel sorry because his death reminds me of my own mortality. This isn't something you feel until you hit your fifties. Kids never feel sorrow over a death. But I'm feeling each one. And I'm feeling them more poignantly.

Here's the famous "Seven Words" routine. He got arrested for this in Milwaukee in 1972. And he's famous because this ended up in the Supreme Court where:

Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5-4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's right to regulate Carlin's act on the public airwaves.

Looking at the routine from the perspective of 2008, it was a tempest in a teapot. There's nothing to get outraged about. To think that he was jailed for this is as funny as thinking about the Victorians and their pretense that sex never happened and that no "decent" women ever enjoyed sex.

Anyway... enjoy the show... and give a thought to George Carlin (and your own mortality)...