Edgy Comedian George Carlin Dead At 71

[ILS1]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs, dirty words and the demise of humanity, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material developed over 50 years, the bald, bearded Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin's routine were indecent, and that the government's broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.

The Grammy-winning Carlin remained an active presence on the comedy circuit. Carlin was scheduled to receive the John F. Kennedy Center's prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in November and his publicist said Carlin performed in Las Vegas this month.

His comedic sensibility revolved around a central theme: humanity is a cursed, doomed species.

"I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas," he told Reuters in a 2001 interview.

Carlin told Playboy in 2005 that he looked forward to an afterlife where he could watch the decline of civilization on a "heavenly CNN."

"The world is a big theater-in-the round as far as I'm concerned, and I'd love to watch it spin itself into oblivion," he said. "Tune in and watch the human adventure."

AWARDS

Carlin wrote three best-selling books, won four Grammy Awards, recorded 22 comedy albums, headlined 14 HBO television specials, and hosted hundreds of variety shows. One was the first episode of "Saturday Night Live" in 1975, when he was high on cocaine.

Drug addiction plagued him for much of his life, beginning with marijuana experimentation as a teen, graduating to cocaine in the 1970s, and then to prescription painkillers and wine. During the cocaine years, Carlin ignored his finances and ended up owing about $3 million in back taxes. In 2004, he entered a Los Angeles rehab clinic for his alcohol and Vicodin abuse.

George Dennis Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in New York City, where he was raised with an older brother by their single mother. He fondly recalled that the nuns at his school tolerated his early comedic inclinations.

After a brief, troubled stint in the U.S. Air Force, he started honing his comic act, developing such characters as Al Sleet, a "hippie-dippie weatherman."

Carlin told Playboy that his sensibilities developed in the 1950s, "when comedy stopped being safe ... (and) became about saying no to authority." He cited such influences as Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Bob Newhart.

He also dabbled in movies and television, recently voicing a hippie Volkswagen bus named Fillmore in the Pixar cartoon "Cars."

Carlin is survived by his second wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; and brother Patrick. His first wife, Brenda, died of cancer in 1997. News of his death was first reported by the television show "Entertainment Tonight."



Story Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080623/us_nm/carlin_dc)

[eppy 12]

one of my all time favorites, sad day:(

[CenTexSports]

The following is posted in the comments section after the article on Carlin in the web USAToday. Was this a Carlin quote?


Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...yes, that's comforting all right


I figured BBDE would like that.

[STANG RED]

Carlin had a brilliant mind and his comedy reflected it by making you think. And he was just as brilliant in 2008 as he was in 1968, which is about the first time I saw him on “Laugh In” or one of the other variety shows of the time. Not only was he a great comedian, he was also a great political satirist and spared no one with his superior wit and knowledge of the days political environment and its short comings. Carlin called em as he saw em, and could cut them to the bone, no matter what their political affiliation was. And he could make the rest of us laugh our butts off while doing it.

[pirate4state]

Originally posted by eppy 12
one of my all time favorites, sad day:(

me too :crying:

[halfnhalf]

One of the greatest comedians of all time, this is a terribly sad day.

[LH Panther Mom]

"There are two kinds of drivers: idiots and maniacss"




RIP George :(

[AP Panther Fan]

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

George Carlin

[pirate4state]

Search George Carlin on YouTube :clap: :clap:

[eppy 12]

The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept.

RIP George;)

[espn1]

By KEITH ST. CLAIR, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago

LOS ANGELES - Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Some People Are Stupid. Stuff. People I Can Do Without. George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.


The counterculture hero's jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks � why, he once asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

The actor Ben Stiller called Carlin "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats."

Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" � all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 � noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" � and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a few TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 � a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply "die."

"'Older' sounds a little better than 'old,' doesn't it?," he said. "Sounds like it might even last a little longer. ... I'm getting old. And it's OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die � I'll 'pass away.' Or I'll 'expire,' like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they'll call it a 'terminal episode.' The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome.' And if it's the result of malpractice they'll say it was a 'therapeutic misadventure.'"

Carlin won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album and was nominated for five Emmys. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

"Nobody was funnier than George Carlin," said Judd Apatow, director of recent hit comedies such as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." "I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny."

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration (though not their close friendship). "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things � bad language and whatever � it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs, including carnival organist and marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with $300 and Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. His first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in � the 1950s � with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin ditched the buttoned-up look for his trademark beard, ponytail and all-black attire.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Weber contributed to this report.

[Diocletian]

Sadly the first time I every saw him was on Bill and Ted's movie. But I have since view many of his recordings and became a fan immediately. His humor is great and to the point, I love that about comedy.

It will take 50+ years for another Carlin to come along....

[PPHSfan]

"They are just words, Simple innocent words." "But say them in the wrong order and you offend someone." "You can prick your finger, but you better not ........"


Pure Genius.

RIP George. You left winged liberal nut job. I love you man.

[michaelp23]

Never heard of the guy. But from what I've heard today, its probably best I didn't. He may think he had it all figured out then, but he definitely does now.

[Diocletian]

The only comedian to use the "n" word on several occasions and never get bad press about it.

He could do no wrong this guy, most of his humor is so funny you don't even care about what it truely means.

[Trashman]

Here are some of his best quotes.

When cheese gets it's picture taken, what does it say?


When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?


If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?


When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?


I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?


If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?


Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?


What if there were no hypothetical questions?


Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.


Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.


Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.


Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?


Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.


Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It's just stale bread to begin with.


I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.


May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.


Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?


If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?


I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer's disease where they slowly began to recover other people's lost memories.


Electricity is really just organized lightning.


Women like silent men, they think they're listening.


"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?


Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.


If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?


Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?


Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.


I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.


Why is the man (or woman) who invests all your money called a broker?


I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.


There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.


At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.


As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.


The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.


Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.


Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

[Highschoolfan78]

He was also the first host of Saturday Night Live.. i saw that on the news and thought that was cool.. He paved away for the majority of the edgy comedians of today.

[Old Tiger]

my favorite carlin bit is "religion is bull****"

[piratebg]

Here is one of my favorites:


In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!