jackassworld

I was sitting on the toilet with a bindle on my knee. The keys were shaking in my hand. There was a crumpled piece of toilet paper between my feet. Suddenly a broom came under the stall door and swatted the piece of toilet paper. I looked up and saw a little brown janitor peering in between the door and the jam. He smiled at me. Then he pulled the toilet paper towards him, swept it into his dustpan and was gone.

I was a little paranoid as I rattled down the hallway to get back to my seat, but George Carlin was performing (he used to do bad things, too), so I threw caution to the wind and just hauled ass, guilty of nothing. No one jumped out and apprehended me and I strolled into the dark theater under the gravely voice of Carlin who was on stage calling everything bullshit. “BULLSHIT!” he’d yell. This was a much older and much crankier Carlin than the one I had seen a few years before in Hollywood, but he was still funny as hell. I remember one line had me in tears; he was going off on the whole swearing-on-the-bible thing and it led him to a story about kids swearing on stuff. “Would you swear on your mom’s grave?” a kid asks him. “Yeah, I’ll swear on my mom’s tits. I don’t give a shit if they fall off. FUCK HER.” The “fuck her” part was just genius.

The disturbing part of this particular show, however, was that a majority of the audience was disturbed by his material. For an hour and a half, Carlin defiled Christianity and the bible. He couldn’t have been more offensive to the gentle religion than if he had come out on stage, shit on a bible, then lit it on fire, then pissed on the fire to put it out so that he could jack off on the embers. It was awesome. It was awesome—wait, I just wrote that. But the room was oddly quiet. There were pockets of fans here and there, but the majority of the audience was comprised of elderly white people. And they did not take kindly to him shitting on their beliefs. A few left, but most remained in their seats, scowling. My first question was, “Who goes to see a comedian they’ve never heard of and are completely unfamiliar with? Especially one you have to drop $60 to see? I mean, it’s George Carlin, what were you expecting?” My second question was, “If you don’t like it, what are you still doing here?” To me, it was just more evidence how stupid Christians are. “DERRR! DO WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS!” Sheep. At one point Carlin acknowledged the silence, “I know this isn’t my crowd,” he said, “but I just do my shit, so fuck you.”

Like I said, that show was only a couple months ago at the Orleans in Vegas. He seemed fine. It takes a lot of energy to get that angry. So it was with great shock that I read the front page last week and learned he died. Shit. (Insert sad face.) I always thought that dude was immortal.

I’ve been into George Carlin for as long as I can remember. I don’t really consider myself a huge fan of standup, but I guess I am. I don’t consider myself Scottish, either. I used to listen to Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Cheech and Chong—I used to buy fuckin’ cassette tapes of that shit. But Carlin was always my favorite. He always stood out. Somehow by being stupider, he was smarter. To this day I can still recite his cheer—I don’t even know what it’s called and I’m not going to look it up—“Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat, sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot. Lizard shiiiiiiit! FUCK!” That’s some smart comedy right there. I’ll always remember him as one of the best. I wonder if he would have let me hug him?