Edgy comic George Carlin dies at 71 - Yahoo! News
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.
ADVERTISEMENTCarlin, 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.
Dead at 71. A shame. He was a very funny guy, albeit that he never lost his lifelong love affair with the left. As to his demise, though, long-time drug dependency doesn’t do a damned thing to extend life expectancy. Especially if you have heart problems - which are often caused, and definitely exacerbated - by certain drugs.
My drug and alcohol days were essentially over by the time I turned thirty, and although it took me another 25 years to dump smoking, I haven’t tasted nicotine since midnight of June 30th, 2001 (why no, I hardly remember it). Most of my risk factors from all three are now not much worse than the general population of non-doping, non-drinking, non-smoking folks. And although I miss all three, I’d really like to survive beyond the age of 71.
Considerably beyond that age, in fact.
UPDATE: In honor of Carlin, Ace is holding a haiku contest: The only rule is you have to use all of Carlin’s seven dirty words in your haiku.
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
Liked Carlin, but think he hadn’t been funny for the past 10, if not 20, years.
I just quit smoking last Thursday. What’s this, the fourth or fifth time? Hoping I can stick with it. In an odd way, it was Tim Russert’s death, of all things, that pushed me over the edge this time. Guess I don’t want to die too young either.
I think I quit for periods of from a few days to a few weeks at least a dozen times before it finally took. Cold turkey was the only thing that finally worked for me.
I’ll add the next 3 words that Carlin updated his routine with: fart, turd and twat.
Re: smoking: I never smoked but my mom did for about 30 years or so. The only way she was able to finally give up the sticks for good was cold turkey. In fact, most former smokers that I’ve known have gone the cold turkey route. Being a non-smoker, I don’t have any real insight into the matter other than what I’ve observed. Caffeine addiction though, is something with which I’m well aquainted. But I can quit any time I want. Really. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need another cup of tea.
My dad tried every possible method to quit the sticks, up to and including hypnosis, which he always scoffed at. None of them took, until my stepmom talked him into trying hypnosis one last time. He said he walked out of the guy’s office without the least desire for a cigarette, much to his own bemusement, and never so much as looked back.
Of course, he died a few years later, after having had emphysema for two years, which seems to be about the upper limit for survivability for that horror. Runs in families, too.
I’m doomed.
Every time you get the urge to light up, tell yourself that you’ll have one later. That’s what my Dad did 35 years ago, and it’s still not “later”.(he ain’t smoking).
Carlin: black-and-white TV, 60’s summer season, short hair, and (approximation from memory), “Tonight’s forecast: dark.” “… there’s some ICBMs coming in over the North Pole, so I wouldn’t sweat the thundershowers…” I remember sitting by the TV with a tiny reel-to-reel recorder just waiting to capture his stuff when I could.
Smoking: strong black coffee and three Musketeers bars. Oh, and not being able to breathe kinda helped. Still, I’d have to say that quitting was…well, it made divorce and bowel resection seem easy by comparison.
warren, that’s his “Al Sleet, Your Hippy-Dippy Weather Man (with all the hippy, dippy weather– Man)” routine. Was so popular it was issued as a 45 rpm single.
And you missed his other line in there: “Radar’s picking up ‘Sing Along With Mitch…’: Give me your answer do/I’m half crazy…”
When I was young, George Carlin was funny because a) he was outrageously outspoken, b) he had a really different way of looking at a lot of things closely that most people tended to ignore or take for granted and c) he used a funny turn of phrase, a funny and often profane presentation, to comment on the topics he chose.
As I got older, I came to understand that George made it his business to poke sharp sticks - in as funny a manner as possible - at anything he saw as pomposity, an overbearing or elitist attitude and/or arrogance or an attitude of superiority on the part of almost anyone.
Unfortunately, as he aged - especially in the last decade or so of his lifespan - George’s perception of reality suffered some slippage; he became less bemused and increasingly embittered at what he perceived to be true. His latter-day comedy became largely unfunny, as he increasingly viewed life external to himself in warped terms.
He could still produce funny, lucid commentary on occasion - his take on “Global Warming”, endangered species and man’s relative insignificance to the planet is a case in point - but such pieces became rare, where once they had been the norm. Too bad - but there it is.
For a very long time, though, he was a funny, funny man.
Smoking: I quit in grad school, cold turkey, after several false starts - but then, I’d only done it for a few years, since graduating from high school. Bronchial scarring, the residue of a serious upper respiratory infection a few years before, made the decision that much better for me.
Only once - about six months later - did I even try another cigarette. When I did, I couldn’t even imagine why I’d ever done such a nasty thing to my breathing equipment - and I’ve never been really tempted to try another one. I still like the smell of a good cigar, but I have no interest in smoking one myself.
I quit smoking grass not long after quitting tobacco - the smoker’s cough/bronchial inflammation from that was even worse than from tobacco, a fact I soon came to realize.