ENTERTAINMENT: Two Ways to Give Carlin His Due

  Chris Ritter, a New York entertainment manager and comedy writer with Las Vegas ties, offers this modest proposal as a means of honoring George Carlin on the Strip:
  “In lieu of the Strip dimming the lights to honor the legendary George Carlin, what if instead, the various comedy headliners all opened their show on the same night by saying Carlin's seven words?”
  He’s referring to Carlin’s most famous routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” from his 1972 “Class Clown” album link.
  It’s a worthy idea, and I’m sure Roseanne Barr, Penn & Teller, The Amazing Johnathan, Bobby Slayton, Vinnie Favorito and Carrot Top could come up with great individual twists on the routine. George Wallace, Rita Rudner and (especially) Louie Anderson would find it a little tougher dance with their audiences, but I’m sure they could sell it. Kudos to Ritter if he takes it upon himself to make the calls and actually coordinates the thing for Saturday night.
  Tributes directly from those individuals would likely mean more to Carlin than a light-dimming, which would be more of a symbolic nod from a city to which he was, let’s just say, indifferent.
  As far as a Review-Journal print tribute, I’ll take the cue from Carlin’s description of himself last year:
  “I was always proud to say I’m a comedian who writes his own material. Then one day I discovered in my head that I was actually a writer who performed his own material. I’m really at heart a writer, I’ve found. The fact that I perform and entertain also is an add-on. It’s another delivery system for the writer.”
  Jeff Abraham, Carlin's publicist, reminds me that his client was a perfectionist who always asked up front that his interviews be taped so his quotes would be transcribed word for word. And in those interviews, he chose each word carefully, speaking in a very deliberate, thoughtful fashion and not prone to chatter. Later, Abraham says, most reporters called back to say they were grateful Carlin had insisted on them capturing his literacy word for word.
  So instead of quoting stage routines that will be all over the Internet, YouTube and HBO (see Chris Lawrence’s previous blog item), I went back to past R-J interviews Carlin did with me and former entertainment writer Michael Paskevich to find six more comments, creating a list of “Seven Observations You Can See Mostly Intact in the Newspaper.”

   The most memorable interview was in 2005, after Carlin had completed a stint in rehab, and the frank talk about addiction and a higher power prompted Carol Cling, on the other side of the cubicle wall, to ask who I had been talking to after I hung up.
  — "You need a system and a structure. You need tools and techniques for maintaining sobriety. And you need a kind of spiritual connection."
  (He’s asked how that reconciles with his savagely funny tirades against organized religion.) "The things about religion I stand by. … Religion is a distortion and exploitation of — and I don't even like the word `God' because it's been given such a bad name. ...
  All I needed was to know that there was something probably bigger and more important than me, that I needed to be in touch with so I could take care of myself."

  — "I find myself very uninterested now in doing any kind of movie acting. Which at one point I thought was my main next step and another point thought was a nice sideline. Now I see it as an intrusion into the time I would normally spend in my creative life. It’s a collaborative art, it’s not creative. Now if Sean Penn and Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson called me up and said, ‘We want you to play the bartender who strangles six children,’ I’d say, ‘Well sure, just put me down for that.’ ” (2007)

  — "What I really enjoy is going out there and telling people, 'You've made it but it's only going to get worse and worse. … But in no way do these feelings reflect the good things that are happening in my real life. I live a joyful life that's free of anger ... and this discontent (onstage) is purely about the world, not my own life.” (1999)

  — "Individually, people are a wonder to me. You can look into their eyes and see a hologram of the entire universe and all of our potential. But, collectively, what they've done is allow commerce and religion to take over their lives.” (1999)

  — “It’s true about getting older. You have a greater perspective and things take on a more accurate shape. The edge becomes even keener because all the superfluous stuff falls away. You don’t confuse yourself with a lot of decoration and camouflage.” (1990)

  — "There just isn’t all that much for me in Las Vegas. I’m comfortable there but I wish the TV had more channels. I don’t gamble and if you’re not out drinking, partying or womanizing, there’s not much to do. I feel like I’m in the middle of the desert, alone with my crazy mind.” (1990)