I caught one of the largest lumps in my throat of all time this morning upon hearing that George Carlin passed away over the weekend. I’m not going to get into a history lesson about why he was the greatest comedian to ever live in my eyes, but he was voted the 2nd greatest comedian ever on Comedy central behind Lenny Bruce (ahead of Richard Pryor) so I’m not alone in that opinion. His masterful ability to cut through the bullshit that human beings perform on a daily basis will never be duplicated – at least, not in our lifetimes.
I was lucky enough to have seen him perform on March 29th performing his HBO special It’s Bad For Ya and I don’t think I stopped laughing the whole time he performed. When my mother asked me if I wanted to go see him, my response was pretty appropriate:
oh yeah, that sounds like it would be great – i haven’t ever seen him live and should probably do that before he’s too old to yell obscenities anymore!
Thankfully, that never happened. Here’s hoping he’s smoking a fat stogey with H.L. and Pryor in magical unicorn land. Speaking of which: