He is an Ex-Carlin
Is it sacrilege, comedically-speaking, to use Monty Python to eulogize George Carlin?
George Carlin died, can you believe it?
I mean, I know we can all Believe it, capital B, but still.
He was seventy one.
He did a lot of things in those years that the human body "likes at the time" but that aren't really, health-wise, good for it.
My letter to him would read:
"Dear Mr. Carlin, I was in sixth grade when I learned about you. My father was a fan and had your albums and while we’d listened to them on occasion, I’d always written it off to that weird kind of parental
nostalgia where families gather around the ole phonograph to learn something, usually followed by the statements: They don’t make music like this anymore, they don’t make comedians like this anymore, they don’t make records like this anymore."It was not, however, until we bootlegged HBO from our cable company by crawling beneath the house in the three-foot tall crawl space filled only with cobwebs and bits of insulation, until then when it was filled by my massive sixth grade torso managing tools in the dark as my father called out directions from his position as "job foreman" in the backyard, sitting in a chair, drinking lemonade - - where was I? - - it wasn’t until we bootlegged cable and in the late hours of the evening I saw for the first time your bit on "Bombing Brown People."
"I set up my little sister’s My First Sony in front of the television, hit record, and turned the volume way up to ensure the best cassette quality recording. I practiced and practiced and at an extremely inopportune moment during my seventh grade year, I let the whole bit fly, my white polo shirt and catholic-school-polyester shorts ironed and neat, to a group of my friends at recess while our former-military science/religion (a conflict, right?) teacher, Mr. Singer, crept up behind me to listen. I know you wrote the bit, but I’ll paraphrase here for those who aren’t familiar. . . head over to YouTube and watch the clip, I’ll leave you a link. But imagine, if you will, a four-foot version of Mat Snapp, in his private school best, surrounded by ten kids in their private school best saying the following:
We average a major war every twenty years in this country, so we’re good at it. And it’s a good thing we are, we’re not very good at anything else anymore. Can’t build a decent car, can’t make a TV set or a VCR worth a fuck (yes, I used all his big words), got no steel industry left, can’t educate our young people, can’t get health care to our old people but we can bomb the shit out of your country all right.
Especially if your country is full of Brown People. Oh we like that, don’t we. Oh yeah, that’s our hobby, that’s our new job in the world, Bombing Brown People. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya, you got some Brown People in your country, tell them to watch the fuck out or we’ll god damn bomb them!
"Mr. Carlin, I’m not sure if my yelling God Damn on a catholic school playground was what got me all that time in detention, it could have been referring to the four ethnic students at my grade school as Brown People (even though they were laughing along with the rest of the kids). You will be missed, sir. Thank you.
posted by Snapp @ 2:41 AM
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