More on George Carlin
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:06 pm
The George Carlin Show:
The much touted George Carlin came to town, and played here to a full house. The audience was generally a much younger crowd than we usually get in this town, and was very responsive and enthusiastic.
The show got underway a bit late, and began with a stand-up comic whose name I did not get and who was not listed in the program. He proceeded to scream into the microphone for 45 minutes. His one-liners were scatological, genital, or urinary, and a couple were actually funny. This was followed by a 20 minute intermission, during which the audience was exhorted to go to the lobby and buy CDs. I suppose this was to warm up the crowd.
Finally, Carlin came out and delivered a single sentence for about 10 minutes, consisting of all the possible cliches and catch phrases one could think of - and some one couldn't think of. That was a tour de force. If you laughed or even just chuckled, you would miss at least a dozen. This was to be the opening on his latest HBO show. It could have been the closing as far as I was concerned. It was downhill from then on.
Carlin used to be funny, and clever. Now I can characterize his act as sick and depressing. Every second word was either s**t or f**k, and the corresponding verbs, often included not for emphasis but for lack of anything else to say. The audience loved it. All he had to do, at odd moments, for no apparent reason, was to shout: "F**k you!" - and the crowd would convulse into peals of laughter and screams of delight. The main subjects of his dissertation were death and misery. All this occupied the better part of an hour.
I guess I must be showing my generation gap.
Willy
The much touted George Carlin came to town, and played here to a full house. The audience was generally a much younger crowd than we usually get in this town, and was very responsive and enthusiastic.
The show got underway a bit late, and began with a stand-up comic whose name I did not get and who was not listed in the program. He proceeded to scream into the microphone for 45 minutes. His one-liners were scatological, genital, or urinary, and a couple were actually funny. This was followed by a 20 minute intermission, during which the audience was exhorted to go to the lobby and buy CDs. I suppose this was to warm up the crowd.
Finally, Carlin came out and delivered a single sentence for about 10 minutes, consisting of all the possible cliches and catch phrases one could think of - and some one couldn't think of. That was a tour de force. If you laughed or even just chuckled, you would miss at least a dozen. This was to be the opening on his latest HBO show. It could have been the closing as far as I was concerned. It was downhill from then on.
Carlin used to be funny, and clever. Now I can characterize his act as sick and depressing. Every second word was either s**t or f**k, and the corresponding verbs, often included not for emphasis but for lack of anything else to say. The audience loved it. All he had to do, at odd moments, for no apparent reason, was to shout: "F**k you!" - and the crowd would convulse into peals of laughter and screams of delight. The main subjects of his dissertation were death and misery. All this occupied the better part of an hour.
I guess I must be showing my generation gap.
Willy