Position Available — Occupation: Foole

Shit.

Piss.

Fuck.

Cunt.

Cocksucker

Motherfucker

Tits.

The preceding seven deadly words are brought to you today in homage to the late George Carlin, who passed away Sunday at the age of 71, according to the AP, apparently brought on by complications from just being too fucking ornery to still be alive.

Before I discovered Richard Pryor or Steve Martin (while both were still doing their best work), I found George Carlin. My friend Sean got away with murder at his house and he had these tapes of this guy… Carlin came off like the cool substitute teacher who would give you the answers to the pop quiz your regular teacher had left for that day. Only Carlin gave me to the answers to questions I hadn’t asked yet, but that I still ponder today because he brought them up. Does the Pope shit in the woods? I still think we oughtta know.

As a kid, I was listening to one of his first tapes at home one day, and my Mom came charging into my room, demanding to know what I was listening to, during Carlin’s “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” bit. And the funniest part was, he was telling a story about getting busted for listening to what passed for smut when he was a kid. Richard would later teach me about life, but until he did, George Carlin taught me about growing up the middle-class vaguely Irish-Catholic perennial square peg. He was right on the mark.

My recollection is that I had fully taken in Carlin’s then-slim catalogue when Steve Martin came around and gave the entire popular culture a pinch in the ass, and I lost touch with Carlin for a while. Caught him on HBO whenever we could afford HBO (or I was at Sean’s house), bought a couple of albums (“A Place For My Stuff”) that seemed to be re-working old themes without a fresh angle, and frankly sort of lost interest. Lost interest in a lot of things there for a while, but that’s a story for a different 12-step meeting.

When I came back to him about a decade ago, his act, like the world around him, had gotten mean, downright hateful. Unapologetically misanthropic. I saw that show on HBO, and basically his thing was that he’d not only given up rooting for the human race to survive, but had gone over to the other team’s side. He was actively advocating our extinction as a species. He said he liked, even loved, individual people, but as a group? Forget it. Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all. And it was really depressing, because every example he gave to buttress his position made perfect sense. I forget the details of the bit, but it carried over to his talk show appearances to promote the HBO special, it seemed to be his new life outlook. And I remember thinking, “Man, is this guy dark. He makes Sam Kinison seem like Ted Danson in blackface.”

Looking back on it now, I realize, Holy shit, this was his new angle! This was a total reinvention of his act, in his sixties. Stooped and greyed and more haggard even than when he was loaded all the time, George Carlin had re-invented himself for the generation he was sure was gonna push the button and end it all anyhow. And again at last, he was right fucking on the mark. I thought it was one of the great second acts in stand-up comedy, which for various reasons doesn’t seem to lend itself to second acts (Lenny Bruce, Pryor, Martin, Robin Williams).

So I’m neither shocked nor stunned that he only made it to 71. The life he’s lived, like Johnny Cash before him, he’s lucky he made it that far. And even then, he never stopped working; I’m pretty sure I saw a new HBO special just last year, maybe earlier this year. He looked liked Tim Conway doing an old-man impression of Carlin, but he sounded like vintage, irreverent Carlin. His act was about half “ya ever notice” filler, and half a continuing exploration of the ugly, secret, true side of humanity, highlighted by mordant observations about his own crumbling decrepitude and impending mortality.

George Carlin is one hateful, misanthropic sonofabitch I’m gonna miss.