The Class Clown

My Dad bought us George Carlin's debut album, Take-Offs and Put-Ons, in 1975.  By that time, it was available in the dollar discount bin in any record store.  Recorded in 1966, when Carlin was still in his clean-cut opening phase of his comedy career, it contained numerous funny and clever, but not earth-shattering routines, that he would have performed on his many appearances on The Tonight Show and Ed Sullivan's variety show.

My brother and I ate it up.  We memorized that album within a month.  We could be heard outside, around the house and when we were sitting in the car, imitating Carlin's distinctive New York voice as such characters as Al Sleet, the Hippie-Dippie weatherman ("Tonight's low will be 35.  Tomorrow's high whenever I get up...")

Dad knew we enjoyed Carlin's TV appearances and we listened to that album until it wore out.  So doing what any father trying to please his children would do, he bought us a couple more George Carlin albums - FM/AM and Class Clown.  Carlin won his first Grammy for FM/AM.  They were both landmark comedy albums, but they featured a completely different George Carlin from his first album.  Heavily influenced by the highly political, counter-culture work of Lenny Bruce, Carlin was reborn as a hippie himself.  His humor, no longer safe for family or TV audiences, was peppered with references to sex, drugs and religion.

The difference in his appearance was equally shocking.  He now wore tattered blue jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts, an earring, sported a beard and his long, graying hair was usually pulled back in a pony tail.   He became a comedic genius after freeing himself up to find his own Voice.  He refused to dumb down his act for Middle America anymore.

I was never sure if my Dad listened much to the more contemporary Carlin material.  I know my brother and I still performed the family friendly/PG-rated material around the house.  Such as the classic "Baseball & Football" routine.

Imagine our shock when my Dad came home from work one day in 1976 and announced that he had bought the three of us tickets to George Carlin's upcoming concert at the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Revolution) Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. (I'm sure Carlin reveled in the irony of THAT venue).

The concert's audience was raucous, young, mostly college students, who were pumped up to be entertained by the "FM" George.  The pungent odor of pot drifted through the air.  Carlin, probably fueled by narcotics himself, performed a carefully honed set of raw, irreverent, thought-provoking material, including his most famous routine - Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.

I was 13 at the time and my brother was 11.  Looking back on the concert now, I have to wonder what in the hell my Dad was thinking.  My family's presence that night single-handily had the youngest and oldest members of the audience.  It would turn out to be the only time I ever saw Carlin perform live, so I must give my Dad credit for that.

A few years later, in 1978, I was living in Northern Virginia with my Dad, and he still worked as a government lawyer in Washington.  George Carlin's most famous routine, The Severn Dirty Words, had become infamous.  An FM radio station in New York City had played the routine in the afternoon in 1973.  A parent listening to the station, in his car with a young child, had complained about the broadcast to the Federal Communications Commission (F.C.C.).  The F.C.C. fined the station for broadcasting "obscene" material over the public airwaves.  The station fought the F.C.C.'s authority to levy the fine in court, and the case reached the highest court in the land - the United States Supreme Court - in 1978.  (Yes, five years is a normal length of time for a case to wind its way through the legal system and up to the Supreme Court.)

Because the case involved obscenity/free speech issues, and, I think, mostly because it involved a famous, outspoken public figure like George Carlin, it garnered a great deal of attention in the media.

My father was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar during that time.  He worked on cases for the government that would appear in the Court, although he would never argue a case there himself.  (He once took my brother and I to see a Supreme Court case argued, but that's best left for another post.)  Still, I was shocked when he came home one night from work and handed me a packet of 20-25 typewritten pages and said, "Here's a copy of the Carlin decision (Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978))."

For a civilian, to get your hands on a copy of a Supreme Court decision "hot off the press" in those days would have been a difficult task.  But for my Dad, it was like grabbing a gallon of milk on the way home from the office.  I thought it was pretty cool.

Contrary to what many people may have believed, George Carlin himself was never part of the actual case.  His "Filthy Words" routine from his Occupation Foole album was simply the routine that triggered the case.  It did, however, bring him a greater level of public awareness and notoriety, and certainly didn't hurt his reputation with his fans.

The most interesting thing about the Supreme Court decision to me was that it included a full transcript of the "Filthy Words" routine as an addendum.  The case is still considered a landmark decision.  (The Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld Carlin's routine as "indecent but not obscene.")

Here's a brief, edited clip of the infamous routine, safe for broadcast, on NPR's "Fresh Air."

Time would pass and years later I would find myself living in an area along the coast in Los Angeles called Playa del Rey.  It was adjacent to Marina del Rey, an affluent yachting community that was home to many celebrities.

One morning I was driving up the Marina Freeway, a short stretch of freeway that connected the Marina area with the 405 Freeway.  (The Marina Freeway ended at Slauson Avenue and was known locally as the "Slauson cut-off."  I thought of Johnny Carson's Art Fern character - "Take the Slauson cut-off.  Now get out of your car and cut off your slauson.  Get back in the car and drive to the FORK IN THE ROAD" - every time I was on that freeway.)

The connecting ramp from the Marina Freeway rose quite high as it merged to the nortbound 405 Freeway.  It was probably 5 or 6 stories high, and on those rare clear days in Los Angeles - usually in January or February, after a good rain - you could see the Hollywood sign and the snow-capped San Bernadino Mountains in the distance.

I was driving on this ramp one morning on my way to work when I slowed to let an older, balding, pony-tailed man, wearing a long sleeve white sweater and driving a new, bright red Ferrari convertible - with the top down in January - merge in front of me.

After I slowed and motioned for him to go ahead and merge in front of me, he quickly turned back and gave me a big wave of "thanks", as both our cars curved up and over and back down to the northbound 405.

"That was a pretty demonstrative wave," I thought to myself.  Not something you see every day in Los Angeles.  You know, that guy looked incredibly familiar.  Wait..that was George Carlin!  No mistaking it.  Or was it?

As my little Toyota sputtered onto the 405, I decided to try and race up beside the Ferrari - which was now moving ahead quickly - to confirm it was really Carlin.  I punched the gas and moved up to the right of the Ferrari, taking a little glance to my left.  Carlin, now aware that I was looking at him, looked back at me - gave me another friendly wave - turned back to the road, gave the car some gas and sped away.

George Carlin did a series of fourteen acclaimed one hour live concert specials on HBO.  Other comedians were amazed by his ability to develop an hour of sharp, new, broadcast-worthy material each year.  It takes most stand-up comedians years and year to develop just one hour of good new material.

Carlin's last HBO concert was broadcast live from the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, CA in March of 2008.  Cindy's theatre troupe was working in the smaller theater across the hall from Carlin's production that week.  The stagehands, working both Carlin's show and her show, told her that Carlin, no longer in need of a place for his stuff,  had donated the expensive, elaborate set that provided his show's backdrop to Sonoma State University's theatre department.

A few months later, in June of 2008, Carlin, who had suffered three heart attacks, checked into a hospital in Santa Monica, CA, complaining of chest pains.  He passed away that same day at the age of 71.

He was posthumously awarded the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor later that year.