Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 314 - George Motherf*cking Carlin: Best To Ever Do It

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Get ready to meet one of my comedy heroes, but only if you can handle a LOT of profanity. George Carlin, following the path of his mentor, Lenny Bruce, kicked the doors of censorship down so people like myself could have careers in comedy, and not worry about being arrested for saying something "obscene."  Today, we learn about the amazing, prolific, inspiring life of George Carlin - how a boy raised by a single mother in New York City grew up to become a radio DJ, then part of two man comedy team, then a solo nightclub act who first achieved success after some early struggles as a clean-cut, mainstream comic. He next decided to follow his counterculture leanings only to lose it all, rebuild into something better, nearly lose it all again, and then become the Carlin of legend. Carlin battled a crippling cocaine addiction, domestic problems at home, a business that wrote him off numerous times, battles with a government that tried to censor him over and over again, and much more to end up with fourteen HBO comedy specials and the designation of one of the best, if not THE best to ever do it - the father of modern standup. Myself and the rest of the comedy community owe him a huge debt of gratitude, and I'm excited to share his life with you here today, on another biographical episode, of Timesuck. Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation:  In honor of the passing of Jeff Burton from the Rizzuto Show aka the Rizz Show on 105.7 FM in St Louis, we are donating $16,640 to Jeff's charity of choice - Kids Rock Cancer. Through the proven healing power of music therapy, Kids Rock Cancer helps children combat feelings of anxiety, depression, uncertainty, and helplessness.  To find out more, go to KidsRockCancer.org  We also are donating $1850 to our scholarship fund! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lJkZj_F42uIMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat. It's hard to choose just one quote to begin our episode on George Carlin. He simply had so many great quotes from a comedy career that spans several decades, but that one may be at the heart of what George Carlin brought to American audiences, a ticket to the freak show of America. The freak show had been happening every day around them for their whole lives, and they knew that on some level. But it took Carlin to really open their eyes to it, to give a voice to their feelings, to clarify their thoughts and suspicions.

With his intelligent profane, silly and irreverent sensibility that poked fun at language, wasn't above fart jokes and seriously interrogated the notion of who really had the power in America and why. George Carlin almost single handedly birthed a new kind of comedy. A kind of comedy that said what it wanted, how it wanted to say it. A kind of comedy that wasn't afraid to use profanity or to be offensive. In fact, being offensive became part of Carlin's brain and brand. By the end of his career, his brand of comedy became one that made audiences think, not just laugh, his jokes, observations and critiques.

They had fucking weight. It wasn't just frivolous, escape, his surface comedy. And if a few people got up and left for the doors, well, fuck those weak minded cock suckers and cunts. Dirt departure was just proof that Karlin was hitting the nerves he wanted to hit that what he was doing was working. Karlin was the real deal, the realist, but he didn't start out that way. He wasn't immediately an edgy, no holds barred, comedy, juggernaut, not right out of the

comedic gates. Carlton walks along and bumpy entertainment road before he become comfortable with his own true inner comedic sensibilities. He was born on May 12, 1937, the son of two Irish Americans in a troubled marriage. Growing up in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, Carlton wreaked havoc with his gang of friends, but also learned how to do impressions of his neighbors, family members and celebrities. They made a lot of people laugh, and he liked that a lot. His childhood plan was to become a radio disc jockey

than a nightclub comedian and then a movie star. Pretty sweet plan. Didn't totally accomplish it, but definitely wasn't a failure. To me, he became something so much more impressive than being another star actor. We got a lot of those. We only have one carlin.

During a stint in the Air Force, George began working in the late 1950s as a DJ and soon he would transition into a low-key stand-up comedian known for such whimsical routines as the wonderful wineau in the hippie-dippy weatherman. Before he went solo, it was his partnership with Jack Burns, another radio announcer that would get him out of the nightclub circuit. After achieving some success, after some struggle, the young husband and father discovered that he didn't like to tuck seedos and mild mannered sensibilities of his patrons, looking for clean, safe comedy.

He didn't like it at all. He found himself entertaining people he'd never want to actually hang out with. Think about it to a lot of the gigs I did early on in my own comedy, Career Hold, you shit, can I relate Carlin wanted to do something more than just be a city to city peddling harmless joke salesman He wanted to do something cutting edge something that felt true to his artistic voice Something would make people pay attention think about what he was saying in a much different way than people here And you know take my wife please type one line or isn't benign social observations.

Beginning in the 1970s, following the lead of his friend and mentor, Lenny Bruce, Karlin transformed himself into a provocative and decisive anti-establishment, comic icon, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, long beard, pony tail, rattling off a list of obscenities and his now infamous seven words you can never say on television routine. That routine would get him in some real hot water. He'd be arrested seven times for performing it in a 1973, the New York City radio station, WBAI FM triggered a lawsuit by the FCC after an error recorded version of a Carlin routine called filthy words.

This landmark, Carlin Case, was finally settled in 1978 by the Supreme Court. In a five to four ruling, it gave the FCC the ability to center offensive content and radio and TV broadcasts. And Carl and did not let that stop him. He continued performing, he continued reinventing himself, hiring new management teams, when his image got old, reinventing himself again and again, writing material that would speak to new audiences and to new issues of the day. His efforts would get him 14 HBO specials, millions of fans, massive respect from his peers and future generations of comics. And now he's considered one of the most influential comedians ever. He is certainly my number one. No one holds a candle to Carlton in my book of the best to ever do it. No one's even close. The life and time to George Carlin today,

on a thank you for doing what you did, for I would not have a career today without being able to follow the shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock, sucker, motherfucker, and tits road, you paved a dish in, of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Oh! Oh!

You're listening to Time Suck. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! You're listening to Time Song. Happy Monday, Meet Sacks. Welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm just gonna assume that most of you have been here before. I'm Dan Cummins, Suck Nasty, fragile butthole mucker, computer keyboard repairman,

and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifer, and praise about jangles and sorry triple M for butchering one of your songs more than normal last week. Dear God. A quick correction from the Catholic episode from two weeks back before I share a few announcements then get going. I saw several comments about mispronunciations online like on YouTube and this time I don't think my mush mouth actually earned them.

It's diocese when it earned them. It's diocese when it's won. It's diocese when it's plural. You can look it up. My pronunciation there is it's actually correct. Who knew? The plural version does sound super weird because almost no one ever says the plural version of diocese allowed. Almost always just in print. So I just wanted to throw that if you're hanging out of that one. be like, oh my God. There you go. Hoping many U-Bot tickets to the 2023 Burn It Down theater tour dates and also the Symphony of Insanity Club dates for the rest of this year 2022 all over at Dancomas.tv. Floor to this week, Miami and Palm Beach, then off to Boston and Grand Rapids in October,

Austin, Louisville in November, Portland in Minneapolis in December, and in so many cities, doing theaters in early 2023. Spokane, Boise, Kansas City, St November, Portland, Minneapolis, and December, and in so many cities, doing theaters in early 2023, Spokane, Boise, Kansas City, St. Louis Sacramento, Denver, San Antonio, Dallas, New Orleans, and so many more. Omaha, also in there, and more. All at Dancomans.tv. Extra excited to tour after going over Carlin's life. Love that this episode drops six years to the day after the first episode of TimeSuck. Six years of the suck every Monday with a smattering of bonus episodes thrown in those early years.

First episode came out about the lizard people September 19th, 2016. Holy shit. Did not plan this episode to be the anniversary episode. This was a voted-in topic, so thank you Patreon Space Luzards. Love that it lines up with me promoting my first ever stand-up comedy theater tour. Also lines up with, I don't know, really feeling ready to let everything out stand up wise. Had a great conversation recently with my wife Lindsay and my agent, and I have held back in little ways in moments with my comedy over the years.

For fear of pissing off family members, early on, fear of losing work, fear of pissing off fans, maybe more recently, damaging my career. I've been honest with everything I've said, everything I've felt, but my comedy has been true to who I am, but I have held back. Kind of like you do when maybe you're around a certain family member, a friend who can handle most of what you think, but maybe the words that not all of what you think, and you don't want to offend them. So I'm gonna work harder now, putting all that behind me, to be the most authentic on stage, to who I am off stage that I've ever been. Maybe you won't even notice, but I will. Excited, very excited to see where the road goes from here.

Last thing before we take off on this topic, I love so much, new merch in the Bad Magic Store this week, always new merch, the art warlock, design Design juggernaut who will not be stopped Check out the men and black tea and no we have not partnered with Will Smith for men and black five Although Will Smith if you're listening and you promise not to fucking slap me. I'll make a great a lit if you do slap me I'm gonna fucking hit you back all right. I know you look big on screen, but I don't think you're bigger than me Come on hire me. I can't make the movie worth the men and black international. Talking to real men and black today,

throw back to episode 87 from 2018. Who are what are they? Aliens, extra top secret government officials, specializing in suppresses UFO related information, modern folklore, absolute nother, wacky doodle crystal powered horse shit, head on over to badmagicmerge.com. See what they look like, at least, if we don't find out what they are, with Logan's very

cool new design, new design. And now it is Karlin o'clock. Again, so glad our Patreon Spaces was voted this topic in. Not the first comic we sucked. We've also covered Robin Williams, but Williams, well, he started off as a comic while he remained a comic throughout the entire of his career, where he really shined for me, and I would argue also for most of his fans, was on screen as an actor, both dramatic and comedic, incredible actor, such a performer. Carlin ended up being more of a specialist, whereas Williams was spread out with film roles,

you know, many, many film roles, TV roles, voiceover roles, etc. Also did stand up. Carlin, for most of his career, focused almost exclusively on kicking out more and more stand-up. And his stand-up, while performed, brilliantly, it was more about the words and ideas conveyed behind the performance as opposed to Williams where the performance was the most impressive part of the act. Wasn't what he was saying, it was how he was saying it in a way only he could, that intense, manic performance style of his. Carlin's style was about what he was saying, it was how he was saying it in a way only he could that intense Manic performance style of his Carlin style was about what he was saying his word choice

No wasted words and a stand-up the words chosen so powerful every last syllable thought out uttered for maximum comedic philosophic effect So let's look into what Carlin was saying and meet the man behind the word behind the word. [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Before our timeline today, where we will really get to know this modern philosopher, first an overview of why we're talking about him, also meet his primary influence, Bruce Lee. Karlin was a huge fan of martial arts, and a second degree black belt before he died in Jeet Kundo.

He wants best at Chuck Norris in an exhibition match and broke Young Steven Segal's arm. I fucking wish that was true. It's very fun for me to imagine. No, Lennie Bruce. Was Carlisn's primary influence, of course, not Bruce Lee. It'd be fun if it was both of them. Though many associate Carlisn with this kind of,

with the kind of long prestigious career he would be known for by the time of his death in 2008. Carlisn's path, at least to himself, well, to himself, what different points to his peers, the industry filled with a lot of uncertainty. As a child, yet aspirations of working on the radio began becoming a nightclub comedian leveraging that and to make in movies, he would make the first part of that reality in July of 1956, working at the radio station, KJ O E

and Shree Port, Louisiana at the age 19 while serving in the Air Force. Love that we are talking about Louisiana again by the way this week. Definitely have a special special place in my heart for that state. Uh, Carlin, a much better association to have for Louisiana. Then last week's Ronnie Joe and his broken butterscotch butthole episode. Uh, Check out this early clip of Carlin hosting his AM 1460 radio program in Shreveport in 1957. He is just 20 years old at the time of this broadcast. He's never done stand up yet. Can't have any fucking idea of who he is going to metamorphose into later on. The production value.

Okay, then solid how you doing. Lots of music coming up for you between now and five, forty-five. Got the brand new Beverly Brothers record and we'll be playing both sides of it for you. In addition to listening to Elvis's latest came out this week and we'll get things started with the new one by Chuck Berry. Stick around. Good things happening here on cd to spin records spin records back then uh... again love the production value went into uh... in trofrus show that honestly i don't think many people isn't it was only on a few hours a week

and not uh... during any important time you know regarding ratings uh... okay afterwards and will get into a much more specific dates and reasons for uh... moving uh... you know the timeline for this stuff Okay, afterwards, and we'll get into much more specific dates and reasons for moving, you know, in the timeline for this stuff, moving forward in the timeline. But in 1959, when Carlton was working at KX-O-L in Fort Worth, he met a fellow DJ, Jack Burns, a former Marine, and a guy who will later go on to write and produce on shows like He-Ha on the Muppet Show. Love watching He-Ha.

The pop award grown up, and I was a little, had no idea, of course, that a former associate of Carlton was working on that show. May have had a bit of a crush on Misty Row, the Perky Blonde cast member with great smile and great other stuff as well. Hey, Elizabeth. Uh, together with Jack Karlin starts developing comedy routines for an eventual nightclub act. The pair have moved to Hollywood to record an album, work at brand new radio station, K-Day.

A station that's still around operating down in Regondo Beach broadcasting to the greater LA area ever since it launched in 1961 before then quitting to work in nightclubs as Burns and Carlin I like the Carlin started off in a two-man show I wasn't a two-man show for a while in the early years Cobb dog crow on bass dan on guitar some musical comedy with David Crowe you all right we had to. It's a musical comedy with David Crow. You know, right? We had some sketches, some musical comedy. Maybe not great, but all right.

Had a lot of fun. Burns and Carl and Stade together for about two years, they played some good clubs, got some good press exposure, even made an appearance on the night show with Jack Parr. Carl and first of many night show appearances. They worked mainly in mainstream clubs, but their act did have a bit of a hint

of an anti-establishment flavor, made fun of politicians, parodyed the type of hard work, hard talking Irish adults they grown up around exposing their upper class clientele to a middle class sensibility. But it still wasn't what George really wanted to do. He wanted to push things much further. It would take him a while to get there, but he was already thinking about it. He also didn't want to be in a double act, doing sketches. He wanted to be solo, doing stand-up. After splitting with Burns in 1962, he had to start over, in a sense. He didn't

experience much success at first. It wasn't continuing to get TV exposure. He'd taken a risk, looked like it was not going to pay off for a little while. In 1963, he branched out into faux clubs, coffee houses, where audiences were more progressive where you can develop a balance of different material types You felt capable of performing The balance mainstream material that frankly got in work with the more outspoken irreverent routines that were closer to his heart and more Poppiter with the coffee house beat Nick Crowd During this time he'd perform frequently at the cafe a go-go and Greenwich village Manhattan spending time with the likes Lenny Bruce and Richard prior luminaries. By performing live in smaller counter-culture venues, George found himself in a sort of comedic laboratory. A laboratory where he could experiment with new things and

really work out what was funny. Some of his most famous early bits would be born there. The Indian Sergeant, the wonderful wineau, the hippy-dippy weatherman, all perfected around this time. In 1965, Carlin's bed at himself began to really pay off. He began to get extensive TV exposure. 58 appearances in 1965 and 66 alone, mostly on Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. Very popular shows. Network spots during that period included the Hollywood place, Jimmy Dean, Roger Miller, Carlin's first few tonight show appearances. First you solo ones in total is total career. He'd appear on 130 tonight show episodes. Most of those would come later.

He'd be a regular on various shows and then try and transition to actual acting in 1967, but found that he didn't really like it. This new wrinkle in his childhood plan. It was supposed to be radio DJ to comedian actor. George now didn't know what was next, though he made 80 TV appearances between 1967 and 1980. He didn't really like the heavily censored somewhat mechanical environment of TV production. So many sponsor considerations, network censorship and production limitations.

And the waiting around the aimless banter, it bothered him, it bored him. He really just wanted to be himself not just a heavily sanitized version of himself that would appeal to middle America's sensitive sensibilities. During this time, he worked headlined and all the major night clubs across the US, including the frontier hotel in Las Vegas, where he ended up earning a three year contract and association with the later proofs significant in an unexpected way when he lost that contract. I became popular, started making great money, but as material from around this time, it had become pretty bland and safe, at least he felt it had. The more rebellious anti-establishment tone of some of his earlier routines had disappeared

from the coffee houses, increasingly he felt bored and dissatisfied with his material, but he was making good money. He was maybe worried he was going to lose it. You know, so he started playing it more and more safe. He chose to stay away from certain subject matter. By 1970, his self-imposed restrictions no longer applied, though. His acting and career put on hold, the country was changing. The people who had inhabited the folk clubs and coffeehouse the early 60s were now the

counter culture, a large, ready-made audience that shared many of Car many of carlins out of step attitudes and opinions with mainstream America. You can now take more risks and actually, you know, maybe get some commercial appeal doing so. Phil, the time was right to stop holding back. Carl and began to drift into the counter culture's direction. He began to become the person he'd long wanted to publicly be with his new much more reverent tone came a change in appearance. Gone with the tuxedos. He performed in a nightclubs. Now he sported blue jeans in a beard. Fuck yeah bro.

Get it George. Yeah. This new much more authentic George Carlin didn't sit well with his middle class audiences nor with the nightclub owners who were paying him every week though. A series of incidents with audiences and owners that year culminated in his being fired from the frontier hotel in September for saying shit What shit did he say literally just the word shit nothing more I'd like to travel back in time and find those audiences that were so offended by shit that they complained to walked out I tied the chairs and make them listen to the Albert Fish episode Peanut butter that's how you would Hollywood Or actually just about any episode of times

Peanut butter. That's how you would Hollywood Or actually just about any episode of times up maybe one with Captain Whisk or horn owner proprietor of Captain Whisk or horns pony play and podium tack shop and saturday Talking about having to sail on butt plugs whips stud chains and shit. Hi. Oh, that's for a la away Rather than beg for his contract back and promised to ease up on the filth language Carlin doubled down on the counterculture. He went back to smaller clubs to a huge pay cut to do so. Introduce them to a new more authentic persona. The eventual result of this would be FM and AM,

an album that would win him a granny. Granny, he was given a grandma. He was given someone's grandma. They were like, fuck, great job out of that album. Take her, take Edith, she's yours. No, he was, he wanted Grammy. AM was one side of the record, which paid homage to his old routines and associated itself with the more conservative AM radio FM on the other side was his counter

culture leanings, the side that didn't agree with the establishment. I've seen his very cool artistic new kind of album. It was the first of four successive gold albums that Carlin recorded for little David records during the first half of the 70s. During that time his new material would lead to him being arrested on obscenity charges, spurring a whole Supreme Court case. This case would be one of the things that would make freedom of speech, freedom to say something, even if offended people, so motherfucking important to George Carlin. And something so important to so many people, so many comics in particular ever since, including myself, obscenity charges in the 50s and 60s were a big deal.

No one would exemplify that more than Karlin's mentor, his chief role model in the comedy world, Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce, the son of a shoe clerk and dancer, Long Island-born Leonard Schneider, took the stage named Lenny Bruce to sound less Jewish. Turned entertainment following the teenage stint in the US Navy during World War II made his first appearance as an MC at a Brooklyn nightclub shortly after he came back from the service.

Bruce's early work like Carlin's early work was traditional focusing on inexpensive material like celebrity parodies and impressions earned in bookings on a variety of radio programs. But Bruce like Car Carl and later, grew to satisfy with this material that while it got laughs, it wasn't saying anything. It wasn't addressing any real problems that upset and interested him in his personal life. A fan of beat generation artists and writers

and a music devotee, he was deeply influenced by the free-flowing improvisational nature of jazz, which he thought could, he could adapt for his stage performances along with his own dark satirical view of then taboo topics like politics religion race sex and drugs standard fare today After marrying a moving to California Bruce began workshop in his new act gaining both ardent fans and hateful detractors a lot of silly over sensitive Cox suckers were shocked not only by his foul language but

by his subject matter. Gosh dang, what, what did he just say? Oh, oh my heck. The stranger's powerful words have hurt my precious heart. As his career progressed, no topic or person will be spared as he railed against the perceived hypocrisy of establishment figures and launch scathing criticisms of religious, social and political leaders. He even make fun of first ladies like Eleanor Roosevelt or Jacqueline Kennedy leading the mainstream media to brand him as a sick comic. What a sick man mocking our first ladies. How dare anyone insult our royalty. He also insulted various presidents.

How dare anyone mock our rightful lords here in the US? By the mid 1950s Bruce was performing across the country. I have released a series of comedy albums, but it wasn't drawn much of a crowd. His increasing notoriety and refusal to conform resulted in his being blacklisted for many popular TV shows. Do the fears that his provocative act would offend middle America? How dare any American adults have to hear words or concepts that might upset them? Easily offended, currently deemed the woke crowd, they've always been around.

I'm sure they always will. What a sad way to spend your time on this ride we call life, bouncing from moment to moment of needless, easily avoidable outrage. Some will punch you in the face, yeah. Yeah, get upset. Someone says, Cunt in a nightclub, fucking chill out, Karen. Why, never, oh my. And then to demand that someone not be booked again, because he said a word you don't like in a nightclub or be sent to jail, do not make sure you're cut. Not wanting anyone to hear the words

that upset you as opposed to just no longer supporting the act, saying those things by just not buying their albums or a ticket to their show or listing their podcast. Despite getting blacklisted, Bruce continued to make a name for himself. In February of 1961, he played a landmark gig in New York's Carnegie Hall. Many historians consider that to be the apex of his career. This extra exposure felt great in the moment, but made him more of a target to some than ever. His controversial act and lifestyle had caught the eyes of too many law enforcement agencies across country. And he would be arrested on drug charges.

On Philadelphia, obstinacy charges in San Francisco in late 1961. He was acquitted there. 1962 drug charge in Los Angeles also dropped, but then in 1963 was convicted of obscenity in Chicago after being arrested on stage. He'd be arrested so many times on stage and increasing in increasing ill health due largely to his looming legal troubles and to a worsening drug addiction. Bruce decided to return to New York where powerful forces unbeknownst to him were coalescing against him.

Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan working in conjunction with local church officials, including Archbishop and Cardinal Francis Spellman began their own investigation of Bruce. For fuck's sake. How many Pito priests did Spellman protect and relocate between 1939 and 1967 while he reigned his Archbishop? Dozens, hundreds. And then he joined the group to take down Lenny Bruce

for saying naughty words and critiquing the church, the audacity. A biography about Spellman will be published in 1984 titled American Pope. It included several pages initially arguing that Spellman had been a known active homosexual in certain social circles based on multiple anonymous sources. The draft of the book was covered in the press. However, the final published version removed that material, replaced it with just two senses. Four years, rumors about it about Cardinal Spellman being homosexual.

As a result, many felt and continue to feel that Spellman, the public moralist, may well have been a contradiction of the man, of the flesh. Why were all those pages removed? Legal pressure from the Catholic Church. Same church that Carlin would feel pressured to, that Carlin, you know,, that, that Carlin, you know, felt pressure to silence him as well. Journalist Michael Angelo, Signorelli,

described Spelman as one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuality in American Catholic Church's history. Signorelli reported that Cuny's manuscript initially contained interviews with several people with personal, intimate knowledge of Spelman's homosexuality. Additionally, Kurt Gentry, biographer of J Edgar Hoover, said that Hoover's FBI files had numerous allegations that Spellman was a very active homosexual. Do I care that that guy was gay? Nope. I sure don't. Do I care that that guy was very likely actively, but privately gay, but then publicly condemned homosexuality and tried to destroy free speech advocates like Lenny Bruce. Oh yeah, I care very much.

Fuck that traitor is coward. He didn't have to stay with the church to deny his own sexuality. He could have lived an authentic life like Lenny Bruce was brave enough to do. Instead that fucking coward helped bring Bruce down. Maybe what really bothered him was that Bruce was doing what he was too spineless and weak to do himself

and he didn't like the reflection that Bruce mirrored back on him. Back to Bruce now, when he was booked at the popular Greenwich Village nightclub Cafe Ego Go in spring in 1964 where George Carlin would later play, also play undercover detectives recorded secretly. Two of his shows was they then presented to a grand jury to obtain an obscenity indictment.

This is a place where people had to pay to listen. In early April, Bruce was arrested, charged with violating New York penal code, 1140, barring obscene material that could aid in the quote, corruption of morals of youth and others, face to maximum punishment of three years in prison. Outrages. This is going on while US soldiers are already literally

dying over in Vietnam fighting for freedom. Brave young men fighting apart to extend the ideals of the US Constitution, which is supposed to provide free fucking speech literally in the very first amendment. Are there limits in that amendment? Yeah, common sense ones. The government may generally restrict the time, place, or manner of speech. Lenny storm into a daycare uninvited, started saying shit to the kids, that their parents didn't want him to hear, you know? How you little conti, dirty, dippin' cocks,

I'll go and join the snacks. Okay, fair, that's fucked up. Get the man to take it, write him up. But he was at a nightclub again, where people paid, listen to him, grownups paid. A private business, where everyone there knew what they were getting into. If you can't save shit there,

wear outside of your own home, can you say it? No where. And if you make Santa at nightclub illegal, well, what's next? Your home? That's the last, that's the last, you know, refuge. Are we American at that point in the Soviet Union? North Korea.

To me, one way to honor the sacrifices, the brave veterans have made us to be as free as fucking possible. I have guns, drugs, and I sell kinds of shit. Thankfully, I live in a nation where the police can't censor me or kick down my door without a warrant, even though I said what I just said here, and take whatever shit I happen to possess. Maybe I'm joking. Maybe I'm not though. For America, ever becomes as anti-freedom again as it was during the early 60s, I honestly

hope a revolution brings us to our fucking knees so something better can rise up. Hail them, Rod and fuck censorship, fuck those assholes who came after Bruce, bet those Gestapo shitheads consider themselves real flag wave in Patriots when they did so. Not only was Bruce arrested, but the club's two owners also arrested, merely for allowing Filthmeister Bruce to perform that material.

So how naughty was this material? Well, here's some of the bits that got him in trouble. His act included two bits about first ladies mentioned he talked about them Bruce declared that the Eleanor Roosevelt quote Eleanor Roosevelt has the nicest tits of any lady in office. Come on, how's that offensive? A crude. Okay, but offensive. The any of you tits possess and meat sacks out there not want to have nice tits. Anyone pissed off that they have fantastic tits. Moping around, wishing you had saggy old win sock titties,

always staring at the floor like their self-esteem is too low to ever look anyone in the eye. I don't think that anyone is dying to have sad titties. What Bruce said, wasn't it really kind of a compliment? Comedy non-captions relating to photos of Jacqueline Kennedy crawling on the trunk of the convertible in Dallas after her husband, President JFK, been shot, would suggest that she was trying to get help, Bruce called the captions bullshit. And Bruce's opinion, Mrs. Kennedy, quote,

hauled ass to save a ass. Just what anyone would do under those circumstances. Again, is that really offensive? Incensive, sure, but offensive? Yeah, word offensive and subjective. But this is the kind of shit said and I clipped it with Lendian jail in America. How dare Bruce suggest that Jackie react like a normal human? In another bit called Red Hot Enema, Bruce argued that the prospect of putting a funnel up his ass containing hot lead

would cause Gary Powers, a CIA spy pilot who had recently been captured from his down U to plane by the Soviets to quickly lose his provato and basically spill US secrets. Yeah, I imagine it would burn the provato out of literally anyone. In a bit called pissed in the sink, Bruce told a tale of a man with a bad leg trying to avoid a trek down the hall of the bathroom. He gets caught urinating the sink by his roommate, who suggests he uses the the ledge instead. He does so only to find himself the focus of a crowd of anxious onlookers and firemen who believe he's ready to commit suicide. That one just sounds

funny to me. It's a great premise. To me, absurd and hilarious, not offensive. The most outrageous of the bits that night to the to the courts, the officers was guys are carnal, and which Bruce suggests that men are oversex creatures willing to have one night stand with just about anything that moves, including a chicken. Another solid premise. I've said so much worse so many times the closure my latest special was a 10-minute piece about fucking a banana peel. Finally, he also told a bit titled to two is a preposition,

come is a verb. It ends with him saying, quote, now if anyone in this room or the world finds those two words, deconent, obscene, moral, moral, amoral, asexual, the words to come really make you feel uncomfortable. If you think I'm ranked for saying it to you, you the beholder, think it's ranked for listening to it,

you probably can't come. And then you're of no use because that's the purpose of life to recreate it. Well said, Lenny. Now if that's not your cup of tea, fine, but is it so horrible? The government needs to intervene and arrest this man. So we can't keep saying this shit. How outrageous, right? How an American, at least on what I consider to be American. It's best free speech being one of the cornerstones of being American to me. Dozens of notable artists signed a petition to announcing Bruce's arrest, including actress Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, writers, Susan Sontag, Norman Maylor, and James Baldwin, singer Bob Dylan, and a bunch of other fellow comics, including Woody Allen. Not a big Woody Allen fan, but I'm glad he stepped in there. It read in part

Whether we regard Bruce as a moral spokesman or simply as an entertainer We believe he should be allowed to perform free from censorship or harassment Simply put and a hundred percent correct Bruce hired a team of prominent first amendment attorneys including E Ephraim London, who would later argue a number of other free speech, free speech cases before the US Supreme Court. When Bruce of trial began that July, the jam-packed courtroom listened as the prosecution laid out his case, including audio recordings of Bruce's performances and reenactments of his routines by undercover cops, including what prosecutors alleged was an act of simulated onstage masturbation. E.G.

A not a simulated jerk, Sesh. How dare Lenny reenact with 99.9% of men without sexual disabilities have done thousands of times in their lives. But every dude in that courtroom was 100% inemely familiar with jerk enough. The hypocrisy, right? The irrationality of uptight moralists never just fails to irritate me. What is big deal with jerk?

Maybe I have had jerk more calculus. I will be no execute and could still be jerk and soft Jerry has to shamecock today. Thank you for waiting, Chikotilo. It's very astute observation. Bruce responded by critiquing their poor performance of his work in the courtroom.

That's funny. It's all in the courtroom. That's funny. It's all in the delivery. His team called the number of witnesses, including literary critics and psychologists, aimed at proving that while Bruce's material may have been offensive, it was not sexually provocative enough to warrant a conviction under the wording of the New York State Statutes. One of the most prominent witnesses with Dorothy Kilgallen, conservative New York newspaper columnist, columnist, who social position and political beliefs, Bruce team had hoped would counterbalance his anti establishment notoriety. The three months for the three judge panel to issue its verdict.

In November of 1964, Bruce, who had already fired his attorneys now, uh, was convicted. As was one of the club owners, Howard Solomon. Solomon Sands would be later overturned, Bruce's would not be. At a hearing hearing a month later Bruce launched into an hour long defense, but was sentenced to four months in a workhouse anyway. Dangerous to speak your mind back then, even in a private nightclub setting. Bruce remained out on bail, pending an appeal, but was virtually unemployable now. What few dates he did book and barely covered his drug habit or legal bills, which continue to pile up as an embittered Bruce filed a series of unsuccessful civil suits against his opponents.

On August 3rd 1966, Bruce still waiting on a trial to appeal his obscenity conviction was found dead of a morphine overdose as LA home just 40 years old. Many felt it the conviction. The fear of being arrested again just for doing his act the way you wanted to do it is when set him into a downward spiral with drugs, the US government and its infinite fucking wisdom had literally decided it was illegal for Lenny Bruce to be Lenny Bruce on stage. I wonder how many lives were saved by, you know, no one happened to hear Bruce's filth anymore.

I'm gonna get zero. I'm gonna guess that how they let him do what he did, literally no one would have suffered even a little bit other than having their, you know, night ruined possibly because it chose to be over sensitive, weak-minded, crybabies who let some other person's joke hurt their precious little fucking hearts. Bruce's struggles and his destruction did not go unnoticed by a young George Carlin. He was his friend, a good friend at this time, just 29 years old, still years away from embracing his role as a sort of counterculture jester slash holder of Bruce's social critiquing flame.

Not even a decade after Bruce's death, Carlin would later see his own obscenity case. Go all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 1973, the US Supreme Court reversed years of earlier precedent in the landmark case Miller versus California, which broadened first amendment protection for material like Bruce's based on an argument of the materials underlying literary, artistic, and social value. Fucking insane that we needed the Supreme Court to rule that free speech needs free in 1973, almost 200 years after the first amendment was adopted in 1791. Just a couple years later, Chrono was stuck again, not by the government this time, but

by himself in the mid 70s. He was dealing with a crippling cocaine addiction, health problems, his wife Brenda severe alcoholism, a more and more distant relationship with his own daughter and no clue how to fix any of this. It was also struggling creatively. He had become a parody of the man that rose to counterculture fame in the early 70s. Other comedians had started to make fun of him, write him off as an old hippie, overly fixated with the usage of certain words, drugs, other shit that they didn't care about. That was past say now. And that really pissed Carl

enough. He cut way back on the coke, eventually he quit entirely, his wife stopped drinking, he became a better husband, better father. Creatively he chose to do everything his power to show how talented he still was to the world, and he took a fuck of mall attitude. I like it. He hired a new management team, began to do specials on a new network with a similar ideology to his own home box office, HBO. HBO didn't launch until the end of 1972. And total Carlin would go on to have 14 HBO specials, including the highly regarded Carlin at Carnegie,

tape at New York Carnegie Hall in 1982, the groundbreaking jammin' in New York broadcast live in 1992 from the Paramountming in New York broadcast live in 1992 from the Paramount Theater at Madison Square Garden. Today, George Carlin's 14 HBO specials have garnered three Emmy nominations, six Kable A's awards, and Carlin picked up two additional Emmy nods,

nominations, excuse me, in the early 90s, playing the part of Mr. Conductor in 45 episode to the critically acclaimed PBS Kids Show, yes, Kids Show show shining time station. That's very funny to me. And he wouldn't stop there. 1997, Carl Inventure, into a new field as Hyperion published his first book, Brain Dropings, a collection of original routines, one-liners, commentaries and essays. I have that book around the house somewhere. And hardcover and paperback, the book spent a total of 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller

lists, had sold nearly 900,000 copies The book on tape version read by Carl himself won the 2001 Grammy in Best Spoken Comedy category A second book nae palman silly putty have that book to written the same styles the first published in April of 2001 Likewise a huge success reached the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list in its second week The paperback edition published a year later has done equally well and together both formats have now sold over 600,000 copies. Once again, the audiobook CD version garnered another Grammy. Fourth overall for Carlin.

Third book will be published in the fall of 2004, including more of Carlin's trademark observations of the English language, one of his biggest comedic strengths, total sales of his books with numbers just over two million copies. Meanwhile, the spring of 2004, Carlisle has substantial role as Affleck's father and Kevin Smith's Jersey girl starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, his, his, excuse me, eleventh feature film, most significant role thus far. In addition, he was a performed extensive voice overwork in three animated films, including Pixar's Cars. In the midst of all that, Carlin still managed to perform roughly 90 concerts around the country each year, selling nearly a quarter of a million tickets. Additionally, made about eight visits

annually to Las Vegas, where he performed four-day weekends at the Orlean Hotel, considered by many comics, the best comedy venue in Las Vegas. Orleans, I don't know why I said it with, in the spring of 2008, Carlton broadcasts 14th, last HBO comedy special, George Carlin, it's bad for you and released a CD of the same name. In 2007, I watched and performed in Indianapolis preparing material for that special.

Performance, I'll never forget. Very inspiring. I don't know what I love more, watching my comedic idol murder with new bits, he was still crafting, or watching him bomb in front of his own audience. It was a nice reminder that the standup is always hard. Even the best to ever do it still struggle to find the right words, rhythms to turn a loose idea into a polished and hilarious bit.

Carlton was trying to figure out how to make his new ideas funny until the day he died literally. He was working on a memoir, a book of essays and a one-man show when he died on June 22nd, 2008 at the age of 71 of Heart Failure. It is hard to overstate how prolific this guy was. How much he pushed the boundaries of the art of stand-up and how successful he was at doing it, but he wasn't always successful. Past not always smooth sailing.

He found himself in many career routes, looking for a way out, trying to think of the next step, to take himself, to get himself, to where he wanted to be, and where he wanted to be was fucking legendary. He wasn't comfortable settling on what had worked in the past. He didn't consider himself successful just because he made good money. He never wanted to play it safe. He wanted to be his true authentic self on stage and have enough people love him for him to be able to have a career in comedy as someone not afraid to share the unbridled truth. Never afraid to hold a mirror up to the country. He both loved and hated a mirror that reflected back all of the cultural sickness. So many of us are still so fucking afraid of knowledge.

He wouldn't settle. He kept working on his craft honing it, still honing it in his 70s. Fuck that makes my comedy dick so hard. I cannot express with words how much I appreciate what Carlin did for comedy, how much it means to me. So let's really get to know him now. Let's discover how he did this, how a young boy from Manhattan became one of

comedy's most enduring stars. Let's jump into today's time suck timeline. After of course our sponsor break, you know, even George Carlin did commercials by the way. Gotta say, find out how made me feel good. And now we're back to talk about a guy who did have different sponsors, a different times, but also despised corporate America. While also selling concert tickets almost exclusively to people working in corporate America.

George was a capitalist, just one who hated a lot of the bullshit that can come along with big business, the government, and religious institutions. Let's actually get to know him now. government and religious institutions. Let's actually get to know him now. Shrap on those boots soldier, we're marching down a time, time, time line. George Carlin would be born May 12, 1937 in Manhattan. Just five years, that's my grandpa, Papa Ward. Holy shit, that blows my mind. Three years before my grandma Betty. I can't imagine my grandma ever getting his reference George Carlin. My grandpa certainly never did. I don't think. But if he, uh, could have got passed his disdain for profanity, I think he would have loved Carlin's messages. George was the son of Mary Carlin,

a secretary in Patrick John Carlin, an advertising manager for the newspaper, the son. Mary was the first of six children and though she'd been sickly as a child, her parents would give her a glass of Guinness every night to make her strong. If it only worked, or she got better despite them doing that, probably the latter thing. Might have made her a little crazy too, or maybe being raised by parents who gave their babies a glass of style beer every day when the age was still in a single digit to that. 10 years old, she sent a box of horse shit to a girl who didn't invite her to a birthday party. Literal horse shit.

She was tough and vivacious, like dance, play piano, outside of some marital abuse. She did eventually run away from, she didn't take shift from anyone. She was tough. So it's like to read multi-classic literature with a 10 Broadway shows, Karlin would later say that his attraction to low culture comedy TV radio would be an

attempt at rebellion away from what his mother liked by the mid 30s. His father Patrick was a successful businessman. National advertising manager well respected guy who'd even won the national public speaking contest held by the Dale Carnegie Institute in 1935. With his speaking engagements, he could bring in a thousand dollars a week. Clearly, Karlin may have had some genetic help when it came to being a gifted orator. Patrick's best speech was the power of mental demand, which got his title from Book Grid in 1913 by Herbert Edward Law. He would shout at the listeners to put

it to work. Performance that many described as electric. You called his wife Mary Pepper because of her spunky personality and she called him ever ready because of his voracious sex drive. Apparently quite a few times she would hear him call from another room saying, Mary, is this yours? And then when she would go in she would find him standing nude holding his hard dick with ice tongs. God, that's really funny to me. Looks like Carl and Mae have had a genetic predisposition towards having an absurd and vulgar sense of humor. I need to remember to try that with Lindsey. Hailers to Fina.

I'm not sure it would lead towards actual sex, it might. I think we definitely get a good laugh. She could also probably call me ever ready. God, I love sex. If we didn't have work or responsibilities, about three times a day sounds delightful. Never get sold. Thank you, Nimrod, for allowing my dick to still work.

I enjoyed very much. Don't take it from me. I don't care how many books I don't write or extra hours of comedy. I don't create because of it. It is the best waste of time ever. George Carlin would become Mary and Patrick Perma boners, second son, as old as brother Patrick Jr.

been born six years earlier in 1931. Patrick will never list the junior designation to his name guessing he shied away from that label because he hated his dad. He certainly did hate his dad based on interviews of Patrick. I watched in the fantastic two-part docu series on Carl and George Carlons American dream. Patrick would say in the doc that his mom told him that the sex was great in his in her marriage to his father, but that everything else was terrible. Mary would only have two kids. In his biography last words published in 2009, Carlon would begin his story a little earlier in August of 1936 when he was conceived in a damp sand-fledged room of Curley's hotel in Rockaway Beach,

New York. Carlons birth was unlikely from the very start. For one, his mom was 40. His dad was 48 and this wasn't a time when women had kids in their 40s nearly as often as they do today. And just prior to his conception, the two had been separated for more than a year. Separations weren't abnormal in their six year long marriage. They'd get together break up, wash, rinse, repeat, which was a a result of Patrick struggles with alcoholism and his drunken sometimes violent rages. Mary was Patrick's second wife. His first died of a heart attack not long after one of his

beatings. As in, he probably killed her. Despite this, Mary was convinced that her hot-blooded man would not hurt her because she had four brothers and her dad was a police officer. At least she was convinced of that for a while. Mary would tell George later that Patrick hit her only once. George's brother, Patrick Jr., though, wouldn't be able to say the same. From the time he was two, Patrick Senior regularly beat Patrick Jr. with a hard-heeled leather bedroom slipper. Another reason that George's births was unlikely

was that his mom had had several abortions between his brother's birth and his own. She'd visit a man known as Dr. Sunshine and Grammar C. Grammar C square and undergo a procedure known as a DNC, right, dilation and cutitage several times. She contemplated undergoing that same procedure with the embryo that would become George Carlin, which is so funny to me, the man who later wrote so many fantastic abortion jugs nearly aborted himself. Obviously with George, Mary had second thoughts, uh, had them just barely in time. She would say later that she saw the face of her deceased mother in a painting on the waiting room wall of the abortion clinic. As a lifelong Catholic, she took that as a sign

that her mom was expressing disapproval. Mary left the office quickly. Wow, that is some irony. The religion that Carlton would,ton would so despise also the one that allowed him to live. In October of 1936, shortly after Mary would have had the procedure, she and Patrick decided to try and make their marriage work again. They moved into an apartment at 155th in Riverside, Manhattan, May 1937. She was taken a walk along the new George Washington bridge when she felt the beginnings of labor pains. May 12th, George will be delivered by Dr. James A. Harar, same doctor who wants delivered Lindbergh baby, uh, topically the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

One we've been sitting on for a while here for limited research done over a year ago. I would have I recorded it already, but I just want to wait a few more years just to make sure that baby doesn't still turn up. JK about the waiting nonsense. Too soon. Now we'll do that. We'll do the topic at some point. Sad story. Also very interesting. Young baby George weighed nine pounds and lived to project out vomit according to his mom for the first four weeks of his life.

After you figure out how to keep food down his parents brought him back to the apartment on one 55th Street, which had expensive new furniture, a sunken living room, and a dramatic view of the Hudson River. A maid, Amanda would serve as George's protector from both his parents, from his father's drunken raiders and his mom's cutting remarks that often egged on the fights. After escalating fights that led to her truly worrying about the physical safety of herself and her kids, especially Patrick, Mary decided that she was leaving Patrick's senior, you know, once and for all.

And while he, and while he was trying to knock down his own door and a rage, she took her kids, fled out the window down the fire escape after Colnard brother Tom, who drove over, who was waiting to pick him up at the bottom by the time they made it down, went to go live with her father, Dennis Beary, ex-police officer who lived at the corner of 111th street in Amsterdam, spent his free time copying out Shakespeare by hand for fun, interesting family. Three days after they arrived there, Mary George, Patrick Jr. Now Brother Tom drove the family to South Fallsburg and the Cat Skills to stay with friends and hide from Patrick Sr. They lived there for two months beginning when George was just eight

weeks old. Dennis Berry would die of a stroke during that time and George would always wish he'd been able to get to know his grandfather better. After her father died, Mary continued to live from place to place. Heiden from Patrick Sr. from what one source said was about two years. Court awarded a legal separation of Mary and Patrick before those two years, December of 1937. Mary would have, she would have filed for divorce, but according to George, the Catholic Church made that very difficult for anyone wanting to remain Catholic to get even if they lived in fear of their life, you know, for lives from their estranged partner.

Catholic church has continued to take a beating in these past several episodes. Patrick fought the proceedings saying that he was loving father, a good husband, but when Mary's sister, Lil, brought young Patrick into the courtroom, the judge watched as the kid, six years old, cringed away from his father like a whipped puppy. Mary would be awarded $35 a week in child support, child support that Patrick would never pay. Last time Patrick ever saw George, was when George was just a few months old.

He sang the Rose of Trolley and played with George on the living room floor shortly before his mom's escape. George would later be read a telegram for his father on his first birthday, May of 1938. Mary and Patrick have been separated for about 10 months that point. He wrote to her saying, just to let you know that one year ago today I shared every moment of your anguish and prayed that I might share each pain while your present advisor said nothing and cared less. Thank God and you for the sunbeam you brought forth whom I pray will outlive all the ill-founded gossip.

George would later say he was touched that his dad at least called him a sunbeam. Sadly, as far as I know Patrick would never try and communicate George again. By 1940 or 1941, Patrick was working as a kitchen assistant at the monastery of the Greymore Friars in Garrison, New York. What the hell happened to his speaking engagements? His kick ass business career. Why is ever ready now working in a monastery's kitchen? Who is he offering his hard dick to with some tongs now the monks? Well, if he did, he probably had several takers, but no one knows for sure. George was speculating that his dad's alcoholism caught up with him, making Patrick unable to work and advertising

and let her to a daughter from his first marriage marriage Patrick would say, my new job is assistant to brother Capestran who's in charge of the cafeteria. On Sunday, I attend the steam table, dishing out food. During the week, I have charged the men who mop clean up and get the place ready for the following Sunday. I have a private bedroom and I eat with five privileged characters in a small dining room. The same food is the priests and brothers. I have lost 30 pounds most year on the waste. I feel swell, not a drink in over six weeks. And there is plenty available, oh yes. Despite the cheery tone of this message, all not well for Patrick.

He would regularly earn a small fortune as an adman, public speaker, now doing menial labor for pennies. It was also the time that the US was getting involved in World War II. After the December 7th attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, George would later remember rolling blackouts in Manhattan, done so that enemy aircraft wouldn't be able to recognize and bomb the city. And how the naval officers were trained to Columbia marched and sang wartime songs in his neighborhood.

He marched alongside them, sometimes later finding out that, or some, he marched alongside them sometimes later finding out. There we go. The one of the men he'd march alongside was a young midshipman named Johnny Carson. He would go on to be a guest of Carson's when he was host in the night show dozens and dozens of times. How very cool. By the fall of 1943, Patrick was working in Watertown, New York at the radio station, WATN, selling commercial time, playing records on the air, similar to what his summer would later do. Same thing as son would be doing about 30 years later. Patrick's radio station signoff would even be similar to George's later jokes. When he said, I pledge

allegiance to the people of the United States of America and all the political crap for which they stand. Big doe shall be divisible with union dues for all. George will later think he wouldn't learn to this sign off until many years later after his dad had passed and he was already a comic that he'd somehow inherited his father's sense for the bullshit that is the glue of America and call it the greatest gift his dad could have given him. Just two years later before ever reunited with his sons Patrick dies in December of 1945 at the age of 57 of a heart attack.

George was just eight. By that time he was living with his mom and brother in a house on West one hundred and twenty first street, a neighborhood known as Morningside Heights. The carlons were living in one of the biggest racial, cultural, and socioeconomic melting pots in New York, a city that itself, one of the biggest melting pots in the world. George grew up influenced by many of the cities nearby, premier, cultural, and educational institutions like Columbia University, there's a few blocks away. As was Bernard University, the Union Theological Seminary, Riverside Church also nearby. Young George could step out his front door, look down the street, see a 28-story Gothic cathedral, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Juilliard School of Music also nearby,

just to the north, several neighborhoods that marry urge or sons pleaded with them to stay out of. Lower-class areas where recent Irish and other immigrants lived, I'm sure they had family there. Carl himself Irish, both mom and dad were. And his mom wanted to keep her boys away from, you know, their families roots in an area with reputations for lawlessness and drunkenness. Carl and would call that area white Harlem tougher, more crowded than the streets around Columbia, full of old buildings with no elevators populated by working class families.

Before he'd explore the streets of white Harlem, he'd spend many days listening to the old Philco radio in the living room. He'd listen to quiz shows, soap operas, newscasts, interviews, plays, comedy. This is back when radio was the shit. Whatever you could get his ears on, he would have loved, I think, to call to the curious. Or at least a concept. Who knows as far as the execution? Carlin valued curiosity very much,

remained intellectually curious his entire life. Before he entered school himself, well, his older brother Patrick was away at boarding school, the Mount St. Michael school run by the Maris brothers. Georgia's company became the radio. All the different accents, opinions, perspectives, came through it. In the years that followed, Mary would try as hard as she could

to give her sons, he upwarded a mobile life. She wanted for herself the one shit of brief taste of when she was married to Patrick. She desperately didn't want to be seen in terms of the many negative stereotypes associated with the Irish in New York at that time. Lazy, drunk, rowdy. So she dressed her kids in the clothes that fashionable, rich, upper middle class kids, you know, and their parents wore her hair cut of the fashionable salons, even when money was tight. Now, raising her boys, you know, been

raising her boys on her own, working in the city as an executive secretary. She would never re-marry. George and Patrick didn't want what she wanted. They wanted to play on the streets with their friends, get into fights, be the rowdy young boys that they felt that they, you know, were at their course. And as autobiography George would put it this way, Mary wanted two little Lord frontal ruins, what she got was a pair of hardened dog turns. I love that description so silly,

and yet paint such a clear picture of who those two little rat fangs were as kids. Soon Mary's attention will be focused on making George into the type of well-mannered boy she wanted. Earlyness childhood, she seemed to have kind of given up on hoping that Patrick, the older son, who turned into who she wanted to be.

Mary thought the Patrick Jr. was a was a carlin with a rough sense of humor and penchant for getting into trouble. It was father and his father's kin. Well, George was a was a berry cultured and refined. Berry was her maiden name, right? Her own parents Irish immigrant style that just not rowdy hard drinking ones. She told both her boys and everything they did was a reflection of her. She would guilt them into behaving the way she wanted. What guilt driven mom? I've never heard

of such a thing. Why is that such a common archetype? Mother, why do you live to suppress my desires? From a young age George was determined not to live by his mom's rules but by his own. If you're new listener that was a very old live by his mom's rules, but by his own. If you're a new listener, that was a very old reference. By the way, if you're like, what the fuck does happen? At the same time, though, he liked making her laugh, like making mom laugh. And it is eerie in some ways how similar our childhoods were. When I was young, I didn't see my dad much for quite a while and live with my mom.

Sometimes all of them were grandparents, but always with mom as well. And she was for sure, back then a big guilt trigger. And for sure, try to push me into being like, prim and proper and do this kind of career, that kind of career. And I had no interest in doing what she wanted me to do. But also really wanted to make her laugh.

I think that's where my comedy began. Karlin to his mom, she granted a lot of trouble in school. He went to Corpus Christi, run by the Dominican nuns who all knew his mom because the family He went to Corpus Christi, run by the Dominican nuns, who all knew his mom, because the family went to the Corpus Christi church on Sundays. There, as Carlton would later describe, he was a consummate show off. Class clown spent more time staring out the window,

cracking jokes that he did studying. He made weird faces, fart sounds, belched, imitated his teachers, blue bubbles with a spit. School was where this future comic legend we get his first taste of entertaining. His first ever public performance would be playing Fraus Jacques on the Xylophone with some wooden mallets for his class in early grade school. He found their attention stimulating and loved the applause. I love that Carlin's very first performance. What he considered his first performance was

playing this. I'm super edgy comic started off so innocent. Holesome. Like we all did. Uh, at his mom's office, little George, offered him impressions of May West. We do a dance called the big apple to show off for her co-workers. You do an impression of Johnny, the Philip Morris cigarette mascot,

which he made up on his own, and gives a big hit with her friends, I guess. Second grade, he became a featured soloist in his classes band, playing March of the Little Led Soldiers, performing at the Horace Man School across 121st Street. A little carlet and playing this. All eyes on him. He can so wholesome. He'd make a mom a proud. Around 5th grade he began to feel that he

might have some kind of future as a performer. In an assignment he wrote that he'd like to be an actor, impersonator, comedian, disjockey, announcer. I love this last one. Or trumpet player. That is such a little kid thing to write. He certainly, certainly dressed the part of entertaining around seventh grade, which would be around 1950. He still was attending the Catholic school. He wore electric blue peg pants with gray pistol pockets, two in tries, gray belt loops,

saddles sticking with a 14 inch peg and exaggerated knees. With that, he wore orange leopard skin shirt. People who saw him wanted to forget a job at a movie theater. Some eighth grade corporate's Christie expelled George, then took him back, spelled him for bad behavior in class, took him back, supposed to because they wanted him to write this cool play for his eighth grade graduation as mom gave him a tape recorder and he began to use it to record his imitations to people in neighborhood. Already working on the voices that would later give his stand-up back so much theatrical life. He also rebelled against the religious instruction he received. Years later, he talked about how he was told by the nuns

at once he took Jesus and his heart, he'd feel a powerful change. He would be transformed in God's grace, God's living embrace and feel the power of the Holy Spirit. But when he tried to do that, he didn't feel shit. He felt ripped off and tricked. He began to think that the Catholic faith was a sham, that the adults and authority figures around him have been lying to him about God. And they lied to him about God. What else had they been lying to him about? While George grew disillusioned with his mom's faith, he did greatly enjoy exploring the city around him, becoming a frequent guest at the libraries, lounge dorms, gyms, halls, the populated his neighborhood. With his friends, he played games like Chinese and American handball, box ball, ring a levio, blacksmith, Johnny Wright, a pony, kicked

the can, roller hockey, and I'll have that shit as a group of young boys he ran with explored Morningside Park, Central Park, Riversideide Park all the fucking parks, Swam in the Hudson. George wrote his little bike all around the city streets weven through pedestrians and fast-moving vehicles. Most of his friends cause and trouble stealing shit. Most of his friends were sons of working class Irish. I already used their fists when they had to against anyone who interfered with them, like a Columbia students whose car is the boy stole from as a gut holder. George later say he was not much of a fighter, but he did get dragged into a number of scrapes with the crew of kids that the neighborhood cops would become pretty familiar with. George would also take the subway around the city to get autographs, sneak into movies,

browse department stores, walk alongside the observation decks of the RCA empire state building, seal stuff from novelty stores, climb trees, do people watching, you know, little punk kids shit. Still Mary was focused on making George trying to into a respectable culture rule following citizen wasn't going well. She wanted to go to regia, some prestigious high school, but like his brother had done before him, he rejected that. Mary did get George job at a popular New York men's clothing store called Rogers Pete,

hoping that would refine him. The chain died out in the 80s, but was a New York institution for decades before that. He didn't last long there. George got fired for stealing money out of a, out of men's unattended wallets when they were trying on suits. Notty George. He'd go on briefly to attend an all boys Catholic high school in the Bronx called Cardinal Hayes High School. We got expelled after only three semesters at

the age of 15 and 1952. Unlike Regis Filben, Martin Scorsese, a bunch of other notable Cardinal Hayes alums, including numerous basketball players who made it into the NBA. Carlin would not graduate. Later interview with Playboy, Carlin admitted that he was failing numerous subjects running away from home for days at a time when he got expelled from Hayes. Also got caught steal a money from the visiting team's locker room during a basketball game. Also got caught telling kids on the playground that he found some heroin. He just had no interest in the time and what they were actually trying to teach him. He said he didn't have much interest in what anyone was trying to teach him at that time. He had a real problem with authority figures in general,

didn't trust him. That attitude would not serve him well in school, but many years later it would help turn him into a comedy legend. Over three decades later, 1983, Carlin would perform at a Hayes school fundraiser in honor of Montsenior, Stanisloss P. Jablonski, the very man who had thrown him out. Despite the fears of so many alumni association, Carlin kept his act clean. Jablonski enjoyed the tribute. Jablonski said at one point, Despite the fears of Selman, the Alumni Association, Karlin kept his act clean. Zoblonsky enjoyed the tribute. Zoblonsky said at one point,

or at Zoblonsky at one point, red old detention slips. He personally had issued Karlin, and one red, he thinks he's a comedian. Ah, if that's fucking great. But back in his adolescent years, it was now onto another all boys Catholic high school. I forgot, kicked out of the first. He goes to Bishop De to Bishop Dubois high school in Harlem gets kicked out of that one goes to his third and final Catholic high school

Salizian high school up north of the city in Goshen wouldn't last long in that place either Drops out of high school together August 1954 joins the Air Force Wants to use the GI build to cover the cost of school he does want to go to at some point broadcasting school. Since he's only 17 his mom has to sign him in. He now has a life plan. He'll hold on to for many, many years, right? First become a disc jockey. It's on place.

Use the audience that he had access to in that market to build up a following, then use that following to perform in local night clubs, become a comedian, get good enough to be able to travel, perform in other places, build a following in and clubs around the country. Eventually make it back to the big apple where he become a star in a Broadway production, Hollywood producers, showbiz. Would he hear about this hot new actor and would cast him in some movies where he would go and become the next Danny K, his acting hero when he grew up.

Danny K was a very popular comedic actor in the 40s and 50s. He had sing, doing personations, use facial expressions, overall physicality to a great comedic effect for the time. Carlisle later also really used his body facial expressions in addition to his words, you know, to make his bits bigger. Young George now had big footsteps to follow big dreams. First, you'd have to serve in the military. George now had big footsteps to follow big dreams. First you'd have to serve in the military. He first get on a bus to head to the Samson Air Force base near Rochester, New York.

Basic training was grueling and George got sick on purpose, actually. He volunteered for an experiment that tracked cold virus moving to the barracks. A cold virus that these scientists planted there. Hope we got something decent. Return for that. George did not enjoy his initial time in the military. Still hated the authority figures. Now he's surrounded by him. He only enlisted to get right broadcast in school paid for.

Uh, definitely never intended to become a career military man. Thought a high school diploma, he knew he was never gonna become an officer or a pilot. He tried to just get through it. Uh, and during long lectures about shity did not care about. Like how to behave in uniform as well as military history. He did enjoy some of the company he kept, especially his time with black servicemen. Some of them came from near George's neighborhood back in Manhattan. Many of those came from the Southside Chicago. And George felt he had more in common with them, love a jazz, RMB, sports,

than with many of the white kids he'd enlisted with. Together, he and his new friend, Smok Pot, goofed around, committed petty thefts, also got along well with his first commander, guy named Don. Give George special commands to go take records from the basics change. Don would let George hang out in his room after the other guys at a light-sounding,

listen to records George had taken, maybe stolen. Before too long, George would be moved to Denver where he learned the navigation system, using the new B-47 strategy. Suddenly rather than slacking off like he had in school, he loved this new assignment like the data flow, the technology, the problem solving, but it still wasn't something he was going to do for long. Still didn't like being ordered around either.

George would turn 18 in May of 1955, spent nine months in the service so far, now sent to the barghtail air force base across the Red River from Shreveport, Louisiana. Here he started hanging out at the base's NCO club. Since this was the deep south in the 50s, still segregated, there was an annex in the club for black NCOs. And that was where George hung out. Listen to the jukebox drink a malt liquor with his new buddies. One day, George even spent a night in jail for being in the car with some of his black friends. One of whom was driving the cops pulled him over subject subjected them to harassment put him in jail Once in jail, I fucking love this George pulled out three joints. He'd hidden this pocket And they spent a night passing them back and forth the white between the white cell and the black cell having a good old time

That that young me would have loved to hang out with young George soon George found himself in more trouble Mouthed off to an air police officer who wanted to see some identification. Said, fuck you, I'm going to work. Sounds about right, on brand. He had defied authority, big no no in the military. He got something called an article 15, punishment just short of a court martial. The doctor's pay is rank forced him to give up the stripe he'd recently earned. Then not long after that, he was court martialed for deserting his post in a unit simulated combat mission. When during

the exercise, he took a nap. Place his gun next to a power unit. Once again, his pay was cut and he was demoted. Now he'd gotten one stripe, lost it, then he got a stripe back. And he got two more stripes and he lost a stripe and lost another stripe. And total by the time his brief career in the military was over. He'd earned six stripes and lost four. And George did not give a single fuck. He was already thinking beyond the military. A friend would tell him about a play taking place in a theater in Shreveport called Venture Theater where George would audition get a small part.

One of the main actors was Joe Monroe morning, this Jackie on K. Joe. Most popular station in Shreveport. George was fucking pumped. Still hold onto that plan in his this Jackie comic, big time actor. Now he'd met a man who could help him. He asked Joe if he could come down and watch the show someday and Joe did him one better hired him for 60 cents an hour to do the weekend newscast. Hot damn and he yeah, he's in soon. George will be doing a one hour show from noon to one before expanding from noon to three.

Preferring not to have George around and making trouble on basis appears gave him a off base permit. Only required him to write up a couple reports a week before he could leave for the station. Then pretty soon he'd have nothing but non-military time because he get another court martial. My god, this time he got it while stationed in England. He's only there for about 90 days. Well listen to the radio on a play, or listen to or a play by play on the radio of a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game is their final season in Brooklyn actually. George is drunk and he gets belligerent, superior. You know, ask him to quiet down and he tells him to go fuck himself.

Again, that's on brand. And again, big no no. Now he has two court marshals, five article 15s. I skipped over a few of the other infractions on his Air Force record. He doesn't want to be there anymore and they don't want him around anymore either. So George is given a general discharge from the Air Force.

July 29th, 1957. Despite getting kicked out, he had served for three years and a month and still qualified for the GI belt at that time. George was not down about the discharge. He felt like he's on top of the world. He's 20 years old. Already had a year and a half experience in radio. Back from England, he's able to work again as a DJ KJo and Shreveport for a few more months. And then one of the

guys from KJo moves up to Boston for a better radio gig. George follows the new station. George follows this guy to weaze W easy E will be very different. They still cared about. They're still carries. Excuse me. Soap operas and quiz different. They still cared about, they're still caring, excuse me, soap operas and quiz shows. They weren't, they weren't very hip or cool. George was able to get more experience though. He took a job as a board announcer, doing live copy, running the board,

also able to program a few hours of music late at night. Maybe not the kind of music he loves, but still cool to people. It's the time, still cool to people now. He played Sonatra, Victor Mone, New Orleans, Louis Prima, that kind of shit. This kind of stuff. And you will always be my endless love. Victor Mold everybody! Ah, try the meal.

It's delicious. Victor's up on Martini as the bar. We got a couple of hours. Yeah, it was the moan singing live, getting ladies wet, getting panties dripping in 1983. Snotch was that he had one of the, had the best set of pipes, excuse me, in the business for that style of song.

Weas wasn't Carlisth Dreamgate, but it would bring a very important person to his life. In 1959, he met Jack Burns, newsman at the station, they hit it off immediately. They both like to play the mandolin and jerk off elderly strangers in Turkish spots Fuck yeah, bro noise Or maybe not that Maybe they both like doing impressions of working class Irish characters Yeah, yeah, probably that one both and feel like they could have their characters say things that they never felt comfortable saying in real life

Once again in Boston naughty George would get into trouble though. 1959 Cardinal Cushing was a big fucking deal in the Catholic Church, especially in Boston. Cardinal Richard Cushing. Cushing. Why am I say Cushing? Cushing. Richard Cushing. Ding, ding, ding.

We've met our dick quota for the day. Can't have time sucks without some dick. Nimrod demands dick and every suck. I figured out he makes me suck at least one dick each week right here in the studio. Gosh dang. Cardinal coaching the archbishop of the Boston Arch diocese from 1944 to 1970 said the Rosary on air from a remote phone line every evening at that time. Good good.

Sure. That's exactly what a lot of people needed to be burning hell. If you wouldn't have done it. Before it began the rosary, he would always say a little something about life in the Boston Archdiocese. And yes, this fucking archbishop, this dick, of course, absolutely. New priests were molesting kids in his watch and absolutely hid them, moved them to other parishes instead of reporting them.

Link to the source for that info in this episode, show notes of course, show notes available for download via the Times Look app or at Times Look podcast.com. I was hoping he was clean, but figure there was some disturbing evidence out there considering where he served for how long. Anyway, one evening while Carl and his work in the station, Cushing starts in about the little sisters, the poor, saying the little sisters of the poor have been working, sadlylessly for years in the Boston wards, well, children with chronic diseases, but that that that keeps drowning on and on. He runs past his time when he's supposed to be off to, you know, Alka Celter, Alka Celter had a

sponsored news broadcast was supposed to be running George face with a dilemma now, right? Should he allow the extremely popular? Beloved Pito Heider keep yammering away or Cut to commercial and please the sponsor George decided to cut him off take him off air go to the Alconselter commercial A newscast and immediately the studio was unundated with calls asking who had dared to shut down the voice of God Station backed carl and decision though, but it did leave a black mark on his record. And then they would not back him up after this next faux pas. This one's pretty bad. Sometimes that weekends, when George wanted to buy some pot, he would take the station's mobile news unit. And they would drive the van to New York City, six or seven other guys that pile in with him. And one time this trip caused George to miscovering

a huge story about a prison break at Walpole State prison. What is superior? Calls George and chooses us. He tells him to calm down. He'll cover the next prison break. His boss, as you can imagine, not happy. Didn't appreciate that sentiment. And he's fired immediately.

After being fired still in 1959, George has now to Texas now. Take a job at KXOL, the number one station forth worth that time, which gave him a seven to midnight segment doing top 40 hits. Station managers called it the homework shift because kids would listen to it while they did their homework. And he holds that spot down for quite a while. After about six months at KXOL, he has old shreve poor buddy Jack Burns. We kept in touch with the peers in the scene again having quit wheeze. Maybe's W E Z E. I don't know if anybody calls it wheat. I don't call it weas. Jack tells him that he's on his way to Hollywood, but he's to make some money first. And George hooks him up with the job as a newsman.

Jack also moves in with him. And now the roommates can joke around all the time, develop some real comedic chemistry, while living together. Jack opens up Carlons mind to some new political insights. George's family had all been staunch Republicans, supporters of Eisenhower. Mary had been pro-Joseph McCarthy during the House on American activities hearings in young George, despite some rebellious ways, simply is still assumed that his mom was right. His conservative tendencies even blood into his radio job.

Once on air, he issued a call for the preemptive bombing of red China. But then Jack would give George a new perspective talking to him about castrow and cubo jack had actually interviewed castrow when he came to boston one of the first english language interviews the castrow gave in the u.s. not a big fan castrow but okay uh... jack i told jordan was fine to care about corporations in the state but also care about people and their civil liberties and jack

the fucking idiot haha haha ha ha ha, okay Jack. Okay, hippie Jack. Only corporations matter, CEOs, upper executives. Obviously, should live in gated communities. Poor, giant piles of wealth. While everyone beneath them lives in fear, that if they break the wrong bone or come down with the wrong illness, they will quickly go bankrupt,

never be able to retire, possibly end up being one of the tens of thousands of homeless working Americans right now. Fuck them, right? Ha ha ha. No, obviously I at least I hope this is obvious. Both corporations that individuals matter. Jack was right and George saw that.

Influence by Jack and he was heading this direction anyway. George was now quickly on his way to become a beatnik, to find as a dirty, fucking stinky, commy, filthy hippie, or as a person who participated in social movement in the 1950s and early 60s, which stressed artistic self-expression and the rejection of the Moors of Conditional Society, a rebel daddy anti-establishment. George and Jack would spend time at a coffee house in Fort Worth called

Celeron Houston Street, a served alcohol illegally. Woohoo! Since the county was still dry. And yes, a served alcohol illegally. Woohoo. Since the county was still dry. And yes, the county was dry. No legal liquor sales or consumption in 1959. 26 years after the National Repeal of Prohibition. 1996 Texas still had 53 dry counties, out of 254 total counties.

They got a lot of counties. And a lot of them are fucking bananas. Don't mess with Texas. She be a bit craic craic. There are still today six dry counties in 2022 in the land of the free. While the rest of the country is arguing over legalizing weed, maybe decriminalizing other drugs like, you know, psychedelic mushrooms, there are people in six counties in Texas who would just like to be able to legally buy a fucking beer One night on an open mic stage this beat Nick coffee house the end of 1959 So you act and George start doing the bits. They've done around the house riffin and characters voices

Surprised to hear they're getting a lot of laughs George is hooked to continue performing at this venue Unlike on the radio. They could really experiment in front of a live audience find out out what played well in the moment, what didn't, how to phrase the kind of things. They wouldn't say in polite society. So they'd get a good response. The duo began to dream about someday getting on the Jack Parr show and soon enough in February of 1960, the two decide to leave Fort Worth for Hollywood. Show me is, they bought a Dodge Dart with tinted windows. So hell yeah yeah head west and highway 80 towards El Paso And how adorable is this their colleagues the radio station talked to them over the air until they were out of the signals range

Saying stuff like they're on their way on their way to Hollywood. They're gonna be big stars Once in Hollywood George and Jack checked into the YMCA and bought some new suits at Sears naturally When you want to look and feel your best you suits at Sears. Naturally. When you want to look and feel your best, you shop at Sears. Then a few weeks they got robbed. There's money, stash, stolen, time to get jobs, cruel introduction to the land as showbiz. Someone stole their super cool Sears fashion suits. First place they went with a daytime station called K-Day looking for work, where luckily they got a gig right off the bat for morning comedy routine.

Station called them the Wright Brothers and they would do their first show from an airplane with, or you know, what looked like an airplane with aviator Helmets on. Ha ha ha. Oh, oh man. How wacky. Something was corny as shit. Guessing it was the bright idea of some dipshit producer and the Jack and George hated it. Oh, I don't know.

It was a very different time. They stayed at the station after hours work on nightclub bits, one night a man came in, they started, you know, gotten some local little coffee house spots, and then a man came in, named Murray Becker, offers to manage them, introduces them to the technical sides of Shelby's, like having a contract.

Murray contacted the guy at Error Records, too, set up a recording for which Jack and George would have $300 advance. Murray would also introduce them to Lenny Motherfuckin' Bruce, George's icon, as you know. George had come across his album, Interviews of Our Times, when he was in Shreveport, and the defiance of Lenny's material really spoke to him.

One thing to be a performer, but another thing to be the kind of free, wheeling performer Lenny Bruce was. Lenny checked out the nightclub act that Carl and Burns were working on in LA coffee houses and loved it. What a cool experience for young George is 22 now. A couple days later, Jack and George get a telegram from Jack from Jack Sobel, head of General

Artists, one of the biggest agencies of the time. The telegram read based on Lenny Bruce's rave reaction. The New York office hereby authorizes West Coast office, GAC to sign Burns and Carlton under exclusive representation contract all fields jack sobel. Which was a magical video the two of them reacting to that telegram. It was June 1960 the two young comics they've been in LA for just a mere five months already had an album recorded manager big agency. The album all recorded in May of 1960 wouldn't be released until 1963 called Burns and Carlin at the playboy club tonight

uh... here's a little snippet from the vinyl pressing uh... of that a twenty two year old carlin plan a boxer and a sketch called killer carlin good evening spot the ends biffer and back again in the spotlight spot like and my guest tonight a young man who has been a credit to the boxing game for over twenty years

a young man who has been a credit to the boxing game for over 20 years a young man was recently called by Ring magazine one of America's boxers. I like to introduce him to you now ladies and gentlemen killer Carlton. Well thank you very much Biff it's a pleasure to be on your crummy show. Thank you killer. Listen can you tell me killer how your fabulous boxing career started? Well, I started boxing as a kid in my neighborhood in the Lower East Side in New York. One day I was sitting at home. My mother asked me to take the garbage off. So I punched her in the mouth. My old man's seniority says kid, you got a good right hand. How would you like to make a little money in a fight game?

So I made my decision. I called Mitch Miller and I canceled my oboe lessons. What's funny to me about this little trippy here is this record was not actually recorded at the Playboy Club. It was recorded in a tiny little club in Hollywood called Cosmo Alley, but the record label thought Playboy Club sounded cooler. So, said they recorded it there. And I bet that annoyed the fuck out of Carl and later.

Now, I love you know, early on, you can hear, you can hear like little bits of what he would become later. I have more of his early performances. I will not have recordings of his later performances, I think just because of copyright issues. Shortly after this performance, Burns and Carlin were booked into their first legitimate nightclub, the cloister and in Chicago opening for Bobby Short,

Cabaret Singer and penis. They're returning to playboy now, Hugh Heffner. They're actually doing something to playboy. He sees him, takes notice of them. Think they have similar ideologies, you know, sexual freedom, freedom of speech, that sort of thing.

Possibly with the help of a good word from Heff back with his name, carried some weight in certain circles. The duo now get on to the tonight, tonight starring Jack Par, you know, like early, tonight show, predecessor, like before it was to the tonight, tonight starring Jack Par, you know, like early, uh, tonight show predecessor, like, like, uh, before it was called the night show. And they imitated Kennedy and Nixon debating. So, uh, yeah, early tonight show appearance. The two guys were hit, working blend, and they're working class backgrounds and their new

suits and social standings. Audience loved them. They weren't clean cut, but they didn't like punks either. They were political, but had more interest in playing their Irish characters and making statements. You know, they put their comedy first, not their politics, felt still felt safe, but maybe a little bit tiny bit counterculture. They done this Kennedy Nixon routine back in Chicago. We're a heftner and seeing them and Joe Kennedy JFK's dad had actually been on the audience and he didn't care for it. As a human Carlin would later talk about when Karlin appeared on Heffner's short-lived TV variety show Playboy After Dark.

For the next two years, Jack and George will play first-line nightclubs, like the Embers and Indianapolis, Freddy's and Minneapolis, and the Tidelands and Houston. Some places, they did great, other places they bombed, did well enough and most keep getting work to keep going. During this touring, still in 1960, at the Racket Club in Dayton, Ohio, George meets his future wife, love of his life, Brenda Hossbrook. Brenda was born and date in 1939, older of two sisters, spent her childhood in Salon or saloons, her dad was her dad saying for fun. After graduating high school, she planned on going to college, even got a scholarship,

but then her mom forbid it. Because she said women only went to college if they wanted to become teachers. Oh boy 62 years ago, and that was practical advice many parents gave their daughters. Don't go to college unless you want to do a job That's okay for ladies like working with children breeding children and or working with children. That's your options. You walking fucking wombs. You breed men's Fucking scary how stupid our species is in so many ways I still often think that I'm fasted with how well society actually functions all the beautiful buildings amazing tech medicine Lots of infrastructure etc Despite how many really stupid fucking ideas so many of us have and have had in the past

It is incredible to me that we are not living amongst burning piles of shit. Brenda came into her mom's pressure hard to go to school when your parents are, you know, supposed to help pay for it, but won't support your dreams. She wanted to be a journalist, but ladies don't be journalists. Now she says fuck it ends up getting pregnant with her high school boyfriend and then Brenda's peach of a mom interferes once more and pressures the couple to get married. Two weeks after the wedding, Brenda has a miscarriage, then files for divorce, which causes her awesome parents to basically disown her for a time.

Something she was better off without those two sad fucking clowns. You can't pick parents, made sex, and idiots and assholes have kids all the time. A bit of a lot of folks would be happier if they just told Mon-Paw to go suck a bag of dicks. If they can be cool and supportive and just cut them out of their lives. I cut an terrible person, a parent who happened to be a stepmom to me for over

10 years out of my life completely, told her to fuck off, never spoke to her again. She died a decade or so after I said, Adios, and I have not once regretted it. If anything, I regret not doing it. That toxic snake of a human earlier. Following this, Brenda got a job as an executive secretary at a tool company, but then quit after she was required to organize call girls for visiting salesmen with the implication being that she would be required to join in. Holy shit. What a what a fun time to be a woman in the American Midwest. Those of you who wants to find those guys and shit in their mouths, but only if that doesn't turn them on

After that she became the major D at the racket club a nightclub the feature comics cabarex She actually would meet Lenny Bruce there And Lenny would be the one to recommend Georgian Jack to perform at the racket club in august 1960 That is fascinating to me We would never have had the comedy stylons of George Carlin had Lenny Bruce not open the door the type of comedy he did and helped his comedy career. And Carly would not have met his wife had Bruce not recommended him to perform it that particular club. George and Brenda clicked immediately. She said when he met her, he asked, uh, you know,

what is the guy supposed to do in Dayton during some time off? Wink wink. him you should find a girl with a good stereo to hang out with and that girl was her When then for the next two weeks they spent every night together Brenda said she didn't think they ever even turned that stereo on They were too busy doing other things She tossed a little impish grinning when she said that I love Brenda After two weeks to gig ended and it was time for George leave town Brenda. Brenda assumed their little affair might be over now. George did not. He was in love. And I love their love story. George is now a cop between his burgeoning career and pursuing something with Brenda. George went on the road again, but couldn't get Brenda off his mind. He wrote her letters, called her up a couple months later, asked her to come to Chicago for New

Year's Eve. She couldn't. So instead, he just drove to Dayton. After a couple days delay, he made it to date in early January of 1961. She wasn't positive, he was really gonna show up. According to George's autobiography, he says, I go in the door and she's seating people, giving the menus, taking orders and so on. When suddenly she turns around and sees me in the doorway, she drops the menus, runs the entire length

of the dining room, jumps into my arms, we go to a motel and no one sees us for three days. During those three days, he asked her to marry him. She said yes. And I heard that someone may have teared up first hearing about their love story. Wasn't he? Wasn't he? I am a man.

And I do not express emotion other than anger and frustration and sometimes tacit subdued joy. But I heard that a guy who looks like me was very touched by all this. Some fucking baby man that is not me. Anyway, George met Brenda's family. Got her moms for grudging approval to marry him. Sucks that she felt the need to even ask that old crusty bitch. And then the two of them went to New York where George introduced her to her, uh, his mother, brother, and old gang of friends. Brenda and George then take a short break from fucking like Spanish fly guzzin rabbits and get married on June 3rd, 1961. ceremony takes place in Dayton and her family's house, Mary flew in from New York.

Jack was a Georgia's best man and their manager, Murray Becker, was among the guests. And then it was back on the road for Georgia and Jack. But this time, Brenda was along for the ride too. Down in Dallas, George gets into a more trouble with law. This time, really isn't his fault. When he's at a laundromat, two minutes of, and actually, I say more trouble with the law. Well, I guess more since he was a kid. This is his first trouble of the law since the military. And this time, not really his fault. When he's at a laundromat, two men in civilian clothes handcuffed and bring him back to the motel where he, Jack and Brenda were staying, then proceeded to tear the hotel room apart and

interrogate all them. They told Georgia that Jack had ratted him out. They told Jack the opposite, both Jack and George, very confused, eventually they find out that the cops were following a tip off, but a group of armed robbers who'd hit the Chicago Motor Club, two men and a woman, and their group happened to fit the bill. That night, George and Jack get to the club just in time to open, also around that time. George, starting to think it might be time for him to move on from their two-man show. Both Jack and George seem to know that being a duo was a stepping stone for them. They were too much alike in their performance styles, same kind of guy, same kind of characters. And you know, George wanted to work solo. March, 1962, the duo of Burns

and Carlin officially breaks up after grabbing a drink at the Redfields neighborhood tavern in Dallas. And it was pretty dramatic. George told Jack, basically, thanks for all the great times. I think we should go our separate ways. He thought Jack was on the same page with that plan. They discussed it previously. No, no, Jack pulled a gun on him. George Quithy grabbed his arm. They wrestle around. They wrestle all the way towards the street where a presidential motorcade was driving by.

The gun goes off. People start screaming, someone at the same time, maybe the same bullet hits JFK. Crazy. That hasn't come up in assassination theories. Okay. Maybe that wasn't that dramatic. Maybe JFK would be assassinated the following year. No, they broke up at the Maryland hotel in Chicago. It was amicable. George or should be Jack wanted to pursue sketch comedy and George wanted to

pursue his tenets. There you go. Jack joined the Compass players in St. Louis. Later moved to second city. Chicago, we later end up as a hugely successful TV writer and producer. He and George would remain close friends for, you know, for the rest of their lives. Now without his partner, 24 year old George had to figure out how to an entirely new routine toward the country yet again, this time bombing frequently. Places aren't booking him back. Young married man wondering how he's going to pay his bills pretty soon to get out of his

own head after bombing at this or that nightclub, he goes to some beat Nick coffee house, gets a little taste of the counterculture is reminded once again of the freedom, the open-minded philosophies of the people performing there. Until 1964, he would live sort of a double life. He'd work in nightclubs where he couldn't say what he wanted to make ends meet. We do, you know, materially didn't care for as much, then head to the coffee house to do much more uncensored shows and get inspired. There he could do material about, you know, integration, John Birch society, KKK, he was at a crossroads.

Like any performer, he wanted the widest audience possible to have the most financial security and the great feeling that comes with knowing a lot of people like a shit. Also wanted to be able to say what was on his fucking mind? What's he willing to risk? Some semblance of financial security to gain a much greater sense of artistic integrity and satisfaction. He's really grappling with his dilemma. Then adding more financial pressure to his plate in the fall of 1962, Brendan gets pregnant in the Orleans. George, thinking fast, his mind trained from hours on stage to rapidly make bold decisions, karate kicks right in the womb.

What she pissed, you betcha. Did he have one less mouth to feed? Mm-hmm, desperate times. No, of course not a terrific. Now the couple heads to Chicago where George gets, uh, gets, gets lined up at the Playboy Club. Brenda will head home to Dayton nine months later to have the baby be helped by her not so cool parents. I'm sure she was thrilled. Back home, Brenda would actually discover that her mom was dying of cancer. She's lifting to a diabetic coma died before the baby was born. Brenda

overjoyed saying saying ding, dong, and the witch just dead to her fetus. No, no, the other problems, but she loved her mom and was upset and grieved her pasty. But, you know, but also fucked that bitch. Brenda was stressed, stressed about not having her mom to help with the baby,

and before the baby would be born in December 1962, George Carlin once again detained by the cops. This time for something that would continue to haunt his career. December of 1962, George was Lenny Bruce at the gate of Horn Club in Chicago, Lenny performing when suddenly a police officer in the audience announced that the show was over

and he had Lenny hauled away. Lenny was used to this by now being arrested on charge of obscenity. He'd been busted, either actually arrested or just detained so many times he started to wear a coat during his performances, so he could just leave immediately he started to wear a coat during his performances. So he could just leave immediately with police and not losing. He was shit.

That's crazy. During one, two years stretch, Lenny was arrested 15 times on obscenity charges for doing standard in places where people paid to watch him to stand up. How sad is that? This time the cops also brought in the bartender and the club's owner. And then when a cop asked us he'd George Carlons ID, he said, I don't believe in identification. Sorry. Then he started to give a drunk and rambling speech about freedom, basic human rights, cops being fucking assholes in these situations. That's sort of thing. And they didn't like it. And he was immediately arrested. June 15th, 1963,

a little while after that, he was just kind of in jail overnight. Lenny Bruce actually said, asked him like, you know, why he was in the car with Lenny Bruce. He got put in the same squad car when he told him he refused to give his ID. Lenny Bruce as opposed to me like, yeah, good for you. Fuck the man, just said, schmuck.

June 15, 93, Kelly, Marie, Carlin's born George and Brenda's only child, her new family while overjoyed to her arrival. Also our essentially broken homeless. They moved back to 121st Street in New York, Carlons Old stomping grounds. George has to borrow money just to stay afloat. Also decides he's gonna, uh, not tour for a while. He's sick of going to play places where the people don't understand him or his references.

Even though, uh, you know, their stability is on the line. They're hanging out by a thread now, Brenda supports him. At the time, the only way for struggling comics to really be seen developing audience was to perform on something called a hoot. Hoot short for a hoot nanny. originally an impromptu concert of folk music It involved into a version of an amateur night where all kinds of aspiring entertainers could perform kind of like an obama But much more variety singers musicians comics jugglers dancers magicians all sorts of shit Georgia played his first hoot in March 1963 and a whole-n-the-wall club called Cafe What off Bleaker Street.

Kepp Plain Hoots at the bitter end eventually caught the eye of how he saw them in who offered him a large coffee house style gig at the Cafe a go-go. Cafe a go-go was a Greenwich Village nightclub located in the basement of the new Andy Warhol Gareth Theater building at 152 Bleaker Street in Manhattan. Cafe a go-go would become a centerpiece of the 60s counter cultural movement, hosting jazz performers like Stan Getz, Nina Simone, Mort Saul, a regular comic there. How we offer Carl and a regular gig there

and open ended arrangement to be a regular when the mic was open. Offer the same to one other comic, Guy three younger than Carl and Richard than Carlin, Richard prior. How amazing, two masters, the best two in my opinion to ever do it in terms of how prolific they were, how good they were, how famous they became, and how influential they were to the art form of stand-up comedy in general. George still took the occasional gig outside of New York to make enough money for his family

to survive. He was lucky to get those. The go-go became his comedic laboratory, where he will experiment with his sets like he had in the old days. His audience was full of people who didn't accept the prescribed social values in the mainstream culture,

who wanted to push the envelope. We felt alienated by a regular middle class American values, but it wasn't without his dangers. Lenny Bruce will be busted by cops to the go-go twice. Of course he won. That poor, cursed son of a bitch, Big Brother hated him. Most of the cops who were fervently busting Lenny were people that George actually knew Irish Catholic boys who were upset that Lenny was being so cavalier about the Catholic church.

And their answer was to arrest him. Fuck in dumb shits. Not real familiar with the slippery slope concept, I guess. Arresting someone, you know, for saying something you don't like, opens the door for someone else later arrest, for saying something you don't like, opens a door for someone else later arrest you for saying something they don't like. November 22nd, 1963, JFK, shot in Dallas for real this time. Carl and headlong identify with Kennedy, you know, another man of Irish ancestry as someone who was working towards civil rights, promising a better world. He had imitated Kennedy for years, a loving tribute to a guy who seemed like he was on

the right side of history. On November 22nd, George was walking his baby daughter down 110th and Broadway when a passerby informed him of the shooting and immediately George called Brandon and started crying. That's so hard to hit him. He was still performing his regular sets of the go-go, but now he doesn't know how to move forward. It's a big cultural shift moment. Carl doesn't see himself as an establishment social comedian, but he also wants to, he wants more than the coffee shops and the village. He wants, you know, a TV spot. He wants to get better work.

What mainstream bit, you know, could he come up with? We can't do is JFK impression anymore. That's out. He feels so he comes up with an idea called Indian Sargent. The premise grew out of all the westerns he watched on TV as a kid. On those shows, the US Army or the Pioneers or Cow Pokes, they always had a weatherbeaten battle, heartened sergeant or boss who gave everyone a rousing speech before a battle. And he felt like, well, what if the tribe they were fighting at the same type of guy?

He delivered it in his working class Irish accent. It wasn't the riskier stuff that the village crowd liked, but it worked. And it was different than what other comics were doing. And he would get a TV gig on the Merv Griffin show, a better place for George than some other programs doing this bit. When made the Merv Griffin show, different mother network shows was that it was syndicated. So while it wasn't fundamentally freer than any other variety style TV show, the burden of approval of things didn't weigh entirely on the producer and production staff.

It was also on a group of stations that wouldn't receive it until two weeks later. It was less panic and pressure. The staff more relaxed. Doing his Indian sergeant bit on this show would be George's breakthrough as a solo act. In July of 1965, George goes in the murder of Griffin show, fucking kills with this bit, and they tell him they want him back three more times. Exciting and stressful, because he didn't have any more TV friendly funny material. He would have to write more and very quickly. He did. His second set was

about a radio DJ with the Wild West team show. After his fourth appearance, the producers now asking to come back again and they want him to do a cycle of 13 more spots with material he does not have. And that is crazy. In need of more material, George quickly writes a TV commercial routine, sports, weather, reporting to, you know, a TV commercial routine, sports, weather, reporting to his radio DJ, bit and on and on and so forth. The exposure on Merve Griffin, soon leads to other opportunities because he continues to do well. Carlin finds himself doing a co-hosting stint on the Mike Douglas show in Philadelphia, another top rated daytime TV show syndicated by Westinghouse, a huge of the time. Closest thing I ever experienced anything like this, like to be

and ask for more sets was after I did Conan the second time, the producers want to be back that I could submit a set anytime and I never did. That was back in 2016, right? When I was conceptualizing this podcast. I love going. Yeah, it'd be fun. But like George would eventually find out that he just couldn't

be himself on late night TV, at least not doing stand up, I also felt that I just couldn't be myself on network stand up spots. I can only be a very censored version of myself and I found it honestly boring. I wanted to accomplish it, I wanted to do one set that I thought was really well.

And the last go to one I was like, okay, that's it. And but I found a mechanical and also brutal honesty here. My late night spots, the few I did never led to a bunch of new followers on social media, to a bunch of new fans, it shows that kind of thing. So, unlike Carl and who had a lot of incentive to bust his ass and come up with more material

and that was the path he needed, I did not have that incentive. Thank God this worked. And October of, by this, I mean this podcast. And October of 1965, now 28 year old George Carlin as C non TV Carlin when that man to everything well he gets booked in Basin Street East another New York City nightclub opens up for Tijuana brass band people actually show up to see him here it's fucking cool producer also meets him put him on the Jimmy Dean show I've seen him there

and ABC prime time show that he went on in January of 1966, and he'll get a job as a regular performer and writer then on the craft summer musical, starring John Davidson, like one thing, this leads to another, this leads to another, and now film an LA starting in March 1966. So the Carlin family excited, the future looking bright, they pack up and they head west. He's back in LA with a better job this time as a solo act. He's got to be feeling on top of the world George would appear on craft as the house comic doing his set for every show It's wild show featured other comics as well like Richard prior flip Wilson musical guest like Nancy Sinatra

Everly brothers here Carlton would get to Be a bit more subversive, writing characters who are clearly stoned yet could pass for just weird to more conservative middle America that would have been outraged by someone obviously stoned, like his character Al Sleet, the hippie-dippy weatherman. First big character that many people today still remember. Here's a clip of Carl and doing this character on the tonight show. And so little is a little bit after, in 1966. And now, boy, it's been a weather of yours.

I'll sleep your hippie-dippy weatherman. Hey, there was that moon. It's murdering. Hey, boss. I was sleeping here, and I imagine some of you were a little surprised at the weather over the weekend, especially if you watch my show Friday night, right? I like to apologize for the weather, especially to these former residents of Rogers, Oklahoma. The next tornado jump? What's that happened? I see the radar tonight is picking up a line of thunder showers, which extends from

a point nine miles south south east of Chesapetlvania along a line and six miles either side of a line to a point eight miles north north east as we call it, it's new turns. However, the radar is also picking up as quite gonna rush an ICBM I wouldn't sweat the thunder shower My god Johnny Carson actually like fell out of his seat and slapped a flora on that one. That's great He could go to do a more and more TV that year I mean all while trying to figure out how to preserve his own identity while also conforming to TV's behavioral standards, starts to change his childhood dream a bit.

You know, he'd been a radio DJ, he's now a comic, he's a successful one. Film star was next, right? Wasn't look like it. Not because he didn't get parts, but because when he tried out for parts, he fucking hated it. He wanted to say his own words, not someone else's.

I also get this too. I was supposed to get acting classes, one someone else's. I also get this too. I was supposed to get acting classes, one of the down LA I never did. I got sent out a lot of auditions at first. It hated it. Yes, one of the money that would have come with a TV show or a movie at that time, the exposure would have been super cool. It would have been super fun to do it. But I also do the odds were low. I would get anything because it's very competitive and I didn't like it. Other people, you know, who are good at it, love it. Love the craft. Hard enough to compete with others in entertainment when you love what you do, almost impossible

when you don't. Despite feeling like acting wasn't really for him. This doesn't come as a relief for George, because now he has no idea what's next, right? The plan was to get leverage, to leverage comedy into acting. Well, now what? Has to go harder on comedy. But first, some tragedy, closest person, Karlin had to a mentor. Lenny Bruce dies August 3rd, 1966, age 40 in Hollywood. George and Brenda had just visited him less than two weeks before, right after moving to LA. By that time Lenny was mired deep in legal battles, almost bankrupt, spending all of his money trying to vindicate himself. Was Karlin tremendously sad, of course, but as they say, the show must go on in a wood form.

February of 1967, Carlton released his first solo album, Take Off's and Put Ons on RCA Victor Records, goes gold, baby. Very impressive for a comic. First of four records in a row that would go gold, gets nominated for a Grammy, which was awesome. Carlton loses to a raping McGee. I mean, sleepy time, a mix-nicky winner. I mean, Bill, fuck that guy Cosby. So he got nominated, but you know, it didn't quite win. If you don't understand those references, you gotta get out more. You've needed to get out more since late 2014.

Carlin is killing it in the late 1960s, making roughly $250,000 a year by the end, which is the equivalent of about $2 million a year. He's got an agent management, you know, great manager, great promoter. He's crushing it, able to take care of Brenda and their daughter Kelly. Just fine, but he starts to get bored and just satisfy with his work. He started to hate late night TV, especially after he goes in the Ed Sullivan show for the first time on January 29, 1967.

Supposed to be a dream, right? This is where the Beatles broke. But for comic be a dream, right? This was a Beatles broke. But for a comic and for George, it's more of a nightmare. There was no second take. The studio audience knew that the show was live. They would hold laughter until the crowd would all laugh at the same time. Very unnatural for comedy. Nail and the conference Ed Sullivan himself would stand on stage during the comedian set

off camera, but still watching. And the audience would watch Sullivan to see if he laughed. And then they would laugh. It was a terrible format for comedy. But George performed their multiple times because I had a huge audience around one out of four people watching TV in 1967 would watch the Ed Sullivan show. Tens of millions of viewers. Karlin happy he's doing well, getting these opportunities, but still not really being George Karlin on TV. He's putting on an act, not truly being himself on stage, the ultimate goal of most comics to be themselves on stage. And there's more problems at home now, or sorry, there's problems, not more problems, problems at home, tying it back up a bit with Brenda's wife.

While Carlin has professionally been soaring, Brenda has been spiraling and it's largely Georgia's fault. Brenda when they first got together didn't just watch his shows and party when they were on the road. She worked with him, took notes on his sets, talked about workshop new bits with them back at the hotel, you know, called clubs to get him more work. Acted as his agent and manager handled his promo, worked on press for him, you know, was a promoter account, etc. and she was good at all that.

And when they moved to L.A., back to L.A., when the star began to rise, he didn't want her to work anymore. He wanted her to stay at home mom. And while she loved their daughter, Kelly, she didn't want to also not work. You know, essentially your husband, the love of her life, a partner in crime, had fired her, kind of turned into her mom again, you know, she was in the fuck at him for this. And she started to drink heavily. She hated playing the hard line mom to Georgia's fun love and dad. It would swoop in and spoil Kelly when he was home from the road. And he was on the road more and more.

And they started the fight because they fought because of his career opportunities. George would go on the road more than ever, which meant they fought more as a bad cycle. And we will reconnect on the relationship later. So let's go on the background more on George's career now, despite his increase in success. George is, you know, again, less and less artistically satisfied, counterculture as a decade closes is in full bloom. And he wants to be part of it. Instead of, you know, I'm playing the fellow hippies who he's not much older than he's

playing to their conservative parents. And that's not who he is. He desperately wants to do more subversive stuff. He'll push the envelope a bit more when he does a subversive piece. He wrote for the Jackie Gleason show, which aired in January of 1969. Peace was called the J Edgar Hoover show. He played Hoover, Mox is shit out of the long time FBI director. Hoover, we've talked about him a few times, mentioned him earlier, ran the FBI's first

director from 1935 to 1972 and in many ways was a huge piece of illegally spying on and legally fucking with anyone he deemed un-American pieces shit. Thirty years later, Carlton will find out due to the Freedom of Information Act that the FBI started a file on him following that performance. One report read that an agent commented on appearance of one George Carlin in alleged comedian, like alleged, alleged, some people think he's funny. And that the subject of Carlin's material was the FBI and Mr. Hoover,

and that his treatment of both was shoddy and in shockingly bad taste. Okay. Then in late 1969, Carlin gets fired again. Mark's a big turning point in his career. In the fall of 69, he was fired from his residency at the Frontier Hotel in Vegas for saying the word ass, losing out on an extremely lucrative two-year deal. With a counterculture in full fucking swing, the epic Woodstock music festival had just

went down weeks earlier. He gets fired for saying ass. Clearly, the Frontier Hotel not catered into the youth. He gets fired for telling a very tame joke by Carl and standards. He said, I got no ass. You might notice I go right from the shoulders to the heels like most Irish guys, no ass. When I was in the service, black guys used to see me in the showers and say, Hey man, where you ass at? Stubbed got no ass. That's it. That was enough to get him fired. And after that, oh, fuck yeah. Dabble's a bit in LSD. Starts dropping some acid. October of 1969, he's planning to jazz club in Chicago called Mr. Kelly, trying to figure out his life. And

over the course of the two-week gig, he drops acid between five and 10 times. Later couldn't remember exactly how much he had done. It was a profound turning point for him. He felt like the drug finally allowed him to see how to get from one place to the next, how to change his life. Yes! Psychedelics, they get so demonized. But what about the valuable person they used to? Less now. Now, I just think about the valuable perspective shifts they can give you. Like, would Hendrix have been Hendrix without acid? I don't think so. I think it allowed him to access his brain in different special ways and took his guitar work for being technically very proficient to other world-day. The Beatles, they would not have made the fucking white album without acid.

Seriously, after their first experience with LSD in 1966, the Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison, insisted that Paul and Ringo experience the psychedelic. John and I decided that Paul and Ringo had to have acid because we couldn't relate to them anymore, not just on the one level, we couldn't relate to them on any level because acid had changed us so much. That's what Harrison told Rolling Stone in 1971.

McCartney tried it in 1967, and later in the interview said that the drug quote, explain the mystery of life. The white album, double album, actually, epic masterpiece recorded months later. Paul Simon, you psychedelics to refocus his perspective numerous times his career. Sting has shit ton of actors, Silicon Valley and innovators, et cetera, have used it to great effect. The long term effects of my craft yet to be seen, but I've been experimenting more and

more with psychedelics recently actively trying to burrow further and further into my subconscious, shed certain fears and habits and, you know, perceive limitations and negativity so I can try and transform it to the best version of myself. And I know that might sound fucking crazy to say that, but I value psychedelics as important tools. And mental health wise, I'm the most in touch with my emotions and the happiest I've ever been on the best father, husband I've been in years, maybe ever, and I think, you know, time will tell. I'll be the best comic and podcast I've ever been.

Let's see, maybe psychedelics will somehow give you the ability to consistently pronounce shit correctly. Doubt it. I kind of like my mush mouth actually. It's a nice arrogance deterrent. When I start sitting a bit too high in the horse, I'm reminded that I can barely speak coherently, and I'm lucky to do this professionally. Anyway, psychedelics now, not for everyone dangerous for some, but miraculous for others. And I don't think Carlin would have become Carlin. The Carlin we know had he not shattered his previous identity with LSD and then rebuilt himself. I've for tripping balls for two weeks, traveling through time and fucking space, deep into his own mind. travel to time and fucking space deep into his own mind. He still has to do his gicks. But he scheduled before the acid like the Copacabana in New York. He does

his act there. The act doesn't want to do any more Indian sergeant. Hippy-dippy weatherman. Wonderful wine-o. Just to enter shit him and doing for a few years. Hearts not in it. He starts making fun of the theater itself at one point lying down on the floor under the piano. Describe it what it looked like underneath. It's high as shit. Audiences didn't care for it. Let's go down for three weeks. On the final performance, the theater simply cuts off the lights and mic during the last minutes of his performance. That's hardcore.

That's how you know the staff fucking hates your guts. Last performance happened on January 6, 1970. He'd now been fired from two of the most respected mainstream venues for comics in the country. He will have at least one good review though. A lot of reviewers are turning him apart right now. Uh, his mom, Mary is not. I find this very touching. Uh, strange.

This was not covered in the recent HBO two-parter about him. Well, I didn't finish the second part, uh, which really demonized his mother in the first part, but she wrote a letter to her son that read, dear George, I should be on the checkout line, uh, at the supermarket, but I must say these words to you, please read these reviews. You will someday be a Beckett or a Joyce or maybe a Bernard Shaw. You seem to have their kind of disturbance. Someday you will release what you have down inside of you and it will be listened to and heard. They condemn you for idolizing Lenny Bruce, how

little they really know what you see in his courage, sincerity, and daring. Please, George, insist on being yourself. Don't let anyone change you or silence you. I'm so hungry for a heart to heart with you. Why have I got this restlessness, this groping for answers, which I sometimes feel I have passed on to you? Do you follow me, George? Why can't I quiet this undisciplined questioning of what goes on around us? Why am I so caught up in it? Hail fucking Nimrod. That gave George the final push he needed and the beast was unleashed. Two weeks later, Karlin, who grown a beard, did the radio and television correspondence

dinner in Washington DC, talked about the government's lies and inconsistencies, starts stirring shit up politically, goes head to head with representative Bob Dornin of Orange County. It was on a tie rate about these hippies desecrating the flag. George calls him out. It says, wait a minute. A flag is supposed to represent everything that a country does. It doesn't only represent the good things. If you burn the flag, you're burning the flag for what you perceive to be the bad things the country has done.

It's only a symbol. It's only a piece of cloth. And he's fucking right. Carlin understood context, he understood nuance. He saw shit from other people's perspectives. He didn't just say lazily, well, the way things are done, that's the way they always are. I'm right.

Lost in some of his jokes was the depth of understanding he had for the human experience, for how gray most of life really is. And when you see life that way, then I try to as well. It's very hard to like a lot of politicians and mainstream media sources who want to simplify shit into catchy slogans and take the nuance out of issues and make them black and white, you know, just make them

binary because that works. That rallies those who can't or don't want to look at things complexly and clean little voting blocks, clean little marketing bases. It's manipulative and very effective, but you don't have to fall for it. If you expand your mind, if you start looking for the gray, when you see the gray, you see the manipulation around you continually perpetuated by self-serving politicians, greedy corporations, and you might just start to hate those motherfuckers and want to call out their toxic lies. It gets hard not to hate the crowds, it's so willingly lap up their lies and rally around simple minded shit as well

People who scream like oh you can't say that you can't do that But don't actually have any intellectual argument to back up their fucking hollow opinions They shot with certainty because they don't they don't have any arguments They just are yelling shit because they got some half-baked notion of being right and that's enough for them Because they don't fucking look into themselves Because he didn't X to them just yelled the same shit. Karlin, he was in this headspace now, he's about to get real fucking real. Comedy bone, rock hard again. August 1970, George gets booked again at the frontier hotel in Vegas and promptly gets

fired again for considering the double meanings of the word shit on stage. He says, I don't say shit down the street, buddy, hack it says shit. Red fox says shit. I don't say shit. I smoke a little of it, but I don't say it. This is a throwaway line, but it's enough to get him fired. The reaction he gets leads to him to expand the line and to a bigger piece. He's doubling down now on what the casino managers, other suits are telling him not to say Riding than performing. I got fired last year in Las Vegas for saying shit in a town with a big game is called Crap's That's some kind of double standard. I'm sure there was some Texans standing out in the casino yelling. Oh shit. I crapped and They fly those guys in for free fired me

shit Get into as much trouble saying shit as you can, smoking it down there. Shit's a nice word, friendly, happy word, handy word. The middle class has never really been into shit as a word. Not really comfortable. You're hearing it around the kitchen if someone drops a casserole. Oh shit, look at the noodles. Oh shit. Don't say that, Johnny. Just hear it. Sometimes they say shoot, but they can't kid me. Shoot as shit with two O's. The use of shit is always figurative speech get that shit out of here Well, you move that shit. I don't want to hear that shit. Don't give me that shit I don't have to take that shit your full of shit think I'm a shithead or something always figurative

You never hear anyone say look at the little pieces of shit in the street Martha They don't say that they're other words for that do do cock-a-poo poo and good old number two Could never figure that one out man. How do they arrive at that out of all the numbers two got to mean shit My dog does number five. That's three ones in a two Soon this routine which he called shoot would have all been to seven words Arguably the centerpiece of his career Talking about something that had happened to him He found his way into a new real more natural kind of comedy and he once again be fired for it.

On November 30th, 1970, the daily variety reported, comic George Carlton was canceled and asked to leave Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Playboy Club after the audience got ugly during his second show Saturday night. Management said it feared for his safety. It was his stick about materialism in American society, press censorship, poverty, nicks and agnew in the Vietnam War that apparently incensed the late nine crowd. Club managers said, Carlin, quote, insult to the audience directly and use defensive language and material, reacting to his statements about poverty, one woman heckled, you don't know anything about poverty. We don't have any in this country. A comment

about going through Cambodia to get out of Vietnam brought the retort. How do you know? You've never been shot at. Club manager said comic would have been in danger if he'd gone anywhere the audience could have got to him. How dare, Carlton actually share well thought out opinions about important shit that audience members had no thought or thought out counter fucking opinions to say back. Here's an idea for anyone, uh, podcast who might go to a stand up comedy show

someday. If you've already bought a ticket to a comedy show and you're there, right? And the person on stage starts saying something you find offensive. How about instead of saying something to back, you, I don't know, just shut the fuck up and listen and don't ruin the show for others and maybe actually think about what they said. Maybe analyze yourself a bit. Why did it upset you? Was it truly offensive?

Or are you just choosing to let the words of a stranger that don't actually really need to offend you bother you more than they need to? Are you choosing to be weak-minded? If you really just can't take it, how about you just show some class quietly leave, trying to upset other patrons who may be enjoying the show on your way out and don't let the fucking door

hit you on the ass when you leave. It's like it's pretty simple, but a lot of people can't get it. Carlin's crowds couldn't get it here. George would later remember how scary this experience was. It was one thing to be heckled. It was another to be heckled by 200 people, many of whom wanted to harm you. He wanted if any of them had a gun. Management told them that they could not guarantee his safety if you remained on the premises. He was shaking up, but I get it. Also shaking up, I lose a lot of money getting fired from all these places. He can't afford the mortgage

for the family's new house in Calabasas now that he, Brenda and Kelly who seven now, they have to move back into an apartment complex. Then they move again to another apartment, Venice Beach on Pacific Avenue where George starts to smoke pot daily, really get into his head. When Brenda brings up her financial worries, Georgia cuses her of being a middle-class midwestern, Protestant, conventional, thicker. He's feeling trapped between the things he wants for himself and his commitments to his family. His career is in a downward spiral,

his marriages as well, Brenda's drinking more than ever. Then in the middle of all this, Brenda finds out that she's pregnant again, unable to afford another child. Georgia ranges the secret abortion in an apartment somewhere in Burbank. It's fucking scary.

Brenda has to be blindfolded, picked up an parking lot. Fuck, life is not going well for the carl and so she won't know where this place is to identify the doctor. Carlisle doesn't let all this break him. He now realized that the key to feeling like he's being his authentic self is not to try and identify with the counterculture to some extreme inauthentic extent, but just to tell the truth about where he came from what shaped him how he thinks He starts to play coffee houses folk clubs again makes a little bit of money Finally starts getting real laughs not polite little titters like you get a night clubs Not to polite little applause break real belly laughs as the firm sees a head in the right direction

He changes his appearance to match his new material. He grows his hair out long And you know he has a beard, tarps wear an earrings, t-shirt, blue jeans. And some people think these changes are great. Some people don't. One review from the early 70s would read, George Carlton has become a showbiz mystery. One of the very best young contemporary clowns, he had a splendid comic spirit, a fresh new outlook on comedy. Got the top TV bookings has been considered for several terribly re-minumative TV talk show chairmanship. His material was attracted to teenagers, college kids and mature marries. His records sold friskely and all seem right in his straight future. Carla

now seems an artistic dropout. His clothes incensed hang dog demeanor, long ponytail style hairdo, grubby pants, totally unwashed sh shambling, savagely, apologetic aspect as if speaking straight from a hobo jungle Combined in his new style, essentially no style at all beyond a belligerent, truckulent statement This is exactly what he wanted. He lost some TV bookings by dressing stranger for a comedian at the time when clean cut well-dressed comedians with a norm He now hires talent managers Jeff Wald, Ron deBlasio to help him change his image making him look More attractive more hip to a younger audience Wald puts George into smaller clubs the bitter end in New York City the Troubadour in West Hollywood Gochua making over $250,000 a year to making less than 15 grand during his transformative year And he's supposed to be providing for the family his male ego getting judo chopped right to the throat in

1970 a real good things coming around the corner 1970 record producer Monty K forms little David records a subsidiary of Atlantic which comedian flip Wilson Was a co-owner of Kane Wilson signed Carlin away from RCA records record a carlin performance of Washington DC Celerdor and may have 71 released as FM and AM in January of 72. The real Carlisans first album and it becomes a hit, right? Gold record. The record marks Carlisans change from mainstream to counterculture comedy, shown his full journey from nightclub comedian to authentic performer.

The AM side was an extension of Carlisans previous style with zany, but relatively clean routines, parody and aspects of American life. AM radio was thought to be a conservative in square. The FM side introduced Karol's new style, references to weed and birth control pills. FM was counter culture. The album, like his first, you know, goes gold, but it's, yeah, he's way more proud of this one.

A lot of people resonate with the AM FM splits. It would even win George's first Grammy, which he would find out during the taping of his next special, which is fucking awesome How good it must have felt to have risked it all and then you know now he's gaining it now He's gaining you know gaining it back the right way the way he wants it He and Brenda, you know, they were broke had to borrow money to pay bills then he makes it Making so much money not happy creatively risked it all

All the day just made goes back to being broke, has it almost all fall apart, but now he's soaring again. This dude had big fucking balls. Just four months after FM and AM, he would record class clown. Finding all this new material he'd been thinking about for years, but was never brave enough to do, he was just bursting out of him. During this time, George perfects his well-known seven-dirty words routine, which most notably appears on his album, Class Clown, as follows.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock, sucker, motherfucker, and tits. Here's how the bit starts. There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are 7 of them. You can't see on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to 7. They must be really bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you 7, you bad words.

With Album Came Money, awesome, but also a new cocaine habit, not awesome. You wasn't just doing a little bit of blow either. Doing loads of it. And speaking of blow, time to take a little quick break from our narrative. Just one more quick sponsor and it will jump right back of it. And speaking of blow, time to take a little quick break from our narrative. Just one more quick sponsor and it will jump right back into it. Today's time talk is brought to you by Whipple! 7 dirty words edition.

Whipple, 7 dirty words edition is made with so much fucking okay. It's barely liquid. And also some green teen orange juice to shut down the shades. Also some PC, fucking P, and profanity. You silly, titsuck and cunt, licking cocksucker, shitty, piss-drinking, DOLIDE, mother f**ker. Not in words got you upset, Karen?

Profanity make your peanut brittle, f**k hole-folded and under the self-todd. Well, f**k both, you dumb f**k ass cunts! F**k, you, sleep, the government, giant corporations, controlling religious institutions. People who take too long to order coffee. People who don't tip. tip, fuck your mom, no cosy, no cosy's mom, how's the most inflammatory flavor of Whipple yet? Eh, whatever. As long as they keep buying spots, we'll keep having them on the show. George Wood recorded Class Clown, May 27, 1972. He'd later say that he wanted to be sharp and lucid, so he swore to himself that he wouldn't

use Coke to record. In other words, he's doing so much Coke. He has to think consciously about not doing too much coke. The liner notes, Carlton dedicates the album to Lenny Bruce for taking all the risks. Love it. Lenny Bruce, thank you, part, not doing so much coke. He has to think consciously about not doing it. Don't love that. Carlton will now play colleges to college students, having a reliving the years, excuse me, that he didn't get to have. I'll also play Carnegie Hall as mom, brother Patrick, and the audience, a lot of old friends. It's had the experience of prestige without compromising his artistic identity.

Everywhere he's going, he's doing that 730 words routine. And then on July 21st, 1972, Karlin is arrested after performing the 7 words routine, one of numerous times he'd be arrested, Emil Walkie-Summer Fest. And like Bruce before him, charge with violating abstinence laws. This is how the AP reported comedian George Carlin was taken into custody Friday night and charged with disorderly conduct. After he allegedly used profanity during a performance at summer fest, attend a festival in the city's lakefront. Henry Jordan, executive director of summer fest said, Carlin got up on stage and he used a lot of profanity. The police went up on

stage after he had finished his act and arrested him. Jordan said he supported the police, adding that many in the crowd of 70,000 were children. Oh no, not the children. I wonder what those precious children did after hearing mother fucker and tits. They probably tried to burn down the city. They probably all went to prison as adults for rape and murder and bistiality. All that they engage in after hearing about those filthy titties. According to the resting officer and complaint, patrolman Elmer G. Lens about 40 of the many thousands of children were youths and wheelchairs who were physically unable to leave the showgrounds

even if they found the show in bad taste. Oh God, not the wheelchair-bound children. Sure, they could survive the challenge of finding purpose in life and persevering without the use of their legs and perhaps arms as well. But could they handle words like cocksucker and cunt? Why God? Why is Carlin doing this to the precious paralyzed children? Haven't they suffered enough, O Lord?

They almost nailed Carlin for more than a century at this time. Brayda was actually with him that night, lucky for George. She brought him a water on stage using that as a guys, as an excuse to tell him that the police were there and maybe dispose of the vial of Coke in his pocket on his way off stage. So Bravo Brenda. His subsequent trial becomes a major part of George's legacy.

He's represented by the distinguished civil rights attorney, William Coffey. I won't really need him, though. The case is thrown out by Judge Garenger in December of 1972 declaring that the language was indecent, but that Carl and had the freedom to say it, as long as he caused no disturbance. A clip from class clown was played for the judge during the recording, wrote the Milwaukee journal, Judge Garenger grinned and laughed softly, though self-consciously. Also the assistant DA for that court

was at the fucking show and testified that the audience loved it so much to give him a standing ovation. I mean, most, the paralyzed kids didn't do that. They were too upset by what he'd said, or they were just still paralyzed. After narrowly avoiding trouble, Milwaukee, George does get into trouble again

the following year or actually gets a radio station trouble. 1973, a man complained to the FCC after listening with his son to a similar routine, filthy words from Carlton's third album, Occupation Fool, released in 1973, which is broadcast one afternoon over New York City radio station WBAI October 30th, 1973, on a program called Lunch Pail. The routine began like this, referring to the seven dirty words routine. The list is open to amendment.

Lots of people pointed things out to me and I noticed on myself. The first thing that we noticed that the word fuck was really repeated in there because the word motherfucker is a compound word. It's another form of the word fuck. If you want to be a purist, it can be on the list of basic words. Also, cock sucker is a compound work. And neither half is really dirty. The word sucker is merely suggestive. The main complainant wasn't just your average Joe. He was a guy named John Douglas, member of the board of a large right wing watchdog group called morality and media. I hate him.

Pacifica received a citation from the FCC for violating regulations of prohibit broadcasting obscene material. Supreme Court of held the FCC action by regulations of prohibit broadcasting obscene material. Supreme Court have held the FCC action by a vote of five to four. Ruling that the routine was indecent, but not obscene, and that the FCC had authority to prohibit such prohibit such broadcast during hours when kids were likely to be among the audience. After some back and forth between the FCC and WBAI, the FCC released in 1975 to claretary, to claretory order, concerning the broadcast of indecent language, defining indecent as words that describe in terms patently offensive as measured

by contemporary community standard sexual or extratory, shit, activities in Pesia. And organs at times of the day, when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience. The FCC found George's routine to be indecent by that standard and put what amounted to a warning in WBAI's license file. Pacifica fights this wins in the US Court of Appeals. The FCC appeals to the Supreme Court in 1978. The Supreme Court finds in favor of the FCC 5-4 LA Times and runs.

This is a big fucking deal. Run the news as his front page lead on July 3rd, 1978. Court banned seven dirty words, blers the headline. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority decision. Saying the broadcast media have established a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans. Patently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves, confronts the citizen in the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone, plainly outweighs the first amendment rights

of an intruder, or they can fucking turn the radio off, to say that one may avoid further offence by turning off the radio. Okay. When he hears in decent language, it's like saying the remedy for an assault is to run away after the first blow. Oh, okay, drama queen, easy.

Words don't break bones, like assaults do, fuckface. Justice William Brennan wrote the descent and our land of cultural pluralism, there are many who think act and talk differently from the members of the court and who do not share their fragile sensibilities, ah, throwing some shade at the other judges. It is only an acute esnocentric myopia

that enables the court to approve censorship of the communication solely because of the words they contain. The court's decision is another of the dominant culture's efforts to force those groups who do not share its moors to conform to its own way of thinking, acting, and speaking. Hail Justice Brennan, well said. The best part to George was that all nine members of the Supreme Court had to sit around and listen to the filthy words bit. Despite this ruling, things overall going great for George.

I mean, if anything, all this court drama just got him a lot of great free press. You know, he's edgy, making big brother nervous, splashed on the front page. He and his family move out of their apartment, move into a new house in an awesome neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. I used to write at a coffee shop there all the time in Pacific Palisades when I was living in Santa Monica. Love that area. Unfortunately, Carlin also know a fuck ton of blow.

Once he got so high, he thought the sun was exploding. Told his daughter they had less than 10 minutes to live. Not a great dad move. Very often, he wouldn't eat. We go up to six days without sleep or food. He's so strong out. He's hallucinating. He said once he sat in his room and thought he had a conversation with six other people.

None of them were there. I didn't know if the coke was making him hallucinate or sleep deprivation brought on by the coke. Touring somehow going better than ever though. And he buys a jet and arrow commander, 1121 jet commander, flies everywhere. Usually with his friend, the singer and hit songwriter Kenny Rankin, Rankin opened up for Carl and a lot of shows with his acoustic set and they both do fucking ton of blow. Bren is a home doing blow as well. Everyone but their daughter Kelly doing blow at this time. She'll do blow later. It's not good. Bren is also doing volume, sitting around drinking snort and cocaine, doing volume, going

out shopping. She's depressed. She has no purpose outside of motherhood. Starts acting out violently now, starts hitting Georgia at home. He sometimes gets physical with her as well. Kelly's turning 12 in 1975. This is all terrible. Her mama's so fucked up. She's having hallucinations too. All right. The drugs making her paranoid. She's seen people standing on the roof, seeing

moms of people in the streets that are not there. One night, George comes home unexpectedly and she tries to stab him with a knife unaware that he's her husband. They're now sometimes wielding knives at each other other yelling, Kelly having to intervene to keep them from killing each other. Shit is fucking bonkers in the carlin home. Then Carlin's mom Mary moves in, flies out from New York, becomes Brenda's drinking partner, makes things worse. But 1975, Brenda will spend the, you know, most days, the whole day drinking wine, talking shit about George, sleeping on the couch, crawling in the kitchen for more booze from time to time. So she can't even walk because she's shaking so badly.

She's weighs less than 90 pounds. Carl is starting to miss gigs now, claiming he's sick with shit like Laren Gytis. Sometimes he does have Laren Gytis, but not from a virus. He's lost his voice from screaming shit while partying high as fucking cocaine for days at a time. Finally, in August 1975,

Brenda hits rock bottom with her alcoholism. After another fight with George, she gets into her car to go down the hill for days at a time. Finally in August 1975, Brenda hits rock bottom with her alcoholism. After another fight with George, she gets into her car to go down the hill to the Santa or Santa Ines in, crashes the car into the lobby. Santa Monica police arrest her. Friend of the Atlantic records gets the case dropped, luckily, kind of. I mean, it's pretty fucked up. Brenda went to a St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica now as a patient at the Chemical Dependency Center. They didn't have private treatment centers for alcoholism at that time. First two weeks, she just detoxes, right?

And then doctors diagnose her with chronic active hepatitis and give her two years to live. Brenda does not accept this death sentence, so she gets clean, she will stay clean, and she fights. She has Mary, huge enabler at that point in her life. Flown back to New York, starts going to weekly AA meetings and she'll prove the doctor's wrong. Also reconnect with George.

Their marriage will be saved. Brenda is fucking back, baby. She's back to being George's business partner. They're more in love than ever. He'll never cut it out of his career again. She'll become a producer on a number of HBO specials, even work on other specials, work as a 4 HBO as a producer talent coordinator

does her own other shit as well becomes a counselor for other people dealing with drug addiction at the VA. Carlin though still not sober. Carlin will host the premiere broadcast of NBC Saturday Night Live. What an honor October 11th 1975. He requests not to appear on any sketches though. Why? Because he super fucked up on coke producers have to literally break down his hotel room door to find him to host the show.

It's that bad. Despite this chaos, he starts appearing on the night show more than ever. He's even asked to guest host puts out a fifth album in 1975 and evening with Wally Lando featuring Bill Slazo. Not a hit though, like his earlier albums, the drugs. They're affecting him. He ends up appearing on Perry Comos, Hawaiian holiday on a variety show, Tony Orlando and Don. Naxi loves those shows because other shows are starting to stop him now. His six album on the road is one he will later call directionless and unstructured. He's just doing too much drugs.

Tries to make it especially with animated interludes called the animated George Carlin, but has to shelve it because he's run out of money because he's not going to save out of work and he's doing too much blow. He's selling fewer and fewer tickets. People are thinking he's peaked and it's all over for him. And then he stops performing completely for a time in 1978. I'll be known to most of his fans. He's at a heart attack. The first to several. It was in the septal branch artery. One morning, he's driving Kelly to school. His jaw feels tight, doing blow like your fucking scar face for years, not the best recipe for a healthy heart. And he spends two days in the hospital. Still, he'll land during this period, the first of his

new legendary HBO specials. The first two airing in 1977, 1978. Carlin continued doing HBO specials every year or two over the following decade and a half. All of his albums for the rest of his career will be from these specials. Though in the beginning, it just seemed more like a regular TV, except he could say, fuck more than normal. All right, I guess a lot. It's a great, not at all. Also 1970, he starts having trouble with his daughter Kelly, who's now 15.

She's in high school. She's smoking pot constantly, falls in with a group of kids, children of celebrities, begins to spiral out of control, gets into an abusive relationship with one, ramps up her drug use with no surprise, Coke, quailudes. George finds out about the abusive relationship, goes to the kid's dad's house, says, don't let that kid, you know, near my daughter anymore, and the kid does try to come over, chase them away with a fucking baseball bat. Wild times continue at the Carlin household.

1980 George leaves Monty, drifts for a while without management. His career has fallen flat. He can still draw enough of an audience for a tour, but there's nothing new and ventive exciting about his material and other comedians are noticing. For the first time his peers are now publicly shitting on the now 43 year old comic.

In an article in Rolling Stone, Cheech Marin, Cheech Marin from Cheech and Chong says, George Carlin is a Revolut. God damn it. Uh, irrelevant. George Carlin is obsolete. He's talking about peas now. If all you can talk about is peas, you're obsolete. What about the issues of the day? This was in reference to a joke, uh, where George finishes with the punchline, give peas a chance. I'm not as fine as work. And he has other problems. Not only has he run out of money trying to fund the illustrated George Carlin, but his money management company had run out of money trying to pay his taxes. They've been rolling it over to the following year hoping that future earnings

would make up for the all the fucking money he's snorting up his nose. They didn't have for at least two years. The money kept piling up. He's feeling like he's about to lose up his nose. They didn't have for at least two years. And the money kept piling up. He's feeling like he's about to lose it all again. But all of this, all this pressure, lights a fire under his ass. While he doesn't get completely clean, he does get his drug he's under control, and he takes on an attitude of fuck them all.

He wants to show the world that he can be better than he's ever been. He and Brenda look for new management. They find Jerry Homsa, son of one of the biggest country music promoters in America. Jerry is eager to take on George as his one big project, not managing a wide group of celebrities like some do and get his career ship shape. He will describe his strategy with George and two words big and hot. Jerry wants to show the world that George was not a relic from the days of disco and lava lamps.

Then that meant new material. So they decided to record a new album. The advance is $100,000, $200,000 less than Carlin expected, but they still go forward with it. And in 1991, Carlin returns to the stage, releasing a place for my stuff. It'll be the first time he uses the now famous line, why is it that the people who are against abortion are the people you wouldn't want to fuck the first place. And Jerry fine backers for the illustrated George Carlin. Jerry effectively deals with the IRS, the bookings and the promoting, meaning they weren't separate. There weren't separate agency fees or promoters fees, more profitable for the Carlin's now. George gets a new interview with Playboy magazine. Back when that brand was still super relevant.

He sets a record straight. Yeah, I've been around a while, but not plenty. I'll leave in the scene anytime soon. Not old news. The cut line of the piece is a candy conversation with the brilliant and still rebellious comedian about his new life after years of inactivity and a crippling cocaine habit. Carlin is now done with Coke for the moment.

He'll relapse here and there, but things will never get as bad as they did before. Jerry wants him to do another special at Carnegie Hall with HBO. But then in a Dodgers game, George feels sudden tightness in his chest. It does not immediately register as a heart attack, more like a cramp, but when they go to the hospital in the car on the way, George falls in and out of consciousness. At the hospital, a doctor tells Brenda that he's going as in her husband is fucking dying. Doesn't seem like there's a lot the medical team can do.

They throw a hell marry. A doctor gives him a strep, strep to kinase, highly effective medicine for breaking up clots that at that time wasn't much in use, but they were just beginning to use it in hospitals and it saves his life. He'll later have an angioplasty. A procedure where a tiny balloon is inserted

in narrowed artery and inflated to increase blood flow and he will recover and go and do carlinate Carnegie. Even though George didn't think the material went over super well, the symbolism was powerful. Back at Carnegie Hall where he'd been 10 years earlier at the height of his first breakthrough. Now he wasn't letting himself get anxious about his career. He looked death in the face. He knew he had to live in the moment, a flood of muddled line, not the biggest deal after almost dying.

When the special comes out in HBO 1983, it's an instant rating smash. Within a few weeks, George selling out double shows, fucking back on top, baby. Fuck, Cheach Martin. Or Marin, fuck whatever, that gimmicky stoner comedy, one trick pony. Step aside for the legend, son, you can't hold Carlton's nut sack. The way it'll crush your little ass. I actually like Cheach, or I actually like Cheach, but he's no Carlton. This special remarks to begin of the real longstanding relationship Carlton's nut sack. The way it'll crush your little ass. I actually like Cheech or actually like Cheech, but he's no Carlton. This special would mark the beginning of the real long standing relationship Carlton have HBO. Not

just occasional specials, but an artistic collaboration with the network that wanted him to say whatever the fuck you wanted. They trusted him. They drew viewers who wanted the same from Carlton. What a beautiful thing. Well, artistically, he's entering his prime true mastery of the form. Personally, still struggling at least internally. He's angry with himself angry with getting in trouble for the IRS. IRS now digging into years past, right? Own more money. Angry for being an absent father to Kelly.

He uses that anger to motivate himself and channel it into an increasingly powerful stage voice. Jerry encourages this. Excuse me. Telling George Freakling that he is 100% confident in him not just as a manager, but as a friend they become best friends At one point he will loan George over a million dollars when money is tight. That's how much he fucking believes in him. Love Jerry bear My Jerry bear is a guy named Joe Eschenbach my now long-time agent and friend if not for his unwavering support me since long before times I began I'd be fucked You would not be listening to this because this would not be here. He believed in me when I had, you know, when I didn't believe in myself, when I made no one any money. Before him, it was Maggie Hulehan,

our partnership no longer made sense after a while. World DIY brand building podcast, not a strong suit, but she did get me a Comedy Central Hour special years ago when I was going through my divorce, got me in the festivals, into record deals, you know, and more than I needed at that time to sustain me. None of us develop in a vacuum. All artists need support. Even lone wolf comics still need a Jerry. Hail Jerry Hamza with Jerry managing him and his wife back in business.

George finds another way to channel his new voice with the election of Ronald Reagan at the presidency in January 2081. Before he fell, he really hadn't had any true political opinions besides general opposition to the Vietnam War and racism. He'd be sort of against the system as a general position. But now we discovered that he stood against many of the hallmarks of the Reagan administration and his supporters. Started reading a lot of sociology and history, discovered Noam Chomsky, Hunter S. Thompson, Gore Vidal, writers who pushed the envelope, started thinking about the left and the rights what they stood for, right? What they stood against. You know, while he hated Reagan, he also didn't love

the left. He later put his political beliefs the time this way. I was beginning to find that a lot of my positions clashed. The habits of liberals, their automatic language, their knee jerk responses to certain issues, deserved the epithets that the right wing stuck them with. I'd see how true they often were. Here they were, banding together in packs, so that I could predict what they were going to say about some event or conflict, and it wasn't even out of their mouths yet. I was very uncomfortable with that. Liberal orthodoxy was as repugnant to me as conservative orthodoxy.

That wasn't an entirely new feeling. I'd worked for the Jesse Un, or worked for Jesse Unru in 1970 when he ran against Reagan during Reagan's second run for governor, my brief little brush with electoral politics, politics. One of the rally talks I gave for Unru was that an elx lodge in Stockton. I pointed out to these democratic liberals, you're having your meeting in a place that has excluded black members for years. Just thought you might like to know.

So in summary, he felt that both the left and the right had in many ways their heads up their fucking asses. Things have not changed much, in my opinion. While working on new political material that would appear in some of his specials of the early 80s, Brenda noticed a lump on her breast. Luckily, just a cyst didn't think too hard about it. After four months, goes in for a checkup, decided to do a minor surgery to remove it.

But then under the cyst, there's a tumor. The mammogram had not shown, had not spread to her lymph nodes yet, but with her previous diagnosis of hepatitis, it was gonna be hard to treat. Chemone radiation would probably kill her because her liver was so damaged. So she ends up having a modified mastectomy

and then reconstructive surgery, and her life is spared again, but her health more fragile. While Brennan would live many more years, Karlin's mother Mary dies in June of 1984 to age 87. Karlin still has his older brother Patrick as far as immediate family goes. Also still wife and daughter and his work, where he continues to flourish. November 10th, 1984, he hosts SNL for the second time at the age of 47. This time, not fucked up on Coke and appears in several sketches.

Also thinking of returning to acting, acts with Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest in the show, still cranking out specials touring, just recorded 1984 as Carlet on campus, a record playing with your head in 1986. Also in 1986, George gets a second angioplasty when another one of his arteries starts closing. Then during the procedure, the wire goes in the wrong artery, damages it, that one, few months later George gets in China, which indicates another closing artery. Dude had his dad's heart and had done all that below. Not good for someone with genetically a bad heart to start with.

1997 Carl and turns 50 gets a good acting role, just like he'd hoped for as a kid. Has a major supporting role in 1987 comedy film, Big Hit at the time, Outrageous Fortune, starring Beth Middler and Shelley Long. plays Drifter Frank Madras. He poked fun at the lingering effect of the 1960s counterculture, maybe a little bit at himself. Beth Middler knew Carl and she once opened up for him almost 20 years earlier at a nightclub when he was shifting away from his 1960s mainstream suit and tie act To the ponytail revolutionary

She said seeing him abandoned an act that was working to experiment and fail miserably in order to find his true artistic self Was very inspiring and changed her life 1988 H.B.O releases a special. What am I doing in New Jersey? It was the first place where he voiced his newfound political beliefs against the Reagan administration, thoughts he'd been tinkering around with for years now. Here's an example. I haven't seen this many people gather to one place since they took the group photo of all the criminals and lawbreakers in Reagan administration.

225 of them so far. 225 different people in Ronald Reagan's administration have either been fired, arrested, and died or convicted of either breaking the law or violating the ethics code. Later he skewer American culture in general, saying, I'm the first to say it's a great country, but it's a strange culture. This has got to be the only country in the world that could come up with a disease like bulimia, where some people have no food at all and some people eat a nourishing meal and then puke it up intentionally. Where tobacco kills 400,000 people a year, but they ban artificial sweeteners because a rat died. And now they're thinking of banning toy guns, but they're keeping the fucking real ones.

He describes his new style as a sledgehammer, point out to show the slow violence of poverty, untreated disease, unemployment, hunger, discrimination. 1989 he gains popularity with the new generation of teens. appointment hunger discrimination. 1989 gains popularity with the new generation of teens when he's cast as roofless time traveling mentor of the title characters and Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Got him. Reprized his role in the film sequel Bill and Ted's bogus journey as well as the first season of the cartoon series 1990 as HBO special will see him continue to work at the top of

his game doing it again taped to the state theater new brunswick I include a stronger more disturbing pieces than in the past like rape can be funny Where he describes what he described as being less about rape more about being told what you could and couldn't say He had a new target identity politics which was starting to crop up especially on college campuses trying to define a prohibitive offensive speech to someone who had been arrested for a 70 charge in the 70s seemed like a return to an older time for him. 1991, Carl has a major supporting role in the movie, The Prince of Tides, starred Nick Nolte in Barberstriesthan, portrays the gay neighbor of the main characters, suicidal sister, also plays a role of Mr. Conductor on the

PBS show Shining Time Station, narrated the show's sequences of the American and New Zealand version of the UK television series, Thomas the Tank Engine and friends from 1991 to 1995 replacing Ringo Star. A perk to Carl and taking the role of a Michigan doctor in Shining Time Station in the first place was that he didn't have to deal with other actors, it's all green screened. But he would inadvertently traumatize kids who spotted him in airports out of uniform much bigger than the depicted on TV. He would say, I'm not on the island of Sodor.

I'm not working today, but I am Mr. Conductor. Crawlin also narrated the first four seasons of what would later become known as Thomas and friends. My son Kyler loved Thomas the tank. He's a little guy. I used to bring him tanks back from the road. Thomas, Edward, James, Percy, Henry, Toby, all of them. And he had a big set of tracks to run them on.

And he would invite me to play all the time, and then inevitably get mad at me for somehow not knowing how the tanks were moving around exactly like he had envisioned. And then he would take the tanks from me and show me the right way to play with him. So it was good times. And actually, it was good time. According to Britt Allcroft, who developed both shows on the first day of the assignment, Karlin was so nervous about recording his narration without an audience.

The producers put a stuffed teddy bear in the booth to stare at him and it worked. Pretty adorable. 1992 would mark another HBO special, Jammin in New York filmed April 22nd that year. Carlton about to turn 55, considered by many to be his best special. I can't say since I have intentionally not watched a lot of his specials. I love him, but I've always been worried to be, uh, I'd be overly influenced if I watched too much since I think like him in some ways already. Maybe not have been doing a long enough.

I can not worry about that happen anymore. Uh, this special recorded just over a year after the end of the Gulf War, most American saw the US's actions there as favorable. People were riding high in a wave of patriotism. But Carlin saw that there were also inconsistencies in the way the government shared information with the public. DoD satellite photos of Iraqi troops, a mass unit to Saudi border, which actually showed the empty desert. George highlighted this kind of bullshit, talking about how the US loves war, how it definitely wins when it comes to bombing the shit out of any country full of brown people, only brown people.

The last white people we bombed with the Germans because they were trying to dominate the world and that's our job. By the end, people are cheering at every line, especially when George compared to bomb to a dick and said America had to thrust this dick into other nations. George now really starts to see a job as not only entertaining people but making them think keeps taking more and more artistic risks understanding that laughter not the only proof of success. You can also appreciate an audience responding to his words in other ways. 93 Karlin begins a weekly Fox sitcom the George Carlin Show playing New York taxi cab driver

George O'Grady. The show created and written by the Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon ran 27 episodes to December of 95 and his autobiography George said about the George Carl and show at a great time. I never laughed so much, so often so hard as I did with cast members Alex Rocco, Chris Rich, Tony Stark. There was a very strange, very good sense of humor on that stage. I was incredibly happy when the show was canceled. But I was incredibly happy. I was frustrated that it had taken me away from my true work. Right? You'll still act from time to time, but never the expense of a standup.

All right? He had done what he needed to do. He'd been in some movies, been in his sitcom. He'd done all the variety shows. He, uh, you know, he was there. He did it, but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt now that standup was his true love. 96 George does another HBO special back in town, which has his still famous abortion piece in it.

He'll point out there wasn't anything pro-life about being obsessed with the unborn, but then refusing to live in child health care and education. There was nothing pro-life about sending the kid off in uniform at age 18 to die. There were no funerals from miscarriages, he said, and women didn't get prosecuted for murder for being on the periods,

aka disposing of their eggs. This bit always riled the crowd up not always in a good way People would get up and walk out Carlin didn't give a fuck he can laugh at stuff like this now. He's proving himself. He has fuck you money If some people can't take a few of his jokes fuck him He still has a support of HBO his wife Brenda and his manager Jerry He's more committed than ever to taking audiences on a walk through his mind, including his darkest corners. George is honored. February of 1997 at the Aspen Comedy Festival with a retrospective George Carlin 40 years of comedy hosted by John Stewart.

That's fucking nuts. His first hardcovered book, Brain Dropings, came out in 1997 as well, sold nearly 900,000 copies, spent 40 weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. August 5th, 1997 bad news. Brenda Diagnosed with cancer again. Doctors give her only three to four months to live and this time she will not beat the spread. Trying to stay optimistic with Brenda's blessing George keeps working. But then he has to quickly fly home and to LA May 11th, 1997 when Brenda abruptly crashes. She was on life support by the time George got there from New York. And she would die later that same day just over a month after her diagnosis. She was only 57. While freelancing as an HBO talent coordinator on 17 comedy specials, she would end up being credited with helping discover many now famous standup talents. Gary Shanley, Paul Rubens, AKP, Pee Herman Herman Harry Anderson, and howie Mandel.

11 years early, 1986, she just outed to Parkview stage company, non-profit equity waiver theater, housed in LA's Park Plaza Hotel, that assisted the careers of many up-and-coming comedians. She'd overcome a lot of struggles, at times in her marriage to George, and like him, she did so much for the world of standup. So, Hale, Brenda Carlin.

About six months later, George will meet Sally Wade, a comedy writer based in Hollywood. They'll fall for each other quickly, but George is hesitant to start seeing someone, you know, so soon after Brenda's death. Sally will wait for him. Over a year later, George and Sally will marry in a private ceremony. June 24th, 1998. Very little known about her. Other than her being a carlin's second wife, he's rarely spoken about her. He rarely did speak about her publicly. According to her bio, it published her Simon and Schuster. She's written over 35 screenplays, TV episodes and development deals. As written for Norman Lear, the Beach Boys, President Ford, George Clooney, Ellie Gould, Dubie Brothers and more. Dubie Brothers, Michael

Beech Donald, get out of here. Internet guess is that she's about 20 years younger than George. 1999, George does another special for HBO. You were all diseased. Such great titles. 2001, Carlisth given a lifetime achievement award at the 15th annual American Comedy Awards. December of 2003, over 30 years after he first got in trouble for that obscenity bit, or first got an obscenity trouble for that, you know, seven words bit.

California Congressman Doug Oce introduces a bill to outlaw the broadcast of Carlton's seven dirty words, including compound use of such words and phrases with each other or with other words and phrases and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases, including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms. The bill omitted tits replaced it with asshole, not one of Carlin's original seven words. The bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution in January 2004, where it was fortunately tabled.

This guy, this dog, he looks exactly like the kind of fun killing douche who would introduce that bill. Looks like a Boy Scout troop leader who is also a pedophile. 2021 OS, then 66, announced his intention to run for governor of California in the recall election to Gavin Newsom, but then backs out after his heart attack. Probably had a heart attack as someone, uh, maybe someone said, cocksucker or a mother fuck around him, you know, oh, gosh dang. Are you trying to kill me with your, with your filth? Uh, 2004, naughty George shows back up. Now 67 year old comic gets fired

from Vegas yet again. His run at the MGM grand Las Vegas is terminated after an altercation with the audience. Still get into alter Gaze. I love he's still fiery. After poorly received set filled with lots of dark references to suicide bombings and beheadings, Carl and complain that he could not wait to get out of this fucking hotel and Las Vegas and he wanted to go back east. He said where the real people are. He continued, people who go to Las Vegas, you've got a question they're fucking intellect to start with. He's out of meltdown.

Traveling hundreds and thousands of miles to essentially give your money to a large corporation is kind of fucking moronic. That's why I'm always getting here. I'm getting these fucking people with very limited intellect. And then an audience member literally shouts, stop degrading us. Love that someone actually used the word stop degrading us. And then you know, Colin Apolleges.

Yeah, right. Now, he told him to fucking blow him. He was in immediately fired. And soon thereafter, his representative announced that he would begin treatment for alcohol and prescription painkiller addiction on his own initiative. Well, I was at the problem. Did they just see the real George? George would perform his 13th HBO special, November 5, 2005, called Life is Worth Losing. His title is getting darker.

During the set, he mentions that he's now 341 days sober. He toured his new materials through the first half of 2006. At the first stop in February at the Tashi Palace Casino in Lennonmore, California, he mentions that the appearance is his first show back after a six week hospitalization for more heart problems, heart failure in pneumonia.

Dude's heart won't stop giving him trouble. Following your George Voices of Character in the 2006 Disney Pixar animated feature cars, the character film more. It's an anti-establishment hippie, Volkswagen, Microbus with a psychedelic paint job, and the license plate 51237, Carlons birthday. That's great. 2007 Voices, the wizard and hamply and ever after, that would be his last film.

Carlons last HBO stand, a specialist, bad for you. Heirs live, March 1, 2008, from the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California. And it was, I didn't see this one, it's pretty dark. More philosophical performance piece than comedy special. I liked it, but I would not recommend it as a place to start with his work.

Themes included American Bullshit, writes, death, old age, child rearing, hating people who are are obese basically he repeated the the theme to his audience several times to the show that it's all bullshit and it's bad for you June 18th 2008 the John F. Kennedy Center for performing arts It names Carlin. It's 2008 Mark Twain prize for American humor on a read and then just four days later June 22nd, the age of 71, Carl and Dys of course, Hart failure, St. John's Hell Center in Santa Monica, California. His death occurred a week after his last performance at the Orleans hotel in Casino and

Vegas. He made it back to Vegas. Did not get fired before he died. Impressive. And according to his wishes, his body cremated his ashes scattered in front of various New York City nightclubs. Huh, that's so cool. And over spoffered lake, New Hampshire, where he had attended summer camp as a teen. That's so sweet actually. Clearly special places and it's heart. After his passing, everyone rushed to pay tribute to the man who had been so influential to comedy upon his death.

HBO broadcast 11 of his 14 HBO specials from June 25th to 28th, including a 12 hour marathon block on their HBO comedy channel. NBC scheduled a rerun of the premiere episode of SNL where he hosted it, where they had a fucking kicked door into finding them because he was so high and coke before serious satellites radios are both, excuse me, serious satellite radios, raw dog comedy and XM comedy, both the channels. Random Memorial Marathon of George Carlin's recordings, the day following his death. Sirius XM has since devoted an entire channel to Carlin.

Carlin's corner featuring all his comedy albums, live concerts, works from his private archives. Larry King devoted his entire show June 23rd, 2008 to attribute to Carlin, featured interviews with Jerry Seinfield, Bill Mar, Roseanne Barr, Lewis Black, as well as Carlin's daughter Kelly and his brother Patrick Jr. Interesting to me, despite so many comics loving him while he was alive after the death of Lenny Bruce, you know, many years earlier, he really didn't hang out with many other comics on a regular basis. June 24th, The New York Times printed an op-ed piece on Carlin written by Jerry Seinfeld, so well written.

It says, the honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlisle nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russell and Bo Diddley and George said, I feel safe for a while.

There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I was like to fly on an airline right after they've had a crash and it improves your odds. You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn't even count the number of times I've been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke. And another comedian will say, Karlin does it. I've heard of my whole career. Karlin does it. Karlin already did it. Karlin did it eight years ago. I didn't just do it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made a sorrow you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a trained hubbob with

a chickenbone. When he was done, there was nothing left for anybody. I became obsessed with him in the 1960s as a kid. It seemed like the whole world was funny because of George Karlin, his performing voice even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the nautious, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story. I know George didn't believe in Heaven or Hell, like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling,

cataclysmic vortex of existence I'm spending through in that moment, I will still have to think. Carl and I already did it. That is fucking great. For a number of years, George M. Kempiling and writing his autobiography to be released in conjunction with the one man Broadway show tentatively titled New York Boy, after his death, Tony Hendra has collaborated on both projects, edited the autobiography for release as last words. The book chronically, most of Carlton's life and future plans, including the one man show,

was published in 2009. It was a huge source for this episode. The abridged audio edition narrated by his brother, Patrick Jr. I'm glad that happened. 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC can no longer impose fines and sanctions on verbal obscenities and decency Carlin would love that about fucking time October 22, 2014 a portion of West 121st Street in the morning side heights neighborhood of whiteheart or white Harlem renamed George Carlin way

This past April 16th at the age 90 Carlin's brother passes away But not before he spoke at length in the new doc on Carlon. Patrick also funny as shit. Month later, this past May 20th, 2002, the documentary George Carlons American Dream directed by Judd Appetown and Michael Bonfiglio released an HBO and with that, let's jump out of today's time suck timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. George Carlin, American icon. A complicated person.

A person with his own demons, bad habits, far from perfect, but also a man who is on a continual quest to be truly authentic and I respect that so much, to live an an authentic life and then share that with audiences. Carlin's career spanned half a century during which he had lined 14 HBO comedy specials a pair on its night show over 130 times constantly evolving with the time staying sharp resonance up until his death in 2008 and beyond. And some ways I think he feels more relevant now than ever. He was a true free thinker who gave a brilliant and comedic voice to an indignant counterculture,

a trailblazer like Lenny Bruce before him, who assaulted the barricades of censorship on behalf of a generation of comics that followed him. Upon his death, his website would include the quote, language as a tool for concealing the truth. If it was for George, it was also a tool for revealing the truth, for opening people's minds, their eyes, provoking them, making them think about the forces that govern their lives in new ways. Carly wouldn't be truly comfortable with expressing all that until the 80s and 90s. They can take a while for us comics to get comfortable enough to peel enough layers off the onion, to get to the core of who we are, and then reveal that to strangers. It's quite a journey.

His early career would be as much about his professional life as a quest to know himself. First as a radio DJ, during his time and the Air Force and after. Then as a member of the Burns and Carlin Duo, touring nightclubs for striking out on his own, going on a number of TV shows where he perfected some of his early comedic bits

like Indian Sargent and hippie-dippy weatherman. He found mainstream comedic success, success, but it was not enough for George, he felt hollow. He didn't want to just be on TV if it meant he had a pander to middle America. He wanted to make people think, he wanted to find an audience willing to think that urge would lead him to a breakthrough.

Hello, LSD, third eye open. By 1972, when he released his second album, FM and AM, this star was again on the rise, the album which won a Grammy as a best comedy recording combined older material with newer, more of Serbic routines. And groundbreaking routines like the profane 7 Word, you can't, you can never say on television. He took aim at what he thought of the prevailing, as the prevailing agents, excuse me, of

American life, politicians, advertisements, religion, the media, conventional thinking of all stripes. And there was one thing Karlin hated more than anything religion, the media, conventional thinking of all stripes. If there was one thing Karlin hated more than anything else, it may have been conventional thinking. He became a voice of resistance, wearing his jeans, t-shirts, always speaking what was on his mind. This would get him arrested several times, even see a case at going all the way to the Supreme Court.

George still not done evolving or pushing the envelope by the 80s. He really became known as America's foremost, most scathing social critic. Also dealt with a lot of problems in the 80s. He really became known as America's foremost most scathing social credit. Also dealt with a lot of problems in the 80s. Issues with the IRS, drug problems, troubled marriage, fatherhood, health, when he gets sober, return to the comedy scene to record his very best specials with HBO, cementing his status into the 90s as a comedy legend, modern day philosopher as well. He'd be awarded and awarded so many times, too many times to recap here. He continues to influence comedians, thinkers, just about anyone with a bone to pick with American culture. And I fucking love him. And I hope you love to hear and about him. I love learning so much more about him. What he did for comedy made what I do possible.

I could not get away with the shit I get away with saying if it had not been for Carl and Bruce Richard prior Sam Kinnison Bill H, so many others who said fuck you to people telling they couldn't say fuck you. Free fucking speech made sacks the first amendment. Also in the first amendment, other important freedoms like the freedom to worship, whichever God you choose, freedom of religion. You should be able to pray to whoever God you choose and I should be able to mock that God whoever I choose. Verily, that's freedom.

Freedom to say whatever you want about anything anything no matter how much it fucking pisses someone else off No matter how sacred someone else may find it offensive real freedom is not pretty It's ugly. It's full of words like shit piss fuck concocksucker mother fucker and tits hail freedom and hail George Mother fucking carlin time now for today's top five takeaways fucking Carlin, time now for today's top five takeaways. Time, suck, top five takeaways. Number one, George Carlin, a master of his craft. Oh, inspiration. A master of artistic transformation.

He began his half a comedic duo doing sketches. Then he came clean mainstream nightclub comedian and pivoted again towards the counterculture of the 60s and 70s, blending his observations about his own childhood and upbringing with the wider political consciousness. And not in words, it got even trouble repeatedly. Eventually more for it into a comedic philosopher.

And you had a huge audience for so much of that. Carla never stopped thinking about how to reach the widest amount of people will also stay intrudemself. That led to some turmoil in his life as he continually launched and relaunched, but also would make him one of the most famous comedians of the 20th century, if not the most, with an amazing 14 HBO specials, millions of copies of books sold and a whole generation of comedians influenced by his work.

Number two, Carlin's influences were many, with the most important ones, was Upper class mother, who wanted him to speak like a proper little boy, leading to a lifelong fast nation with swear words, and the Irish American people in his childhood, neighborhood of white Harlem, when we learned to imitate, to make his friends and classmates laugh. And of course, Patrick Swayzey, who taught that motherfucker to dance like a beautiful angel, a sexy, graceful swan angel creature sent down from heaven to gyrate his hips and flexes taught yet supple shoulders and pecs. Sorry, I meant to say Lenny Bruce, you knew that.

Lenny Bruce, introduced Karlin to the true counterculture scene. Number three, Karlin was put on trial for obscenity for his famous seven dirty words. You can't say on TV, routine. Repeating the word shit, piss, fuck, cock, suck, or motherfuckin' tits, over and over again. And on July 21st, 1972,

Karlin arrested a Milwaukee summer fest. Lucky that the cops didn't find coke in his pocket. You won the legal battle. Then was involved in a subsequent legal battle in 1973 when a man complained to the FCC after listening to that routine. On the radio, the Supreme Court upheld the FCC action by a vote of five to four. Ruling the routine was indecent, but not obscene at the FCC at authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when the children were likely to be in the audience. But unlike his mentor, Lenny Bruce, Kar Carl didn't have to fight these fights himself, which along with the crippling drug addiction eventually killed Bruce the age of 40, and the world would catch up to Carl and his outspokenness making him a legend.

Number four, Carl and would die of heart failure. June 24th, 1998, he had a long had problems with his heart, including several heart attacks. Years of abusing cocaine doing so much He thought the fucking sun was exploding did not help And number five new info when Karlin was just starting out as a comedian the internet obviously not around He had no way of predicting the extent to which fake quotes would be misattributed to him Many online quotes have been falsely attributed to Karlin including various joke lists rants other pieces Basically some people figured that Karlin was so prolific and had such a distinct a style that they can attribute whatever they wanted to

and that a bunch of other people buy the website snopes has addressed these hoaxes there's many of them many of them contain material that run counter to carlin's viewpoints summer especially volatile towards racial groups gay people women homeless other targets carlin was aware of some of these bogus claims before he died and debunked them on his own site, writing, here's a rule of thumb folks, nothing you see on the internet is mine unless it comes from one of my albums, books, HBO specials, or appeared on my website. It bothers me that some people might believe that I'd be capable of writing some of this

stuff. Weirdo Yankevic, even reference the hoaxes, and a song stopped forwarding that crap to me with a line. And by the way, your quotes from George Carlin aren't really George Carlin. One was a piece called Bad American. It starts like this. I'm your worst nightmare. I am a bad Republican. I like big cars, big cigars, and naturally big racks. I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid-level governmental functionality with a bad comb over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.

I don't care about appearing compassionate. I think playing with guns doesn't make you a killer. I believe it's called the Boy Scouts for a reason. I think I'm better than the homeless. I am not the real slim shady, so I think that I'm going to stay seated right here in this damn comfy chair. I don't think being a minority makes you noble or victimized. I don't care if you call me a racist, a homophobic misogynist.

I am not tolerant of others because they are different. I know that no matter how big Jennifer Lopez's toilet gets, I'll still want to see it. If anyone thought that Karlin said that, they were really not familiar with his general vibe. George Motherfucking Karlin has been sucked. Chuck, top five takeaways. George, Motherfucking, Carlin has been sucked. Thank you again for picking that winner, Patreon Spaselers. So glad to have the best excuse to learn so much about such an amazing person.

Also, thank you to the Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins. Thanks to the suck Ranger title C for directing and producing today, staying late to do so. Logan Keith for helping him set up. Thanks to BiddleLixer for upkeep on the time suck app the art warlock Logan Keith again creating the merch bad magic merch.com Help him on our socials along with the suck Ranger and a team managed by our social media strategist Ryan Handlesman So many people Thanks for producing Sophie Evans initial research this week

Thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the cop the curious private Facebook page the mod squad making shit on discord keep running smooth everyone at the time sucks subreddit and bad magic subreddit so many fantastic sacks doing a lot of great things next up next week next episode both will find if I would just pick one we returned to cult cult cult diving back to the realm of cults with a little known but very murderous group from Uganda in 1990s. The movement for the restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a small splinter group from the greater Ugandan Catholic community whose members lives would end in terrible brutal ways. The group founded by Cradonia Marenda, a former sex-winter worker who claimed to receive

visions from the Virgin Mary. When she met Joseph, I want to get these names better next week. Kiwa Kiwae Tate in 1989, a religious man in somewhat of a local politician, the two quickly developed a vision of a world where the apocalypse was imminent, unless they didn't get people to follow the 10 commandments. In practice though, it was a lot different than honor thy father and mother. Instead of going to church, receiving communion, members lived on the cult's compounds, mostly pineapple and banana plantations, gave up their assets, of course, standard cult practice, greed to a life without sex, and also soap oftentimes.

And sometimes you've even taken, you know, showers or talking. All of this as Credonia claimed to receive messages from the Virgin Mary through hidden, through a hidden telephone system that communicated to her through everyday objects. Interesting. That's a years past. The group's messages got more and more apocalyptic, pretty can bludgeon chaos, cannibalism, monsters from hell, plagues and pests, a lot of fun stuff. Movement leaders declared that the apocalypse would occur on December 31, 1999, much like

many who believe Y2K would bring about the end of society. Young member that cult even declared the world ends next year. There is no time to wait. Some of our leaders talk directly to God. Any minute from now, when the end comes, every believer who will be at, at and as yet undisclosed spot will be saved. But then of course, they didn't happen. Three months later, roughly a thousand people, though, will die at the cult's hands. How did that happen?

Why is it more well known? What crazy beliefs did these leaders peddle to people who've been struggling for years, struggling to make ends meet in a nation with a poor economy ravaged by an AIDS crisis and brutal dictator? And is it possible that they escape to fade to their followers and are still out there somewhere? All that and more next week on TimeSucker. Right now let's head to this week's time sucker updates. First update today is from me. Quick note on last week's episode. I intended to but did not mention a man named John Banny who according to author Fred Rosen was a second man to survive and encounter with little Ronnie Joe Ronald Dominique to buy you Strangler.

That happened in November of 2005. It was accidentally deleted when editing the timeline. It goes through so many revisions. Sorry about that. It doesn't change the episode. No one has written in as I record this because it hasn't been released. Just mentioning it in case you were like, hey, didn't he say that Ronnie Joe and it's overblown bubblegum butth hole killed all but two of

those he brought back to his camper trailer, but then only mentioned one dude Ricky Wallace. Well, that was a great catch imaginary Lister. But yeah, just wanted to correct that. Now for some comedy before we get to a more serious message, this is from a Cummins lot meets Zach Cody George writes, dear Dan, the time so crew. I've listened all the podcasts for the past two years. We're working at my job at UPS. As a package handler, slowly climbing the ranks. This podcast keeps me sane. Gets me through a work in these 110 degree trailers.

That being said, I'm a Cummins law victim now and my case happens to have happened to my work. I've a clear backpack full of drinks that I take with me and put outside my trade-offs at work. I keep my phone in there, listened to the podcast by wireless earbuds. Well, As I'm listening, they accidentally disconnect, right? Is the podcast is ending and the outro is playing. And I started again with my smartwatch, not thinking that it will loudly at ear level outside of my trailer on my phone, when my supervisor is walking up,

play you saying, now I come almost every day. If I stop coming, I would think two months tops, someone's getting killed. He stops to listen and then here's you scream, do you have any idea how blue my balls are? I forget to know you're full of this. You finally walks around the corner, I see him with a look on his face that I have never seen before. I hope that made your day. If you happen to read this in the podcast, I appreciate it. If you gave a shout out to my brother Tyler George, forget me into the suck. He used to be a dick, but I guess he's all right now. LOL. Thanks for all the hard work. You putting everything you do. Fuck you. Fuck your family. Cody George. Thanks for sharing your pain with me. Cody, I appreciate it. Fuck Tyler for for leading you into this weird world, almost getting you fired. That's what his

real plan was. No, seriously, thanks Tyler. And thanks Cody for helping us all get the shit that makes our lives work uh you know uh being delivered right to our homes for uh thanks for doing what you do uh now an update to the Catholic Church sex scandal suck which just came out yesterday as I record this uh coming in from a sweet Canadian sucker Kayla who writes good day master sucker. I'm a newfoundlander space lizard writing to give you some more information about the absolutely appalling behaviors of Catholic priests and the cover-ups by the church. Open in 1898, Mount Cacheal Boys' home, aka Mount Cacheal Orphanage, was run by the Irish

Christian brothers of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1989, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, sorry, I'm probably butcher in that word, re-open investigations of child abuse from 1975 at the home and the, quote, public learned that the foster home had four decades been the site. A repeated acts of physical and sexual abuse performed by Christian brothers against boys who lived there as wards of the state.

Religious authorities were aware of the abuse, did little of anything to quell them as conduct. The crimes were covered four years with the assistance of police and local government. Damn, growing up, I lived down the road from and played with the daughters of Derrick O'Brien who wrote the book Suffer Little Children. An autobiography of the abuse he suffered as a child in relation to this. My dad luckily never grew up in such conditions, but has told me with the stories of the terror

that came along with her smurching a member of the clergy, you did not speak ill-appreciation about her what or you'd be punished severely by your parents, teachers or other adults who were meant to protect you. Currently, the Catholic Church is in the process of selling many religious buildings to pay their reparations awarded to the victims. And so the Vatican couldn't cover this cost easily without putting the burden of their misconduct cover up on parishioners. The Catholic Church is the absolute epitome of hypocrisy. And as a major reason reason

I do not believe in organized religion. Keep sucking. I hope Luciferina personally ensures pedophiles roast slowly. Your loyal space is in Kayla. Well thank you Kayla. I mean, it is, it is just so disheartening. Just scandal after scandal after scandal. Government's protecting the church in some instances.

No church should ever have the power over its parishioners that the Catholic Church has had for centuries, not as much now, but in centuries past. No group of men should hold the keys to the path of salvation for others, have that kind of power. And I hope going forward more and more, we burn down those who scare innocent people into thinking that they do. It's just it's too much power and power does corrupt and that much power corrupt so horrifically as we've seen. Uh, now finally for a borderline personality update regarding my description of it in the murder of the DD Rose suck, uh, coming in from complete and utter maniac and evil little

rat. Kaley, Kaley Allen writes somehow somehow with her little rat claws. How do you, mother fucker? Sir, I adore you, but you were wild and out describing borderline personality disorder. I've been diagnosed with this since I was 14. I'm 23 now and have been on a variety of medications along with therapy. And here is a little insight of a very little research disorder. You got some things right, emotionally unregulated, intense emotions, deep abandonment issues. However, manipulative is not a way at all to describe a person with borderline personality. In my experience with therapy and my everyday life, we see things in people in terms of black and white.

Instead of trying everything to keep people from abandoning us, we try to abandon everything else first and become a model person because we also see ourselves as good or evil. Within one hour, I can go from thinking of person walks on water to think they might be just as evil as Hitler, all because I found out they spanked their children or associated with people I believe were also evil. Before therapy, I knew absolutely no one in the gray area. I either loved or hated everyone. I knew and how I felt about each person was constantly changing. We were often confused with people who have bipolar disorder, but instead of having weeks of depression, weeks of mania, we have these extreme feelings and more within an hour or so.

I've had experiences where I've had lunch with my mom, we've laughed, joked, had a great time, but I thought her facial expressions didn't match what she was saying. So she left thinking we had the best time, I left thinking she only wanted to hang out with me to get knowledge of me and use it to hurt me later on. Obviously, I was being delusional, but in the moment, it felt very, very real. The best way I can describe living with BPD is like living life with a veil on and one day the veil gets removed.

Then because of that, it feels like you can see between the lines of every action. But half the time, there weren't lines, there to see between. It's like having a gut feeling about everyone and everything, but half the time, you only have that feeling because of a delusion. Everything is scary and unpredictable, especially people because people are the only things that are guaranteed to hurt you.

Just a little inside because I felt like you made it seem like evil little rats and that we want to manipulate everyone to get what we want. Slash hurt everyone around us with little to no compassion or reason. I mean, Nimrod be with you. Kaley Allen. Well, Kaley, thank you for both the phonetic help with your name. You know my brain does not assume well in that regard, thank you for both the phonetic help with your name. You know, my brain does not assume well in that regard. And thank you for humanizing this disorder. Yeah, it seems like manipulate manipulative poor chores, poor choice of words, where it's hard.

Generally, sorry, you have to fight your mind like that in daily interactions. Good on you for taking the time to understand your mind, navigate around misleading instincts. I can't imagine how difficult that is. I'm very impressed truly. So yeah, so I've might have picked and painted those with that disorder as evil. Unfortunately, many of those who have it, according to what I've read in both true crime stories and psychological journals, do not combat the disorder well and instead do end up greatly harming those around them due to their paranoia and maybe instability better word than manipulation.

I should have at least addressed how a hard life can be to navigate from the point of you someone who has and showing more compassion in that regard. Great reminder for me to do so. So hail you, Kaylee Allen, and may need me to help you continue to overcome and push forward. And that's all for today. That was a lot of words, maybe the biggest episode yet. I think my mouse about done. It was a big one and a fun one. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did.

Another bad magic productions podcast is done. Say, uh, say fuck this week or cut or cock sucker or tits. The world won't end and it's my feel good. Say fuck those con politicians on both sides of the aisle who do so much more to divide instead of united. Conor would like that now say the 7-Dirty Words you can't say on time-side because those words, oh, man, would just be morally fucking horrific. you