George Carlin

            On Thursday morning I revised my translation of the fourteenth verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the third verse of “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only three more verses to learn and that’s only eight lines so I might have it all in my head this weekend. 

            I weighed 88.45 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since April 6. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the first of four sessions and it went out of tune during every song. It also feels like the action has gone up. 

            Around midday I went over to Family Dentistry to make an appointment. My top front filling needs to be fixed and I need to find out if my denture can be altered so I can wear it again. The shape of the gap has changed since I got the bone graft and it will be several months before I get the implant. 

            I weighed 89.55 kilos before lunch. March 7 was the last early afternoon when I was so rough on the scale. 

            In the afternoon I headed out for a bike ride but it was raining and so I only went to Brock and Seaforth, then south to Queen and east to Freshco. I bought five bags of grapes, one pack of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, a container of lemon dish detergent, and a pack of Sponge Towels. I did a price match on the grapes with the food Basics price of $6.58 a kilo.

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 17:30. The highest in the evening since March 14.

            I was still behind on my journal at suppertime. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the rest of my pork ribs while watching season 3, episode 9 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            A clean shaven, short haired George Carlin does a comedy routine. He says he thinks the Emmy awards are biased towards the big shows and that the small shows should receive consideration. Shows like Sermonette, which he says he watches religiously. He says he likes it because every religion gets a platform, but then he corrects himself and says, “Well, not every religion. When was the last time you saw a good old fashioned human sacrifice? Maybe on Ed Sullivan but not Sermonette”. Another award neglected show is the FBI list of wanted men. If it had a bigger budget they could jazz up the show and maybe win an award. Then he acts out that alternative reality he calls The J. Edgar Hoover Show. With music by The Mothers of Detention. 

            Carol performs a song that an audience member named Sue Vogelsanger gave her three weeks before. It took her some time learn it but they turn it into a big production complete with dancers. The song is from the point of view of a housewife who fantasizes about travelling the world. The set design has large three dimensional letters making up Sue Vogelsanger’s name but rearranged to make different words like “LOVE” during the performance. 

            In the next skit Carol and Lucille Ball are two flight attendants in competition for employee of the month. A Latin man with a beard boards the plane and it is clear to the audience but not to Carol and Lucy that he plans to hijack the plane. In that era there were several hijackings of planes that were forced to fly to Cuba. Lucy picks up that the man is Cuban and he asks how she knows. She says, “If there’s one thing I know it’s a Cuban accent”. That’s a reference to her husband Desi Arnaz. Carol and Lucy fight over making him comfortable to the point of causing him pain. Even after he pulls a gun they fight over who’s going to help him. In a tug of war of the man between Carol and Lucy trying to please him, he is eventually accidentally tossed off the plane to fall to his death. 

            Then Vicki and Lyle come out with guitars and sing “Try a Little Kindness” by Curt Sapaugh and Bobby Austin that was a big hit for Glen Campbell in 1969. Vicki does double duty as she also joins the dancers during the instrumental break but dances out of the circle and must have retrieved her guitar quickly before the last verse. 

            Next Carol is singing in the shower. She starts with a couple of lines of “Singin in the Rain” by Alan Freed and Nacio Herb Brown from 1929. Then she goes into “I Say a Little Prayer” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David from 1966. There are comical moments when water gets in her mouth. Then she wraps herself in a towel and leaves the shower where we see the band still playing as the water falls on them. 

            There is a parody of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice with Harvey, Carol, Lyle and Lucy all in bed together. But the scenario is different from the movie in which the two couples try and fail to swing. In this case the other couple simply needed a place to stay and the hosts had no extra bedroom. 

            The final sketch begins on Vaudeville in 1919. Harvey plays the announcer Tommy Two Step and he introduces The Rock Sisters, played by Carol and Lucy. They sing and dance a happy song about love and pretend to play several instruments. But they’ve been doing the same act for a long time and they are fired for not changing. Fifty years later a DJ named Big Daddy (played by George Carlin) announces a big rock concert happening tonight and featuring 100 bands. He’s with his dumb assistant Tandalayo (played by Vicki Lawrence). She tells him that the 100th band Stark Naked and the Calcuttas have canceled. He says he promised the kids 100 acts and some of them can count so he needs a new 100th act. He has to leave for rehearsal and so he leaves it up to Tandalayo to look in the files and find another act. When she looks in the file cabinet an old file falls out and the name is The Rock Sisters. She assumes they are a rock band and calls to book them. They haven’t performed in 50 years and they are elderly but they go to the Neptune Theatre, which is where they last performed. Band 99, The Frozen Nostrils is pretending to perform “Commotion” by John Fogerty and the actual music is just the recording by Creedence Clearwater Revival. When the Rock Sisters come out the audience starts laughing. But the guys from the previous band come out to tell the audience to give them a chance. They do their old act while the Nostrils help to keep them from falling over and then join in. They win the audience over. 

            George Carlin was raised by a single mother and spent a lot of time alone listening to the radio while she worked. He started doing impressions of radio personalities. He was expelled from cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. He joined the US Air Force as a radar technician and was court martialed three times. He worked as a DJ. He did a morning show with Jack Burns and called themselves The Wright Brothers. He started out as a conventional comedian and had a considerable amount of success at $250,000 a year. . He was part of a comedy duo with Jack Burns from 1960 to 1962. He made his TV debut on The Tonight Show starring Jack Paar. But in the 60s he changed his act and started dealing with more serious contemporary topics. He also began to dress extremely casually on stage and he lost 90% of his income. He was arrested with Lenny Bruce in 1962 because when the cops asked him for identification he told them he didn’t belief in government issued ID card. His “Seven words you can’t say on TV” ("Shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'cocksucker', 'motherfucker', and 'tits') routine became part of a larger censorship case that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1978. The court ruled that the routine was indecent but free speech gave him the right to say it. He was one of Johnny Carson’s favourite guest hosts for The Tonight Show. He was the first host on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. He was a regular on the Tony Orlando and Dawn variety show. He made his film debut in With Six You Get Eggroll in 1968. He co-starred in Americathon, Car Wash, Bill and ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, Jersey Girl, He played Mr. Conductor on the children’s show Shining Time Station. Later he became more and more critical of conservatism and increasingly more popular with audiences. His sitcom The George Carlin Show lasted two seasons and he said he had a great time and loved the actors but couldn’t wait to get the fuck out. He was fired in Las Vegas for criticizing people who go to Las Vegas. He won five Grammy Awards for comedy albums. He had 14 HBO specials. His autobiography was called Last Words. Comedy Central rated him the second greatest stand up comic of all time. He said it’s the duty of the comedian to find the line and cross it. He said voting gives you the illusion that you have the power of choice but you don’t. The politicians you vote for own you. Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things. Dishonesty is the second best policy. If teachers could influence sexuality I would have become a nun.