recommendations

George Carlin is gone. Damn it. I never got to meet him.

His work showed me what comedy could be - that its full scope extends well beyond what is merely funny. His wit was restless, impatient; it tugged persistently at the uneven corners of our society. People who know me well will attest that in a normal conversation, it’s quite common for me to quote George Carlin. It’s no accident: he was so prolifically funny and insightful for so long that he covered the majority of topics relevant to our lives at one time or another. More than any other individual source, George Carlin’s stand-up formed the basis of my comedic sensibility.

When I was about 11 or 12, his 1972 album Class Clown became the first comedy recording I ever owned. I brought that LP home, listened to it, and then listened to it again. And then again, a few more times. Soon his brilliant riffs were committed to my memory (where they remain), and I returned to Tower Records in Mountain View to repeat the process with another opus from the Carlin catalogue. LPs gave way to cassette tapes - easier to store, useful for my new, bitchin’ bright-yellow Walkman, and good for comedy recordings because the eventual decline in audio fidelity didn’t matter so much.

As I’ve mentioned, his penetratingly funny insights are too numerous and wide-ranging to recount. Here’s just a few, off the top of my head. George, forgive me if I paraphrase.

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I had wondered when David Sedaris, who grew up mainly in the Raleigh, NC area, would get around to writing about his erstwhile hometown’s primary industry. Well, I need wonder no more. Here’s a taste from early in his piece, after he has related that when he began smoking, he learned that possessing cigarettes makes one, to paraphrase, a magnet for moochers of all stripes:

Take this guy who approached me after I left the store, this guy with a long black braid. It wasn’t the gentle, ropy kind you’d have if you played the flute but something more akin to a bullwhip: a prison braid, I told myself. A month earlier, I might have simply cowered, but now I put a cigarette in my mouth—the way you might if you were about to be executed. This man was going to rob me, then lash me with his braid and set me on fire—but no.

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Hold everything - have you been watching the new HBO series In Treatment? If not, you MUST.

If you don’t have HBO, that’s no excuse. You can watch full episodes on the HBO site, and you can also grab the free (for the moment) download from iTunes. I don’t have any TV service at all, and I just watched the first five episodes in a row on the computer. I’d thought I’d just watch the first one and then do other stuff… but I couldn’t.

To learn a little more about the show, I recommend David Bianculli’s post here. Otherwise, just watch it and thank me later. By which I mean, post a comment and tell me what you thought (actual thanks are purely optional). I’d also be very curious to hear from anybody who’s seen the original Israeli version.