George Carlin is gone. Damn it. I never got to meet him.
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. He showed me what comedy could be—that its full effect extends well beyond what is merely funny. His wit was restless, impatient; it tugged persistently at the uneven corners of our society.
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.
If this is your first visit to C&B you may be wondering, “Who the hell is this guy, and why does he have a blog?” It’s a reasonable question, so I’ve dedicated an entire page to answering it: check out 
Chelsea Cain
Assaf Cohen
Amy Stewart
…nwood…
2 Hot Girls in the Shower
A Lethe
Tara Dublin
Konradical
Life 2.0
Lucrezia's Delight
Memoirs of a Barista
The Moving Target
