GEORGE CARLIN dressed like a dirty old hippie – but even at the height of his hippie-dom, with his sneakers or sandals, he’d wear a $12,000 watch.
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He made his own rules, and he didn’t look back. He wasn’t one for strolls down memory lane – but here it goes, anyway.
He was a skinny Catholic kid when I first met him in the Village in 1961, back when Lenny Bruce was our god, and Bleecker Street was our Mount Olympus.
The two of us always liked to say that Lenny Bruce anointed us. He had seen me at the Bitter End on a night I bombed and he sent me a note, which I still have somewhere, that read, “You are right and they are wrong.”
On Friday, HBO airs Carlin’s final HBO special
Lenny Bruce also saw George around the same time, and walked backstage and told him, “You are the next one.”
In the beginning, George was very much in the group, but slowly he began to break away. We both went to Las Vegas and were thrilled to go, but that’s when things started to change.
When we were playing at The Frontier, George refused to wear a dinner jacket during his show and they fired him for it. “That’s not what I wear on stage anymore,” he told them.
I remember standing there under the marquee, thinking, “My God, he has just ruined his career.” I was wrong.
He was fearless. He had absolutely the most important attitude a comedian should have, which is: if you don’t like it, don’t listen.
I am much more of a coward than George was. When they told me you can’t do or say this in your show, I would at least try not to do or say those things. George would just go on and do what he wanted.
When George did the seven words you can’t say on television, I told him he really only had six – tits wasn’t in the same league as the rest.
But he needed a seventh. Seven was funnier.
I like to think George left the seven words to me. In fact I just used two of them in Britain and got thrown off of television. I think of it as my homage to him, and I’m so glad he was still alive to see it. I still have five left.
George made his own niche. He went on HBO before it was HBO. He did that instead of a network show, which he was always being offered, so he could say what he wanted.
He was a thinker and a plotter and a worker. He wasn’t the one you wanted to have coffee with.
Comics are all manic depressives. When someone is a cutup at a party, it ain’t gonna come out on the stage.
George was smart, but he wasn’t dinner-party smart.
He was so head and shoulders ahead of everybody. He wasn’t sentimental, but don’t kid yourself – he would have loved all the attention he’s getting right now.
Just don’t say that he “passed away.”
“Passed to where?” he would ask.