Magnifisyncopathological

The Man's Website

As a surprise birthday gift from a younger sister, I got two tickets to a George Carlin show in San Antonio. It was held at the Majestic Theater in the downtown area and the place was packed. I took a friend and we sat down for an hour long blast of vulgar ranting, obscene thought meandering, and hilarious observations.

I've wanted to see Carlin live for a long time. I've seen most of his early 90's HBO shows, bought his Braindroppings book, and a friend got me a CD boxset of his older material.

Our seats were above and beyond what I thought they'd be. I dunno if my sister did it intentionally, but they were dead center in front of the mic stand and up on the second mezzanine level. We were close enough to see him on stage and get an idea of what insane facial expression he was using at the time. Better than I had hoped.

His material has gotten both lighter and darker of the years, in my opinion. He seemingly gives less than a shit about more things, but at the same time he's grown more hostile to the shit he finds repulsive. The bulk of the middle section of his act was engaged with a long series of quick explainations of why certain people just need to be killed. This may have been the weakest part of the act because it almost became predictable, but never unshocking. He is by far the most foul-mouthed and unshy man I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure he managed to offend and eye-widen everyone in the theater at least once.

He opened with a grand ode to the benefits of not stopping when involved in a traffic accident. Human or machine - doesn't matter. Lots of new stuff to be heard here and most of it was really funny.

It's most interesting to compare how his views affect me now and how they affected me ten years ago. I've become more politically-minded and firmly aligned to pro-capitalistic ideas over time and dropped most of the anti-consumerism rhetoric. Carlin's "don't give a shit but I'm still gonna talk about it" attitude mirrors some of my new opinions, but overall, I was slighty saddened to realize that he wasn't funny for the same reasons anymore. People grow up and change. Comedians have a reputation to live up to and to expand. Carlin will never change his ways now and I hope he never does. I also hope he never gets into a position of legal power. I do like his ideas for new TV shows.

So. "Go become a cow dentist, kill someone you like, try for a good bowel movement, go get fucked, and pull out your entrails and make a hat." The world awaits you.