Carlin

We lost one of the greats today. George Carlin was the comics comic who made the crowd do what the best of us desire to accomplish; think while laughing. There are only a few comics who blazed the trail we take for granted. Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor and George Carlin. They were not just stand-up comics. They were philosophers who accurately spoke about the insanity around them. I always felt like Carlin was more an anthropologist with punch lines, than anything else. He would stay quiet for years and then blast back onto the scene with his latest observations on America. More silly than Hicks and more sane with his drugs than Bruce and Pryor, he defined not just a style that would be copied by many comics who came after him, but he took the risks and paid the price that allowed any comic to say what they want on stage in front of a live audience. I will admit to not being his biggest fan, but I always respected the man for his work and always felt like I owed him a debt of gratitude for making the English language we actually speak a living thing that he pulled art from.