I just shared some communication (that’s a big word for me) on Twitter with Kelly Carlin. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t, until tonight) she is George Carlin’s daughter. The mandatory promo for her is as follows, you can check out her website here and her podcast here. I am looking forward to hearing her podcasts, I am linking them to my blog without hearing them, so hopefully they don’t suck. Even if they did, my blog audience couldn’t fill a bathroom of a single-wide anyway, so no harm done to either me or her. I strongly suspect I won’t be disappointed, if she’s 1/8th as funny as her father she’ll be 10 times funnier than the rest of us. Gonna be fun.
George Carlin was a great inspiration to me. I mentioned that on THE LEEBO SHOW when he passed. His greatest gift to me was to make my fragile eggshell mind QUESTION EVERYTHING. People, rules, signs, the media, my parents, your parents, other people’s parents, clergymen, military men, my Uncle Dave, your Uncle Dave…. question things. Everything.
If it wasn’t for him I might be lobotomized sheep. Instead I’m 175 lbs of I-can-think-for-myself-talkinghead-so-bring-on-yer-candy-ass. Yes, 175 lbs. I’m slightly overweight. I’m working on it.
George Carlin once chewed out my mother.
She was working for GTE when we were in California and she cut off his phone. I’m not sure of the circumstances around it, but he called GTE Customer Service and got my Mom… and proceeded to chew her out. To George’s credit, he cooled down and called back and apologized to Ma and they worked everything out.
My Mom used to tell me that story whenever we saw George on HBO or when I was listening to his albums on my Princess Leia hairdo-looking mega 70’s headphones. I listened to George, Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, Zeppelin and Clapton albums on those headphones back in the day a lot. Oh, The Monkees too. I’m not ashamed. I’m a believer.
And yes, I said “albums”. Look it up on Wikipedia. They were glorious things.
I shared this memory on Twitter with Kelly. It got me thinking about other memories I had about George and my parents. Mostly watching him on TV and them bitching… I never could believe my parents, two of the most conservative people you ever could meet, still watched George Carlin with me. They claimed to not like him, I knew better, after all, he used words like “fuck, “goddamn”, “cunt” and at least seven others. To this day, I still don’t know what some of them mean. But coming from George, they sounded cool. Also, looking back, I can’t believe my parents could afford HBO. I can’t.
I have one more early George/Mom memory I want to share with her, I thought this would be a better forum than Twitter as I can’t share it in 120 characters or less. And make it funny, anyway.
My Mom took away my TOLEDO WINDOW BOX album just before I turned 18.
Mainly because she heard it. It blared from my room with the utmost comic authority; because I forgot to put on my giant headphones (they clamped my skull).
Also, because a week before, she had found weed in my room.
I refer to this discovery in my room as THE GREAT CATACYLSM, as a week earlier, she had found the little gold box. In it, the offending items: a pack of rolling papers, a small roach clip and a small amount of weed. I couldn’t have gotten in more trouble if contained the Queen’s vagina. (Me having any vagina was also illegal in my house back then.)
When they found it, I freaked, but I did the right thing. I blamed it all on my friend Frank, and claimed vehemently that the stash was his. I don’t think my folks bought my story. They knew me and Frank. They figured probably only half of it was his.
See, my mother actually once watched REEFER MADNESS, saw the scene where the guy goes into the closet, takes one hit off a joint and proceeds to laugh his ass off and kill everybody….and believed it.
So, she’s hears George (while she’s strategically placed) through my bedroom door talking casually about drugs….and she barges in my room and demands to know what I’m listening to. I hand over the album cover, altering between confusion, amusement and shame. In other words, I was 17. I altered between those a lot back then.
Of course, once she saw the offending cover, the connection was obvious.
For the Uninformed and Great Unwashed who are not familiar with the brilliant piece of comic genius that is this album, on it, George talks about drugs. A lot. And on the cover, he is wearing a shirt with the devil weed blatantly taunting all American and possibly some Canadian Mothers on the front.
As you might gather, this leads to some spirited conversation between my Mom and myself. Not a conversation so much, but more like two blathering idiots screeching. One: a beloved authority figure through all my life, and me: not so much.
And I will NEVER forget… NEVER, EVER, EVER forget… this particular verbal exchange between us. And to this day, it makes me smile. I wasn’t smiling then, but now, yeah. It went like this:
MOM: You will never listen to this record in my house again, this explains a lot!
ME: Huh? What are you talking about?
MOM: This is why we found…(she can’t bring herself to say it) what we FOUND! In your room last week!
ME: That has nothing to do with me listening to a record! You act like… like George Carlin sold me weed!!
MOM: Well…. HOW DO I KNOW HE DIDN’T?????
I remember just standing there dumbfounded. She was staring right through me. She knew… God love her… she knew, she had just said something completely and totally ridiculous. But she kept her straight, totally pissed-off MOM face on. And I didn’t DARE laugh.
Never mind that George Carlin and I didn’t know each other.
Never mind that George Carlin was a big star in California and I was a dumb kid in Florida.
Never mind that we were thousands of miles apart.
Never mind it was only about 2 joints worth of weed and George would have made about 20 cents on the deal (that’s 70’s currency, today, with inflation, he may have made a thousand bucks).
Never mind that George probably had better weed than me.
I didn’t DARE laugh.
Long story short, I never saw that album again. But I still had CLASS CLOWN, AM/FM, OCCUPATION: FOOLE and I continued to accumulate. I just remembered to listen to them with headphones.
George Carlin evolved and perfected his craft as a comedian and great social commentator. My Mom did the same thing, though to less acclaim.
They made me the man I am today: an unemployed blogger writing embarrassing details about his strange childhood to complete strangers while drinking vodka shots late on a Thursday worknight.
I love ya, Mom. And I love ya, George. And I’m looking forward to being entertained by and lovin’ you too, Kell.
Excelsior.
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