I think people should be allowed to do what they want. Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Religion is like a pair of shoes…Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes. The people are f***ed.īy and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. Just because you got the monkey off your back, doesn’t mean the circus has left town. Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. Some people see things that are, and ask, why? Some people dream of things that never were, and ask, why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.
There’s a humorous side to every situation. Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough not to quit. Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body. Whether we agreed with his acerbic commentary or not, his words always reminded us of how sharp a weapon humor can be in slicing through the surface of our assumptions - and leaving us, as he would say, “gasping for breath.” The Grammy-Award-winning star of 14 stand-up comedy specials on HBO, George Carlin was widely considered one of American’s most influential comedians. And far from staying to the safer path, he leapt time and again past the cliff of “common” wisdom, in the hopes of rattling us into questioning the way we live. Beneath George Carlin’s biting sarcasm and razor-sharp wit lay a heartfelt indignation at the injustices he observed in the world around him. Carlin certainly aimed to provoke, but it’s the why and how of it that made him so exceptional. In his 50-year career as one of America’s most poignant and provocative social critics, the irreverent actor, author and comedian left no sacred cow unsinged as he took to lobbing one grenade after the next into the comfort zones of American life. And then they’d just proudly blurt out their spitting, giving away their ignorance without even realizing what they were doing.īut anyway, happy birthday George Carlin.George Carlin was no stranger to controversy. Twenty years ago it was pretty common to see articles like this, blissfully unaware that tasting beer and wine was different. They have some pretty interesting remarks about each of them, but their notes of Rogue’s barley wine betrays their deep ignorance about what they’re drinking.Īnother hint that they’re not exactly aficionados is the reference to spittoons. And again, it’s weird, but I’ve tried every one of those beers, too. It’s strange to say, but I can honest y say I’ve had every one of them.Īnd their list of the ones they most disliked is equally interesting.
They don’t say how many or which other beers they sampled, but their list of their Top 10 is certainly a trip down memory lane. It’s funny to hear them complaining about all the fruit in beer those days, instead of the “reliably toothsome beers” that Pete’s and Samuel Adams, among others, had been making before then. In addition to Carlin and author Hendra, the other beer tasters were Bernard McGuirk, who “is the executive producer of the Imus in the Morning radio program” and Laura Ingraham, who “is an American radio talk show host, author, and conservative political commentator.” It’s an odd group, though the unifying factor seems to be that they’ve all worked in radio. They were drinking “microbrews.” But that’s just the beginning. The first thing you’ll notice is that the term “craft beer” is nowhere to be found. It’s interesting to look back two decades and see how people viewed craft beer in 1997. Educated at St Albans School (where he was a classmate of Stephen Hawking) and at Cambridge University, he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.” If you don’t know Tony Hendra, he used to be the editor of National Lampoon, and “co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced the British television satirical show Spitting Image.” He “is an English satirist, actor and writer who has worked mostly in the United States. Anyway, Carlin enjoyed beer, and because of that twenty years ago New York Magazine asked him to participate in a tasting of “microbrews” for an article written by Tony Hendra for the issue. He was easily one of the best stand-up comedians in my lifetime and now my son is discovering him through YouTube, which has been fun for me. Today is the birthday of American stand-up comedian, actor, author and social critic George Carlin.