George Carlin

George Carlin died yesterday. Some may already know this, but George Carlin was my biggest inspiration in this entire world. He is the reason I went after my dream of entertainment. He is the reason I made a blog. He is the reason I used profanity and obscenities to intelligently describe my well thought out points. Well, sometimes they were well thought out.

Point is, this blog exists because of the inspiration of George Carlin. And I only took the next step to radio because of the success of the blog. And it's the continued inspiration of George Carlin that helps me every day on the radio. If all of my hopes and dreams come true, it will be in large part due to the inspiration of George Carlin.

I saw George Carlin long before I heard him. On Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. As Mr. Conductor on PBS. That was when I was a boy. He was just that guy... When I was 16, my sister let me borrow George Carlin's "You Are All Diseased".

Quite possibly George's most angry show considering the death of his wife two years earlier, I fucking LOVED it. It made me think. It taught me to question everything. It made me laugh so hard. I really can't describe it. I just knew that I wanted to hear every word this man had to say. It could never get old.

As proof of that, my girlfriend can tell you that every single night, I go to sleep listening to George Carlin on my iPod. Every single night. I have every single recording he's ever made. All 22 of his albums. And all three of his audio books. I listen to it all. I listen learn. I study his timing. His choice of words. His logic. His arguments. But most of all, I listen because there's nothing better than falling asleep listening to the funniest person alive.

But now I can say that I fall asleep every night listening to funniest person who has ever LIVED... My biggest hero. The one person who has made the greatest impact on my development as a human being. Socially, mentally, and as a performer. George Carlin is without a doubt, my hero.

In 2005 George Carlin was working on his Life Is Worth Losing HBO special. He was coming to Orlando. I HAD to go. I went on to get tickets. Everything was sold out. I was crushed. I called the box office, they said sometimes they release tickets closer to the end so keep trying.

So I kept trying every hour on Tickermaster.com when all of the sudden... two front row tickets popped up. Two.. Front... Row... Tickets. I bought them both, took my best friend, and I was literally front row, DEAD CENTER. I could see the swear glisten on his neck. I watched them bring out his stool. I heard a man give the instruction to put Evian water in an unmarked bottle. It was truly one of the top 5 happiest moments of my life. Probably top 3. Maybe top 2.

I will hold on to that memory forever. I will cherish every single word of every recording this great man released for our enjoyment. In his late career, it wasn't all about telling a funny witty joke. He wanted to expose the bullshit. He hated bullshit. He hated the fakness. He hated words that covered up the truth. He loved to point out that this country was founded by slave owners who said all men are created equal.

That's who George Carlin really was. A man with the greatest ability to jump into the bullshit, wrestle around in it, harvest it, repackage it, and put it on a silver platter of gut busting hilarity for you.

To sum it up quite simply. George Carlin was my favorite person. Out of all the people on this earth, he was simply, my favorite. He was without question the greatest, most brilliant, ingenious comedian to ever step on a stage. And once he did step on to that stage, he never stopped. He did a show last weekend for Christ's sake. He was still on fire. He made two HBO specials since 2004. While it makes me very sad to know that there will never be a new Carlin HBO special, I'm extremely grateful that he was able to pump out two more for us.

The strange part is, George Carlin joked about death so much, that it doesn't seem so bad. He had the same quirky, obscure, skewed outlook on death as he did everything he else in the world. There will never be another person as brilliant and genius as George Carlin to make comedy. People as genuinely brilliant as George Carlin usually end up working at NASA. Carlin used his brilliance to make us laugh. He used is ingenious way of thinking to slap us in the face with the truth and then make us laugh about it.

I'll miss him a lot. He was the best. And no one will ever be as good as him. George Carlin was so important to me, and is so special to me, that I can not possibly end this in a way that justifies the way I feel. So in George Carlin's own words:

"I have no ending, so I take a small bow"