Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [101]
Some of the drawings were by Holly Tucker, wife of Corky Siegel, the bandleader from the Summerfest incident in Milwaukee. The centerpiece, a two-page spread of 209 “impolite” words scrawled in calligraphy above a drawing of a urinal, provided the artist and her husband with an unexpected moment of amusement. When they went to pick up an early draft of the artwork at a printer’s shop, there was a little old lady behind the counter. As she was handing the print job to the couple, she leaned in to give it a good read. Siegel and his wife were mortified, until the attendant looked up with a smile. “Oh, this is cute!” she said.
In late 1984 Carlin took another swing at hosting Saturday Night Live, which was in the middle of one of its extended periods without creator Lorne Michaels at the helm. After viewing a brief clip of Carlin on the first SNL episode nearly a decade earlier (“Does anybody know who that was? He sure had a lot of hair”), he joked about the long gap: “They told me if I did a real good job, they’d have me back. . . . I’m really glad that some people live up to their word.” He noted the complaint that NBC had supposedly received from the archbishop’s office about his God monologue, then proceeded to bait the current archbishop, the newly appointed John Joseph O’Connor, with more material about religion.
This time on SNL he was a team player, guest-anchoring the newscast and taking part in a few sketches. He played to type as an Irish fireman, making a guest appearance in Billy Crystal’s parody of The Joe Franklin Show, and he soloed in a mock infomercial for “Ted’s Book of World Records.”
By this time Carlin was like a nutty uncle to the emerging generation of comedians. He gave Bob “Bobcat” Goldthwait, a newcomer by way of the Boston and San Francisco scenes who always seemed on the verge of hysterics, a part in the proposed HBO series Apt. 2C. Garry Shandling, who had mustered up the nerve to approach Carlin for comedy advice when he was still an electrical engineering student at the University of Arizona in the early 1970s, was now a regular Carson guest host and the cocreator of Showtime’s It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. Shandling loved to recount his youthful encounter with Carlin, who was performing at a jazz club in Phoenix when he took the time to read the nervous kid’s work.
Carlin’s curiosity about the unexamined side of human life was a huge inspiration for Steven Wright, the molasses-paced surrealist whose breakthrough came with his 1985 debut album of comic koans, I Have a Pony. “I was amazed how he talked about everyday things,” says Wright, “little things people don’t usually discuss. He’d make his comedy about these mundane things, and it was hilarious—the speed of light, and coasters, and lint.” Wright, who recited routines from FM & AM and Class Clown (with proper credit) for his public speaking class at Boston’s Emerson College, says he instinctively gravitated toward Carlin’s “whole approach, like he was an outsider of society, looking in.” Over the years he had several opportunities to speak with Carlin, who sought Wright’s advice on playing certain venues and told the younger comic he was one of the comedians Carlin had on his iPod. The connection was as meaningful for Wright the last time as the first. “It was a big rush for me that he liked what I did,” he says.
The Carlin on Campus HBO special, which aired in 1984, was Carlin’s best yet. On an eccentric set designed by Brenda—a landscape of oversized geometric shapes—he crafted a kind of comic poetry by blessing the performance with a mock recitation, jumbling lines from the Lord’s Prayer with the Pledge of Allegiance (“Give