Another American ICON passes

[Guest2]

George Carlin was a unique source of financial advice

Irreverent, hilarious, provocative and profane -- all were qualities of the great George Carlin, who died Sunday from heart failure. But who knew that Carlin was also a good source of financial advice?

What else would you expect from the comedian who so well understood our fascination with materialism, as demonstrated by his "A Place for My Stuff"? ("Bouncing Back" at Bouncing Back from Bankruptcy, one of many Carlin fans who mourned his passing online, provides a link to the "stuff" routine. Considering it's Carlin, the language is only slightly off-color.)

It was also Carlin who said, "Why is the man (or woman) who invests all your money called a broker?" (DigitalDreamDoor.com provides a list of Carlin quotes -- as well as a list of many incorrectly attributed to him.)

In a Bankrate.com interview in 2001, Carlin described how he came to his financial senses -- in the process he also refined his wit -- and overcame a staggering $3 million IRS debt he had accumulated while abusing drugs. At one point during his financial rehabilitation, he served as a spokesman for MCI. Was that a cop-out for an anti-establishment guy? In a simpler world, he said, "I would go from campfire to campfire, dragging my stone tablet of jokes around for people to see in exchange for pieces of meat. It would be a nicer system. But that's not the way it is."

The way it was is that he worked hard for 20 years to get the IRS monkey off his back. As Key Bell notes at Don't Mess With Taxes, he told Esquire: "It made me a way better comedian. Because I had to stay out on the road and I couldn't pursue that movie career, which would have gone nowhere, and I became a really good comic and a really good writer." Amen.

At the time of the Bankrate interview, Carlin said, he was earning $2.5 million a year. He described his method for maximizing income from shows -- control the venue and the ticket revenue -- and his passive income from books, HBO specials and videos.
Since living in the woods isn't an option, he said, "we all make adjustments to our value system according to our needs and what we can tolerate."

Carlin spent his final years harping on his favorite topics -- religion and corporate America. ("It's a big club, and you ain't in it," he said.) His words about the state of the American worker may seem all the more relevant now: "It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

He also was true to his mission. "I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately," he once said.

 

[Guest2]

"I'm aware some stare at my hair, in fact to be fair........"

What a talented and contoversial comedian and entertainer.

Another one we grew up with is gone, he'll be missed.

 

[Buster]

George Carlin Dead at Age 71​

June 23, 2008, 2:44 AM EST
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) -- George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.
Carlin constantly pushed the envelope with his jokes, particularly with the "Seven Words" routine. When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested for disturbing the peace.
When the words were played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a Supreme Court ruling in 1978 upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language.
"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.
He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies. Carlin hosted the first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" and noted on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long."
He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
When asked about the fallout from the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction," Carlin told the AP, "What are we, surprised?"
"There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body," he said. "It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."
Carlin was born May 12, 1937 and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.
While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.
"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.
From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Forth Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs including a carnival organist and a marketing director for a peanut brittle.
In 1960, he left with a Texas radio buddy, Jack Burns, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. He left with $300, but his first break came just months later when the duo appeared on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar. r Carlin said he hoped to would emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade that Carlin grew up in — the 1950s — with a clever but gentle humor reflective of its times.
Only problem was, it didn't work for him.
"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."
Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.