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George Carlin is my God...hahahaha (pg. 2)
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| vano |
| Religion is the opium of the people. |
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| vano |
| Church as an institution is bad and that applies to all of the religions. However, there is nothing wrong to believe in God as long as you don't force others to do as well. |
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| rippedbambam |
| carlin rules. hard to believe that he was on a kids show (shining time station as the conductor) his role in dogma was fitting as cardinal Ignatius Glick. sam kinison was a riot too. |
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| that guy |
| quote: | Originally posted by rippedbambam
carlin rules. hard to believe that he was on a kids show (shining time station as the conductor) his role in dogma was fitting as cardinal Ignatius Glick. sam kinison was a riot too. |
f'real, the dude's a sellout, which is oh-so-ironic. too bad he didn't go the way of kinison, edgy comics are sad when they fade away and end up doing movies like daddy daycare and the adventures of ford fairlane. for the militant atheists out there, check out david cross. he's a en pitbull...and sellout. |
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| Epicurus |
| quote: | Originally posted by that guy
f'real, the dude's a sellout, which is oh-so-ironic. too bad he didn't go the way of kinison, edgy comics are sad when they fade away and end up doing movies like daddy daycare and the adventures of ford fairlane. for the militant atheists out there, check out david cross. he's a en pitbull...and sellout. |
And exacly how is Carlin a sell-out...as for Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay, they're not even close to being in the same league as Carlin...Richard Pryor, sure, but that's about it... |
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| that guy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Epicurus
And exacly how is Carlin a sell-out...as for Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay, they're not even close to being in the same league as Carlin...Richard Pryor, sure, but that's about it... |
dude! SHINING TIME STATION, 10-10-220! if you watch the simpsons, the episode where krusty becomes a standup is mostly based on carlin and how he dances between being a social commentator and a commercial whore. i agree, he's more of an icon than the last two comics but he's far from untouchable from critique. |
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| Epicurus |
| quote: | Originally posted by that guy
dude! SHINING TIME STATION, 10-10-220! if you watch the simpsons, the episode where krusty becomes a standup is mostly based on carlin and how he dances between being a social commentator and a commercial whore. i agree, he's more of an icon than the last two comics but he's far from untouchable from critique. |
DUDE!!! COMMONNNNN!!! Shining Time Station was a KID'S SHOW...and he was even condescending on that...hahahaha...how is that selling out exactly???? As for 10-10-220, he even makes fun of himself about that on his Advertising Lullabye tirade...anyway, even if he's a sellout, according to your definition of sellout, he acknowledges that fact and doesn't spare himself when it comes to criticism... |
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| that guy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Epicurus
DUDE!!! COMMONNNNN!!! Shining Time Station was a KID'S SHOW...and he was even condescending on that...hahahaha...how is that selling out exactly???? As for 10-10-220, he even makes fun of himself about that on his Advertising Lullabye tirade...anyway, even if he's a sellout, according to your definition of sellout, he acknowledges that fact and doesn't spare himself when it comes to criticism... |
i guess it's because i never took a liking to carlin, i always thought he wasn't funny in a self-righteous dennis miller kind of way and the only reason he got that much attention was because of his famous 7 words. i think doing a collect call commercial a la carrot top is a pretty good example of a sellout, just doing work for money.
anyway, i think you might like david cross, he's the new hotness. not just with atheist humor, he rips into bandwagon patriotism and issues in the gay community without flinching. it's a different reaction from carlin, who rants. you can actually hear and feel the audience cringing at what he says. |
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| Epicurus |
| quote: | Originally posted by that guy
i guess it's because i never took a liking to carlin, i always thought he wasn't funny in a self-righteous dennis miller kind of way and the only reason he got that much attention was because of his famous 7 words. i think doing a collect call commercial a la carrot top is a pretty good example of a sellout, just doing work for money.
anyway, i think you might like david cross, he's the new hotness. not just with atheist humor, he rips into bandwagon patriotism and issues in the gay community without flinching. it's a different reaction from carlin, who rants. you can actually hear and feel the audience cringing at what he says. |
Carlin's genuis goes way beyond the famous "7 words"...In fact, I didn't even like that one in particular...
At any rate, here are a couple of interviews where he acknowledges the 10-10-220 commercials...I respect the man because when that happened, many were shocked (I don't think justifiably so), and he went out of his way to explain why he did it, to poke fun at himself, and to explore the concept of selling out in his "The Big Sellout" skit, amongst others. Personally, I think he makes a good point and I tend to agree with his position.
| quote: | Courtesy of http://www.gettingit.com/article/394
GI: You were Carson's main guest host in the 1980s. Was that a strange experience for you, being so deep into the mainstream?
GC: Yeah! I have always had my dangerous flirtations with the mainstream. I've used it to serve my purposes, and it has, in a way, used me in a fair exchange. I've always kind of been of two minds when I'm doing something fairly mainstream: One is the critical observer outside, and the other is the person who wants something and is willing to make an accommodation to get it. All of living is, of course, a series of accommodations -- with conditions as they are -- so I don't look at it as anything more serious than that.
One of the things that'll be on my Web site pretty soon is called "The Big Sellout." When I did a couple commercials for 10-10-220 about two years ago, there were [some fans] who thought this was a horrible sellout. So this thing I'm putting up has a dual purpose. One is to describe my own conditions and circumstances that led to that decision -- my own personal need to make that decision -- and secondly, an examination of this whole idea of selling out, which is made to sound like a black or white situation -- you either did it or you didn't do it.
I see it on a curve of behavior that can be called a series of accommodations ... in order to pursue your own purposes in life. So I say the pure person is living in the woods, eating bark, and making his clothing out of vines. That's the purest person. And somewhere along the line, when you decided to wear clothing and use buses and use the telephone, you began a series of accommodations. So for instance, Ted Kaczynski hated, hated technology. He was willing to kill because of his hatred of technology -- and yet he used a typewriter to type his manifesto. And he rode the buses, an advanced form of technology, to get to the post office, where he used a government agency to deliver his crude technologies. So he's not a sellout, and I say, therefore, who is, and what's this all about? So it's kind of a philosophical examination of that, rather than being a defensive gesture. I thought I owed it to whatever fans were insulted by my doing a commercial, to hear from me my own delineation of that.
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| quote: | Courtesy of http://www.theavclub.com/feature/in...?issue=3541&f=1
O: You mentioned before that you have wide recognition. Like it or not, you're part of mainstream society.
GC: Sure, absolutely. That's one of the interesting and odd things about my own success: It's rooted in a distinctly anti-mainstream point of view and yet, in order for me to project that, I have to put my foot in the stream. I wrote a thing for my web page called "The Big Sellout." A couple of people took issue with my doing a commercial for 10-10-220...
O: I was going to ask you about that.
"When fascism comes to this country, it won't be wearing jackboots; It'll be wearing sneakers with lights in them, and it'll have a smiley face and a Michael Jordan T-Shirt."
GC: Yeah, well, that will soon be on the web site in a very complete form. There's an explanation of first of all why I would make that decision—and it's always for money, of course, but why money was important to me at that moment. That's on there. And then, secondarily and more important, an examination of this whole idea of selling out. It's uttered and spat at you as if it were an absolute; you did it or you didn't. And this person at home saying it probably has on a Gucci shirt or a McDonald's hat, and he has a telephone and he might even own a little bit of stock, and he has made some adjustments along the way himself. He doesn't live in the woods and eat bark and make his own clothing out of vines. So no one is really pure. There is a continuum, and it's up to each person to decide what decisions are worth making to accommodate yourself to the system in order to do what you want to do. Even Ted Kaczynski, who hated technology, used a typewriter to type his manifesto. He rode buses to go to the Post Office to use a government agency to deliver his bombs, which were also a form of crude technology. So, who's a sellout? That's what the whole thing is about.
O: Was it simply a matter of money?
GC: I had 20 years of tax struggle, which I've talked about publicly before, and what I did in this thing on the web page is give the history of the development of that back-taxes debt, and how penalties and interest prevent you from chopping it down to size very quickly. It took 20 years. And what happened, the shorthand of it is, my wife died about two and a half years ago. I met a woman and we're very in love, and it's a magnificent experience that's going on between Sally and me. I just didn't want to get into this relationship with any vestige of that tax problem still lingering. I had it down to several hundred thousand dollars—maybe $350,000—and I said, "I need a quick source of unexpected income." And they were offering... I didn't go hunting: MCI had already approached me, and they made a lot of concessions to try to make it consistent with my personal approach to stand-up, and to make me seem less like a pitchman. Anyway, for whatever compromise there was, for my purposes it was a good one, and I think no harm was done to the culture or to myself. |
As for David Cross, he's not bad at all...but again, he's no pioneer when it comes to defining a new genre in stand-up comedy, which is why Carlin stands out from the rest...Richard Pryor and a couple of others are also considered pioneers, but Cross isn't and for good reason...anyway, there are tons of others that I enjoy, including David Sedaris, Lewis Black and so forth, but Carlin, for me, remains a cultural icon for so many reasons...to each his own I assume... |
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| that guy |
| i dunnooo, sounds like an elaborate cop-out. david cross is no pioneer but i'm sure he's one of the first comics to address popular culture post 9/11 the way he does. anyway, i agree to each his own. i totally forgot about carlin's role as rufus in the bill n ted's series, those movies fuggen rocked. i don't really *get* sedaris but i've always enjoyed lewis black on those segments of the daily show, the guy is such a spaz. i prefer the more stupid and sophomoric kind of comedy like dave attell, dane cook and mitch hedberg. |
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| Epicurus |
Bahhh, its not that much of a copout...The topic of selling out in particular is dear to me since I've always struggled with the prospect of breaching certain principles that I truly believe in for purposes that could help me somewhere down the road convey a message that I truly believe in to even more people.
Without delving too much into ethics, it's the classic struggle between deontological and utalitarian type of principles. The first type is a rule-based ethic, that expects adherence to certain principles or axioms, while the second uses a utility function (such as the common good) as its basis. So for instance, I believe that corporations are evil. And I have some great ideas to convey that message, but I need money in order to do so. So I decide to work for some corporation to generate the money I need to convey this message that could reach so many more people. Is this selling out, or is it not? Some will argue that it is, some will argue that it's not. I tend to argue that it's not, despite the fact that on a superficial level, it seems like I'm being a hypocrite.
Anyway, I'd like to hear your (and other) points of view on this general topic of selling out, since it's something that's not as clear cut as most people imagine it to be. |
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| that guy |
well this is a tangent i wasn't expecting to go on with you but according the utilitarian view of selling out, i think the reasons for him to do them were more self-serving and less altruistic than you give him credit for. he's an intelligent man and i'm sure he can reason his way out of an embarassing career move by playing on his idealized position as a somewhat funny social critic. do you regard what he did as selling out, in the sense most ppl understand it to be, without splitting hairs? i think your example of a corporate msg is an idealized situation and i would not compare that to what carlin did. he's not altruistic in the same sense. as per his own "message", what is it? did he ultimately fail in conveying it? not to use the tired cliche "the ends justifies the means", but if the ends are not met, we are left to interpret the means, which would point to selling out. imo, ppl still see 10-10-220 as a cash grab to support whatever kind of lifestyle he was accustomed to. in my mind, when we see a collect call commericial with a celeb, im sure we all think "washed up".
but i'll leave it at that. there's reality and its interpretations, of which only the former is absolute. i say he's a sellout, you don't. in reality, he just made a commercial for whatever reason. |
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