On one of my Carlin favorites: Complaints and Grievances
Growing up on the upper west side of New York, Carlin has had plenty of opportunities to people-watch. He has taken his ability to view and analyze everyday events and point...
[+] Read Full Review
On one of my Carlin favorites: Complaints and Grievances
Growing up on the upper west side of New York, Carlin has had plenty of opportunities to people-watch. He has taken his ability to view and analyze everyday events and point out the humor in them and turned it into one of the staples of his act.
Carlin's been getting more and more crusty in his old age, that is to say, less tolerant of hypocrisy and lies. As a New Yorker's New Yorker he does talk a little about "the elephant in the room," the WTC bombing, but his solution is pure Carlin comedy. Let's create a chemical warfare unit called F.A.R.T. and use deadly cheese-beer-cabbage farts to smoke Bin Laden out of his caves. After taking care of the elephant, he proceeds to take potshots at nearly every cute and cloying cliché in 2001 America: people with mobile phones, parents who trumpet their kids achievements on their bumpers, singers with one name, gun enthusiasts and guys named Todd. It's some of his most hilariously crude stuff ever.
It's not his most political record but there are a few very subversive pieces. He speaks of how nice it would be if Governor Bush would get elected in 2004. He wonders what aliens would think of our planet's backward ways and rattles off a list of abuses most people would rather not talk about. He saves his best for last; a fantastic piece on the 10 Commandments. George shows the cut-through-the-bullshit mentality that he's rightfully famous for, reducing the ten ancient laws down to two that are meaningful in the 21st Century, plus one new one that Moses left out.
Get it or the terrorists win. No, not Al Qaida, our own terrorists, the straight-laced guardians of public morality who can't tolerate dissent or simply take a joke.
