* sometimes listed as On Location: George Carlin at Phoenix
Performed at the Celebrity Star Theater in Phoenix on July 23, 1978
Hi, this is George Carlin, and I thought we might take a look at some of the pictures from the days when my show business career was just starting. This is one of the earliest photos of my days as an actor. Here I’m playing the part of a baby in an early production of a play called “Hold Onto The Rail.” As proof of the intensity I brought to the role, lying nearby you can see a doll that I had recently strangled. This is a candid photo of my first manager and I having a business conference in the park, where we knew we couldn’t be bugged. In this photo I am trying out a new funny face that I had been working on for about six months. Now, here I am with, uh, two of my fellow actors from the West Harlem production of either Ben Hur or the Sound of Music. You can’t really tell from what we’re wearing there because those are our street clothes. And the person off to one side is our personal manager who insisted on being in all of our publicity photos. This is a rare photo, uh, this is a photo of me in a singing group called The Mills Brothers. Uh, we didn’t know that there was already a group in existence by that name. The Mills Brothers sued us, so we dropped two guys and changed the named to Mickey and Sylvia. This is a picture of the time I came in second in a suntan contest. The boy in the middle won, but it was, uh, later he was disqualified when it was discovered he had been using pep pills. Uh, this is the same photo with the negative reversed. As you can see, the suntans are approximately the same on the back. This is me during an early suicide attempt. I was despondent at that time because my puberty was coming along very slowly. This one was taken during the nationwide search for a replacement for Lassie. I remember this picture. I’m trying to get my dog Spotty, a fox terrier, to stand up straight and act like a collie. Uh, although he didn’t get the part, later he did go on to become Mars the Cat God, rest his soul’s manager. This is a picture of me and the boy who doubled for me during my early film career. Normally I did all my own stunts except for the scenes involving homosexuality, of course, and this boy served that purpose. This is me singing in a trio I had started which was called The Inkspots. Oddly enough, the NAACP sued the trio and forced me to drop out when I couldn’t prove there was such a thing as flesh colored ink. This is my first communion picture. It was so well received that I decided to use it for publicity, and to this day, this is the picture that I send out when producers call and ask me if I’m interested in serious acting.
And that brings me to today, here in Phoenix, Arizona, where we’re going to shoot one of these comedy shows for the first time in the round. So I’ll see you around. All right, now, I’m starting to feel it Marty. Let’s go, Marty. All right. No, I want to do like, this is what guys who run do, sprinters do this, 60-yard dash. I always wonder if they’re gonna run on their fingers or what. Okay, getting ready to go. Hey, how are you there? Okay, we’re getting ready to go. We’re getting ready. All right, we’re going to hire you on good judge of character. Hi, how are you? Looks like you made it all the way out to the van during half-time. That’s good. Any time. What? Go. I can go out, on-stage? Yeah. Oh, all right. Ah, yes, thank you. Thank you. Very nice, thank you very much. Well, thank you. Well, I do thank you. And you all got here. Imagine that, we all got here. That’s what always knocks me out about the audience, the audience comes from everywhere. Audiences come from all different houses, different apartments, all over town, different rooms. Imagine that, you had to leave your room and come on to the theater. Maybe you had to drive here, that’s how a lot of us got here. You had to get in and drive the big iron thing, trying real hard not to hit anyone else in the other big iron things. But we got here. Now, all we have to do is get back again. I do think about the audience, though, I’m in the audience, too. You know, I mean, I feel like I’m in the audience, I just happen to have the best seat in the house, that’s all. I am in the audience, and I know the things you think of. I think of them too. When I’m driving to the theater going to be in the audience I’m thinking to myself, what kind of a member of the audience will I be tonight? Will I be a credit to my row? Will we win row of the year? Suppose we get some shit from another section? If there’s a fire drill, will I file out safely, or trample the shit out of my neighbor? Pardon me, fire, look out, fire, pardon me, fire, fire, look out, pardon me, fire. We never practice that one, do we, panicking. We never practice panicking, we practice going out neatly, pardon me, fire, look out, pardon me, fire, fire, yeah, pardon me, fire. We never do that, I don’t know why we practice so much. If we could learn to climb over one another, we might save a few lives.
I wonder, I wonder a lot of things. I wonder what it’s like when I’m not there. Do you wonder what it’s like when you’re not there anymore, when you’re gone? You know, you were somewhere, you were over here with your friends and you’re talking some shit with them. You say we’ll see you later, Phil, we’re going downtown, and then you leave. Do you wonder what it’s like over there now? I wonder are they gonna treat me right while I’m gone? What’s it like? I wonder a lot of things, but that’s my job. My job is thinking up goofy shit. You know, that’s my job, thinking up goofy shit. My job is to think up stuff and come around and remind you of it. Cause you already knew it, you just forgot to laugh at it, that’s all. My job to remind you. I wonder about things like, I wonder if on a rainy night the sandman sends the mudman. You’d think it would be his job. I wonder why we don’t have any large craft warnings. Apparently we don’t care about the big boats, huh? I wonder why Marineland doesn’t have a display of fish sticks. I mean, it’s a seafood, I’d like to see it. In fact, I’d like to see Mrs. Paul herself come swimming by. Hi, boys. I wonder if a centipede wants to kick another centipede in the shins, does he kick one leg at a time, or does he stand on 50 and kick with 50? I wonder why there are not waiters in waiting rooms. They’re all in the restaurant. I wonder why women wear evening gowns to nightclubs. Why don’t they wear nightgowns? And I wonder why fluorescent lights seem afraid to come on. Have you ever noticed, you turn them on and they go blip, blip, blip, blip, blip… finally they’ll come on after you coax them a little. I wonder why Kleenex doesn’t have a target in the middle of it. Don’t you think we need a bulls-eye right in the middle of the Kleenex? I wonder about hats. Did you ever notice that when you have a hat on for a long time, it feels like it’s not there. And then when you take it off, it feels like it’s still there. That’s creepy. I wonder about frog’s legs. In those restaurants where they serve frog’s legs, what do they do with the rest of the frog? What, do they just throw it away? I mean, they don’t have frog torsos on the menu. They must be doing something with them. They throw them away. Can you imagine a barrel full of frog bodies in the restaurant and some drunk coming down the alley, oh, goddamn. I wouldn’t wanna see that. I wonder about who empties wishing wells. Who the hell empties the wishing wells? That’s our money. I’ve never seen an accounting. Does anybody ever tell you, no, gone, just gone. Someone picked it up, someone emptied the well. I’m sure they don’t come around at 3:00 in the afternoon on Sunday with a little girl in her first communion dress dropping a dime. 3:00 in the morning, black T-shirts empty the wishing well. It’s our money and I want some of it back. I wonder if movie directors have credits on their dreams. And I wonder why there’s no blue food. Where the hell is the blue food? Every other food is represented… I mean, every other color, every other color is represented. I mean, every color… okay, red is raspberry, cherry and strawberry, orange is orange, yellow is lemon, green is lime, brown is meat. There’s no blue food. Why the hell was blue left out of the food thing? Somebody’s got the blue food, goddammit. Somebody’s got it. It probably bestows immortality, that’s why we haven’t been given any. And don’t say blueberries, we know they’re purple. You look at a blueberry and you see that sucker is purple. Bleu cheese, no, bleu cheese is just white cheese with a bunch of mold in it, man. And bluefish, God knows, you open one up they’re every color under the sun. Well, enough of that shit. I wonder, I wonder which came first, skilled workers or unskilled, and who decided? I figure originally all we had was workers, and then they decided, this is hard. And they called themselves skilled. And someone else came along they couldn’t do it, poor unskilled son of a bitch. They moved right past his ass, man, when he was just in the landing area. Do you think maybe Charlie McCarthy has little wooden balls? I’ve always wondered that. Hi, Charlie, hi, Charlie. You know what I wonder about, I wonder we buy flowers. Why do we buy flowers? They’re free. They grow all over. Yet, we buy them, we pay good money for flowers, flowers that are dying, I might add. That’s a little strange, flowers is one, flowers is one of the few things that you buy, you bring it to your house, and if they die you don’t give a shit. Normally, you’d be asking for your money back on anything that died. Are you kidding me, these things keeled over on the piano. Flowers. I wonder why I’ve never seen anyone cleaning a church. Have you? I’ve never seen someone cleaning a church. A lot of things go on in church. You never see a cleaning crew going in there with pails and mops and shit. It just never happens. Why don’t they clean churches? You know why? Churches don’t need to be cleaned, they clean themselves overnight. That’s how they know they’re churches. Come back the next morning, shit, it’s still clean, must be a church.
Does the time bother you? I get bothered by the time. Not so much the time itself, the people bother me for the time. People come up to me on the street, I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you, people come up to you and say what time it is, or they might say what time is it? I shouldn’t get into these ballads. You’ve had people come up to you and say, what time is it? What time is it? As if you personally were responsible for keeping time. You know, I feel, I feel honored, first of all, that they thought I was the man in charge. But I do have to explain, you don’t see official timekeeper on here, do you? I don’t have the time of course not. Do you have the time? That’s another way they say it, do you have the time? I say, uh, no, I don’t believe I do. I certainly didn’t have it this morning. Did you leave it somewhere? Well, do you have the time? No, I don’t have the time. I use a little of it like everyone, you know, but I don’t have it. I think, I think the Navy has it, in Washington. Isn’t that, they keep it in an observatory, that’s right. Sure, they let out a little of it each day. Not too much, they wouldn’t want to give us too much, just enough time. Sometimes they’ll say, do you know what time it is? And I say, yes. I hate to disappoint them, but there is no time. There is no time. I don’t mean there’s no time, I mean there’s no time. When the hell is it? We made that whole thing up. There’s no time, we made it up. It’s a manmade invention, time. There are no numbers up in the sky. I’ve looked, they’re not there. We made this stuff up, when is it? When the hell is it, when are we, I ask you, when are we? Sometimes we think we know where we are, but we don’t really know when we are. When the hell is it? All the time zones are different, every calendar you run across is different. They’ll all give you a different answer. These are calendars, these are made to… to keep track of time. Everybody’s got a different one. The Chinese are way up there in the 5 and 6000’s, Hebrew calendar is way up in the 5 and 6000’s, we’re up at about 1977. Well, shit, this ain’t a couple of weeks these people are off, this is thousands of goddamn years that are missing, man. How did they do that? We don’t, we don’t know when the hell is it, it could be the middle of last month, for all we know. I mean, time is so, we’ve got it down so perfect that every four years we have to stick in an extra day just to make sure it still works, and we call it February 29th. Bullshit, it’s March 1st and I know it. It just feels like March 1st. You can’t keep track of the time, what’s the sense. Give you an example, there’s a moment coming, it’s not here yet, it’s still on the way, it’s in the future, it hasn’t arrived, here it comes, here it is, oh, shit, it’s gone. There’s no now, there’s no now, everything is the near future or the recent past. But there’s no present. Welcome to the present, whoosh, gone again. It’s just so imprecise. We don’t even care to use the minutes and seconds and hours that we’ve been given, everybody’s very vague about the time. They say what time you got, I got, uh, I got just after. Just after, geez, I must be slow, I had going on. And where did that imprecision begin? Why is it we’re not so sure? I know one of the clues that happened to me was when they started telling me about moments when I was a kid. They were trying to teach me how to tell time, and of course, you can’t tell time, time tells you. But they were trying, they were trying to show me. Now the big hand, I said I don’t have a big hand. Never mind, look at the clock. And the clock is so wonderful, there’s so much emotion attached to a clock face. I hate digital clocks. Digital clocks rob me of all the emotional experience of the spatial relationships on that face of the clock. Isn’t it true, I mean, don’t you always feel that this half hour when it comes down from 12 down to 6 goes by a lot quicker than this half hour when it has to come up fighting gravity all the way? I know, it does go a lot quicker, yeah. Oh, I got ya, yeah. I’ll tell ya, I’ll tell ya this, if I only have a half to live, I want it to be this one, man. I wanna last just a little bit longer than this one here. It’s vague, that’s all I’m saying, it’s very vague how we treat time. We have all these wonderful expressions, we say now, now is an interesting one. When, now, you want that now? Yes. Well, would you like to try again. Or sometimes just now, just now, did you hear that? What? Just now. You must mean just then, don’t you? Yes, just then, but there it goes again. When? – Now? – No, not now. Pardon me, do you have the time? When do you mean, now or when you asked me? This shit is moving, Ruth. We got a lot of these vague terms, right away, immediately, at once, lickety split, just like that, nothing flat, drop of a hat, no time at all, as quick as you can say Jack Robinson. I’m sure you’ve done that to people, I’ll be back before you can say Jack Robinson. Jack Robinson, you’re not back. How about, a jiffy, a jiffy, or a flash? Which is quicker? A jiffy or a flash? I think there are two flashes in a jiffy, myself. But God knows how many jiffies there are in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And why did they use two shakes of a lamb’s tail, what’s wrong with the basic unit of measurement, one shake of a lamb’s tail? We can do our own arithmetic, thank you. Belched a little there. Tried to swallow that one. Then we have words like soon. Soon, that’s a very emotional word, there’s a lot of potential for drama in that word, soon. Soon, soon, is your mother coming home? Uh-huh. When? Soon. Real soon. As soon as she can. Sooner than you think, that’s kind of a spooky one, Sooner than I think? That’s a little bit like before you know it. I’ll be back before you know it. He did it, holy Christ, look at that. And we go on with these terms that we use, these vague terms of time, one of these days, before long, any time now. Well, that’s true, everything is gonna happen any time now. Any day now, that’s kind of a snotty one, any day now. Hey, I’ll be giving you that five bucks I owe you, Bill. Yeah, any day now. Sooner or later, now and then, once in a while, from time to time, in a little while. In a little while, that will just be a little while. That’s a wonderful one, and I just love that. It sounds so benign, just a little while. Couldn’t hurt you, could it? You can wait a little while. It’ll only be a little while longer, just a little while. That’s so different from a short time. Short time sounds sound almost terminal, doesn’t it? You only have a short time. Whereas you have a little while. Oh, I’d rather have a little while than a short time. You know, we’ve got long ways we measure time, we’ve got vast distances of time we measure. People will say things like kingdom come, I’m… I’m gonna be standing here till kingdom come. Shit, I don’t have that on my watch. Doomsday, you say? Doomsday. Till the cows come home. Now, that’s an easy one to understand, that’s long about dusk, isn’t it? If you leave them out overnight they’d burst. Here’s a long period of time, forever. Some people will tell you, gosh, I’ve been standing on this line forever. Look at this, Dave, this man has been standing on line forever. He looks fairly fresh to me. Almost like an eternity, people will tell you, it’s… it’s almost like an eternity, as if they had experience with eternities. Now, you must have a favorite period of time. I have some favorites, I just want to try a few of them on you. It isn’t easy, uh, to select a favorite period of time, so many of them are attractive, but there are little periods of time that, um, that you might relate to. Of course, the most basic period of time I feel is five minutes. That seems to be the one everyone chooses. If they need to think of a period of time real quickly, they just go five minutes, just five minutes, I’ll be there in just five minutes, give me five minutes, would you please just, would you just give me five minutes? Are you kidding me, I can fix that shit in five minutes. Five minutes, that’s all most people want, five minutes, a good, solid, nice period of time. You can do anything for five minutes, can’t you? I mean anything. Even things you really hate. Yeah, you can probably do it for five minutes. Hey, let’s go talk to Ted. Are you kidding? Ted’s an asshole. Look, just five minutes, huh? Okay, let’s give him five minutes. Not ten, ten I can’t make, now you’re getting into double digits, you’re starting to fool with my head. Time, five, ten minutes. Fifteen minutes is popular, you hear fifteen quite a bit. But it’s, it’s sort of an institutional one, it’s kind of an official time period, 15 minutes. Has a touch of regulatory, uh, quality to it, doesn’t it? It sounds like something you’re not supposed to do, or have to do for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes. I like 20 minutes. Doesn’t that sound free compared to 15, 15 minutes? Twenty minutes. I’ll be back in 20 minutes. Gosh, what’s he gonna do?
Do you have those news stories for me? Maybe let’s go to the news reports, man. Tell us what’s going on around the world. God knows you’re not home to find out. Thank you, thank you, Walter, let’s do it. I just want to keep you up to date, there’s a few things that have happened while we’ve been sitting here, and it’s not nice to ignore the rest of the world. Let’s take a look, I’d like to take a look at the news. First of all, the headlines, three Shriners have been killed in a whoopee cushion explosion, 21 killed in 21-gun salute, rapist swallows whistle. Oh, the head of the lost and found has been reported missing. And a vegetarian has been beaten to death by a meat packer. Oh, some vegetarians? Have I been ignoring your section? I’m really sorry. Well, we’ll be okay, though, cause, um, you know, I just can’t think of everything. But I’m now, I’m gonna do about 10 straight stories just for these folks here. Back into the news. Police fired over the heads of rioters today, however they killed 200 people standing on a balcony. A 107-year-old woman in Florida is reported to be pregnant. Physicians claim that because of her advanced age, she will have a grown-up. Scientists have discovered a new disease which has no symptoms. It is impossible to detect, and there’s no known cure. Fortunately, no cases have been reported thus far. A man has barricaded himself inside of his house, however, he is not armed and no one is paying any attention to him. The Surgeon General announced today that saliva causes stomach cancer. However, only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. A woman was severely injured today when she attempted to force breast feed a wildcat. And the results of the latest Gallop Poll have come in. It seems that 29 percent of the people were not home, 14 percent of the people made believe they weren’t home, 6 percent of the people could not operate the doorknob, and 3 percent were wearing underwear and had to stand sideways. The Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today that they have found another Mohican. Accordingly, all the books are being called back in and will be changed to read The Next To the Last of the Mohicans. In France today, a baby was born wearing glasses and holding a Quaalude. A high-speed chase ended today when the car stopped and the people got out. A dog exploded on a busy downtown street corner today. No one was killed, however 12 people were overcome by fur. Police estimate that 50 to 60 fleas also lost their lives in the blast. Scientists in Switzerland announced today that they have been able to make mice fart by holding them upside down and tapping them on the stomach with a pencil. A Milwaukee man has been arrested for attempting to use food stamps to mail a box of macaroni. Earthquake, an earthquake has hit the maternity home… maternity home, there’s no such place as a maternity home… an earthquake has struck the maternity hospital, three people were killed, however, six people were born. A priest who has performed 300 exorcisms was eaten today by a green boogie man. Out at the lake in City Park today, police arrested a one-armed man who was bothering the other boaters by continuously rowing in a circle. A man at a tool and die company, died today when he was hit with a tool. A severely disturbed geography teacher has been arrested after killing six people who did not know the capital of Scotland. A man in Detroit is suing a soup company, claiming that a bowl of alphabet soup spelled out an obscene message to his wife. A heavily-armed man in Seattle has taken six hostages, he’s demanding $3 million and someone to share driving and expenses to St. Louis. Police today announced they have broken up an amphetamine ring, narcotics detectives broke in and arrested six out of ten of the speed dealers they had under suspicion. The other four got away by running completely across Canada. A man who was shot in the chest nine times yesterday and refused treatment… died today… of nine shots in the chest. A man in Cincinnati is suing a hospital, claiming he entered the hospital for a vasectomy and was castrated instead. When the chief surgeon was asked how such a mistake might happen, he said, well, it all started out as a joke. We were pretending we were going to castrate him and he got real snotty so we offed his balls. The man himself was philosophical about it, he said well, it’s just that much less to wash. Tragedy struck the parade today as an open manhole claimed the lives of 1200 marchers, one at a time. A man who shot and killed all 12 members of a jury which convicted him last year, goes on trial again today. A set of Siamese twins which was surgically separated six months ago was sewn back together again today because each of them only knows one half of the combination to their locker. A man who has… a man who was… this is kind of one where you’re gonna moan, but I’m gonna do it anyway. Okay, a little pre-moaning, that’s nice. Visine, do they look that red? Would you hold that for me. Oh, hey, now I need it, now I need it. It’s like starting a fire for the charcoal burner, you know? God, well, that’s gonna be nice, That’ll really… Well, anyway, would you hold them both for me. Now you’re under arrest. Here comes the Wisine, as we say, in the middle part of Europe. Well, there ain’t much of this left, but there is one final story that I would like to wind up with, folks, and I do thank you for that Visine, but I didn’t smoke at half-time, so if they’re red, it’s just natural eyeball blood pressure, or whatever you call that shit. I was, the one you were gonna moan about, I was gonna tell a man… about a man who was scheduled for a heart transplant who decided not to have it. He had a change of heart, you know? I love that shit, that’s why… I know why you’re moaning, because you wish you had thought of the goddamn thing yourself. I have to think that. Like to wind up the news tonight with sort of a little story, kind of a human interest story about man’s best friend. It seems that 65-year-old James Driscoll was asleep in his downtown hotel room last Wednesday when he was awakened by the sound of a dog barking. When he woke, he found the room was full of smoke, he could not see, and the dog led him out of the room, down the hall, and into an elevator shaft where he plunged eight stories to his death.
I want to do a… a nostalgic thing here for my own sake and for the request of a couple of people that are on the crew that are listening or looking through viewers, or listening on headsets or whatever, and do a little, uh, weather forecast from Al Sleet, Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman. Hey, baby, what’s happening. Que pasa? Que what you call your pasa? Al Sleet here, your hippy-dippy weatherman, with all the hippy-dippy weather, man. Brought to you by Parson’s Pest Control. Do you have termites, waterbugs and roaches? Well, Parson’s will help you get rid of the termites and waterbugs, and help you smoke the roaches. Hey. Temperature at the airport is 88 degrees, which is stupid, man, cause I don’t know anybody who lives at the airport. Now if you’ll take a look at our national weather map, you’ll see that we don’t have one. So try to picture last night’s map in your mind. Remember all the letters and lines, all them little numbers. The weather is dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight’s forecast, dark, continued dark tonight, turning to partly light in the morning. Old Al, Al got out of the weather business and he’s, uh, he’s now a, a linoleum, uh, quality control inspector in a linoleum plant. Al, he only wanted to get out of the media. You know, he said fuck it, I don’t need it. And, uh, hey, who can blame him. I don’t know, but Al got out of weather when he realized he had given the… the final weather forecast. He had given the ultimate forecast, there was nowhere to go. You know, when there’s nothing left to conquer in your field, hey, it’s time to leave. And old Al had given the ultimate forecast, he told us, he said one night that the weather will continue to change on and off for a long, long time. Then he was gone from it. God bless Al.
Okay. Yes, you’re all, you’re all going to die. Didn’t mean to remind you of it, but it is on your schedule. Yes, it probably won’t happen when you want. It usually comes along when you’re not expecting. Generally you have your stamp collection out, you know? Now? Now. Just want a little time to put away your hinges, you know? No, there’s a time to die, and it’s okay, you know? It’s really okay. Nobody wants to die, nobody. Well, you know, ha ha, most people don’t wanna die. Nobody wants to die. Boy, if you think being sick is no fun, dying is really a pain in the ass. Nobody wants to die. People don’t mind being dead, being dead is great, but getting dead, nobody wants to get dead. So I hope I don’t die. I wonder how often we think that, you know? It’s just under the surface, isn’t it? You go out for the day, going out of your house, geez, I hope I don’t die. It would really spoil the circus if I were to die. Geez, I hope I don’t die. Comedians don’t wanna die. It’s only a metaphor, but it’s true of all of us, we don’t wanna die out there. A comic’s gonna die, I don’t want to die. Geez, I was dying out there, I was dying, it was death out there. It was like a morgue. I don’t wanna die. Of course, if the comedian doesn’t die, you know? If he succeeds, if he makes you laugh, then he can say, I killed ’em. I killed ’em. So, it’s either me or you, you know, just like on the freeway. Yeah, dying shouldn’t be that bad, it shouldn’t be that bad. We’re all gonna do it, it’s one of the few fair things in life, everybody catches it once. And dying should be fun, there should be some sort of a look ahead. I mean, after all, when you die you’re gonna find out where you go. Haven’t we been wondering about that a long time, where the hell we go. Isn’t that the biggest thing we have to wonder about, where the hell do you go? I don’t know. Joe thinks he knows. I know Joe thinks he knows, but Joe don’t know. Where do we go? Nobody knows. Well, I think sometimes you go where you think you’re gonna go, whatever you think you’re gonna do, that’s where you’re probably gonna go. If you keep saying you’re gonna go somewhere, chances are you might go there. You ever hear those guys say, I’m going to hell, don’t pray for me. Don’t pray for me, I’m going to hell. He is. You go where you wanna go. I think when you die, your soul goes to a garage in Buffalo. When Monte Hall dies, he’ll go behind Door Number 4. That’s it, where you wanna go. No, nobody wants to die, and you know part of the reason we don’t wanna die is because of that goddamn funeral. We’ve seen it, we know how bad news it is. That funeral is no fun. Man, if I don’t like other people’s funerals, I know I’m not gonna like my own, man. There’s no way I can get behind my own funeral. Gonna be lying there in a casket, they’re gonna put me in the box, gonna put me in a convertible with the top down. You know that’s embarrassing, lying there and everybody’s looking at you. You’re dead, and they’re looking. You’re just lying there still, people coming over going… they don’t know that you’re lying there with short pants on and no back in your jacket, embarrassing. And sometimes they’ll come over, you know, some people it depends on your religion and so forth, but they do come right over to the casket a lot of times and they’ll go like this. And they’re silent for a moment, and what they’re doing while they’re silent is, they’re subtracting their age from your age, so they get a rough estimate on what they have left. And they get up and they say, don’t he look good? Don’t he look good? You crazy, he’s dead. I know, but he never looked that good. Well, they say the nicest things about you, they say the nicest things when you die. Your popularity goes straight up when you die. They say the greatest things there are that can be said, they’ll even make stuff up if they have to. Well, he was a real asshole, but he meant well, you know? He was a well-meaning asshole. Yes, you get so popular when you die, all the flowers you get, think of the flowers you get when you die. You get more flowers when you die than you got in your whole life. All your flowers arrive at once, too late. And guys will say, oh, yeah, well, you know Bill is dead, yeah, poor Bill, poor Bill is dead, yeah. Poor Dave, yeah, poor Dave is gone now. Ed, yeah, poor Ed is gone. Dan, that motherfucker is still alive, isn’t he? I wish he would die so I could like him. Reincarnation is another aspect of death that a lot of people will tell you little tales about it. Reincarnation, coming back, a lot of folks are sure of it, they can come back, you come back as something. I don’t know, does it seem right to you that it would work? I mean, mathematically, it doesn’t seem to work, because originally on this earth we only had, well, let’s say six people. I know we had two, but it’s a controversial number. Let’s say at one time there were only, there were only six of us, about, six people, six souls. And those six people died, and those souls went back to the staging area, and new people were born and those six souls came back. We still only have six souls. Now, we have four billion people claiming to have souls. Where are all these extra souls coming from? Someone is printing up souls, and it lowers their value. The more souls there are, the less they’re worth, it would seem. Well, somebody’s got to think of this shit, you know? How about the perfect murder, I’ve thought sometimes about the perfect murder. You know what you do, you pick up one person by the ankles and you beat another person to death with him. And they both die, and there’s no murder weapon, hey. What happened here, sergeant? Looks like a pedestrian accident to me. They must have been moving at quite a clip. Of course, if you should be caught with this perfect murder in progress, or even after the fact, if you should be caught you might wind up on death row. Death row, wow. That’s more than just fun, ain’t it? I mean, there’s cats there, death row, man, shit. Oh, well, you got that one meal, but that’s not much of a consolation, is it? You’re gonna get to order your meal, big deal. Why don’t you leave me alone, I’m not hungry, man. They give you that one last meal. I say, you can have some fun with that last meal. I mean, if you work it right. They gotta give you whatever you want. I mean, short of elephant steak, you know? They don’t wanna start on a new elephant just for one guy. But they gotta give you pretty much what you want, that’s part of the humanity of what they’re going to do to you. Yeah, you could just order something, you know, like maybe, well, shit, you tell them you can’t decide. That’s it, I can’t decide. I don’t know, I don’t know if I want steak or lobster, you know? I mean, I really love them both and I honestly can’t decide. Could they kill you? I don’t think they could kill you if you honestly couldn’t decide. Lie detector, truth serum, the man honestly doesn’t know what he wants. We can’t very well kill him, we can’t drag him down the last mile screaming, I don’t know what I want. You gotta give him a chance, and then he… well, man lives. Imagine if you worked it out and you kept it going six months, man is still alive, can’t decide on meal. Three years, eight years, and then finally you’re an honest person so you tell them when you do figure it out, and you say I’ve decided what I’d like, I think I’ll have steak. Okay, how did you want that? Oh. Well, my feeling is, if you’re gonna die, you know, or if you know, hey, die big. Die big. Nobody wants to just pass away. You don’t want to be a euphemism, do you? Nobody wants to pass away. You know, Arnie passed away. Oh, really? Yes. Well, I didn’t know that. Well, that’s the idea. On the other hand, Dave died. Oh, yes, I heard about Dave dying. That’s true. I say die big, give it a shot, man, go out big, it’s your chance. Die big, work in a few posthumous reflexes for your friends. Give them a show before you go. Entertain and uplift and instruct those you are leaving behind. When you die, give them a few posthumous reflexes. You know, the body does store electricity up, there’s a certain storage of electricity, and even a dead body, a corpse, will occasionally go (sound). And I say if you have that potential after you’re dead, use it properly. Pre-program, before you die, pre-program some posthumous reflexes that will be entertaining to those you’ve left behind. Do something to capture their imagination, roll over on the autopsy table. That’s nice. Cross your legs, scratch your balls, do something. Now, the only reason, the only reason that I even suggest that you have a choice about what you can do at the moment of death, is a very little known and very little understood part of the death process called the two-minute warning. Many people are not aware of it at all, the two-minute warning. Just as in football, two minutes before you die you receive an audible warning, two minutes, get your shit together. The reason we don’t know about it is because the only people who hear it, die. And I don’t think we’d believe someone anyway if he told us he’d received his two-minute warning, would you? Some asshole on the bus, hey, I just got my two-minute warning. You’d think it was a coach out on the town, you know? But no, the two-minute warning does arrive, and I say use that time to entertain, to leave something behind. Do something with the two minutes, hey, if nothing else give a speech, a little two-minute speech. We can all give a little two-minute speech. Just pick some subject you’re very fond of and talk about it for two minutes, I mean, tell them. It’s your last chance to tell them anything, so tell them. You got two minutes, and I mean wax eloquent, rise, bring it to the rafters. And then at the moment of the end you say, if this is not the truth, may God strike me dead.
Well, that leads me into the filth, and, uh, to kind of wind up. Thank you. You know, that’s the trouble with it, is trying to decide what to call these words, man. I’m trying to decide what to call this whole thing. You know, what are these words that I’m talkin about, they’re just words that we’ve decided, sort of decided not to use all the time. That’s about the only thing you could really say about them for sure, that they’re just some words, not many, either, just a few, that we’ve decided well, we won’t use them all the time. Sometimes, well, hell yeah, sometimes it’s okay, but not all the time. And they’re the only words that seem to have that restriction. I mean, there are a lot of words you can say whenever you want, you know, pneumonia. Nobody gives you a lot of… all right, you can’t yell it in the hospital a great deal, but what the hell. There are words that you can say, no problem. Topography, no one has ever gone to jail for screaming topography. But there are some words that you can go to jail for. There are some words that we just have decided we will not say all the time. Sometimes, okay, if you’re running through the jungle chasing somebody that we’re at war with you can holler them. If you’re shooting a criminal it’s okay, it’s the all American thing, dirty, fucking crook. But if you’re with the bishop’s wife at lunch, it’s better not to ask for the goddamn lettuce. You know what I mean, it’s just like we’ve decided there’d be some words we won’t say all the time. And I was just trying to find out which words they were, for sure, all of them. I wanted a list. Cause nobody gives you a list, that’s the problem, they don’t give you a list. Wouldn’t you think it would be normal if they didn’t want you to say something to tell you what it is? Nobody even tells you when you’re a kid what the words are that you’re supposed to avoid. You have to say them to find out which ones they are. Shit, ahhhh. Oh fuck, ahhhh. That’s two. Oh, ma, that’s enough trial and error, huh? Please, ma, give me a list, huh? All right, you’re six years old now, and here’s the list of words your dad and I don’t ever want to hear you say. Oh, hey, thanks ma. Boy, that’s gonna save me an ass kicking or two. Ahhhh, ohhh. Yeah, you never know what’s gonna be on the list, cause it’s always somebody else’s list. You didn’t make that up, somebody told you that shit. They told you, better… better not say that, so you’re gonna… and you don’t know what’s gonna be on their list. God, people’s lists even change from day to day. Some people on Friday night got a list, you know, about two or three words. Sunday morning, goddamn, there’s 27 words on it. These are the same people, two days later, different list. So you’ve gotta kind of watch out what you’re gonna believe from them. The trouble is, I was trying to find out what these words might be, and I wanted to know the ones that you could never say on television. I mean, the filthy words that are always filthy. There are a lot of these little two-way, double entendre words that have two meanings, words that they’re okay part of the time. I call them like, part-time filth, some of these words, they’re only 50 percent dirty. You have words like ass. Ass is hardly even a dirty word anymore, but it has a few meanings that you can’t say on television, that’s what I was talking about, what can you say on television. That’s another one of those places where we can’t use these words all the time. But some of them are all right, some of the time. Ass is all right on television. You can say on television things like, well, you’ve made a perfect ass of yourself tonight. But you can’t say, hey, let’s go get some ass. Bitch, bitch is another word like that, same kind of word, it’s only dirty part of the time, depends on what you mean by bitch. You might be the lady from the San Diego Zoo visiting one of the Tonight Shows, and you might just have a bunch of little canines with you there. One of them is a female, and you say there’s the bitch, Johnny. And it’s okay, fine. Just don’t refer to the singer the same way, that’s all. Is that bitch gonna do another number? Yes. Animals are fine on those two-way words. And that’s it, that’s what I was trying to find, the words that were always dirty not just part of the time, but completely filth. Well, in… in looking for these words I kept finding new categories. We have so many ways of describing these dirty words, it’s, well, we have more ways to describe dirty words than we actually have dirty words. That seems a little strange to me. It seems to indicate that somebody was awfully interested in these words. They kept referring to them, they called them bad words, dirty, filthy, foul, vile, vulgar, coarse, in poor taste, unseemly, street talk, gutter talk, locker room language, barracks talk, bawdy, naughty, saucy, raunchy, rude, crude, lewd, lascivious, indecent, profane, obscene, blue, off-color, risque, suggestive, cursing, cussing, swearing. And all I could think of was shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, man. That’s all we have, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. That was my original list. I knew it wasn’t complete, but it was a starter set, you know? …mention WBAI? Shit, piss, fuck… yes, WBAI is the one who played them… shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Now, that was the original list. We’ve added a few words since then, we’ve added fart, turd and twat. And I know there are some other words that many of you are wondering about, why they haven’t been considered, why they haven’t shown up on the list thus far. We’re looking at them all very closely. Some of your favorites might make the list this year; asshole, ballbag, hard on, piss hard, blue balls… nookie, snatch, box, pussy, pecker, peckerhead, peckertracks, jism, joint, donicker, dork, poontang, cornhole and dingleberry. Dingleberry, a very popular word. And to my way of thinking, dingleberry a rather innocent sounding word, dingleberry, sounds Christmasy to me, you know? Let’s put one on the tree, dad. So, the words, as I say, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd and twat. Now, motherfucker came off the list immediately. The first day in fact I had a call from an English language purist, some guy had to, he had to talk, you know? He got on the phone. He tells me I have a duplicate on the list, I have a duplication. He says motherfucker is a duplication of the word fuck, technically. Because fuck is the root form, motherfucker being a derivative, therefore, it constitutes duplication. And I said, hey, motherfucker, how did you get my phone number anyway? How did he know I even had a phone? I said look, man, it may be a derivative, but you still can’t say it. You still can’t say motherfucker on TV, can you? He said no, but you can’t say fuckee, fucking, fuckola, fuckarooni or fuckarino, either. Well, I said, yeah, that would crowd up my list something awful. So I just struck that motherfucker away. I struck it from the list, motherfucker was gone. Now, the list was shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, tits. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, tits. Does is sound like something’s missing? Does it sound like an old friend is gone? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, tits. Remember the old rhythm? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits. Now, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, tits, it falls apart. It isn’t going anywhere. And by now, cocksucker is the dominant word on the list. Previously, with motherfucker on the list, cocksucker was somewhat balanced out. They were the only multi-syllabic words on the list. But now cocksucker stands alone, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, tits, And who knows, maybe it doesn’t belong either. After all, motherfucker turned out to be a ringer, let’s take a look at cocksucker, see if this one belongs. We’ll divide the word cock and sucker from each other, those words. Sucker isn’t dirty, sucker, it’s suggestive as hell, but it isn’t dirty. And cock, that’s not dirty all the time, that’s one of those words that’s only partly filthy. Cock, if you’re talking about the animal, it’s perfectly all right. They used to read that to us from the bible in third grade, and we would laugh, man. Cock is in the bible. Remember the first time you heard about a cock fight. What? No. Get out of here. Get out of here. Even the word cocksucker itself has been twisted out of all of its original meaning, it’s been distorted. For some reason now, cocksucker means bad man. It’s a good woman, how did they do that? How did they do that? Well, tits is on the end of the list, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits. And you know it doesn’t belong on that list. I mean, it really doesn’t belong in with that kind of heavy-weight filth. Tits isn’t dirty, tits is a cute name, cute thing, cute idea, great fun, good name. Tits, hey, tits sounds like a friend. It sounds like a nickname, doesn’t it? Hey, Tits, come here man. Hey, Tits, I want you to meet Toots. Tits, this is Toots, Toots, Tits. Tits, cute word, nice word. I love a word that spells the same forwards and backwards like tit. Don’t you think it’s cute when a word is spelled the same forwards and backwards? I always wished my name was Otto, just so I could walk backwards and yell my name, you know? Otto, Otto, Otto, well, I had strange dreams. But the word tit is on the list because you can’t say it on television. You can’t say tit, imagine that, can’t say tits. You can say boobs. Boob is spelled the same forwards and backwards, too. Boobs is all right. You can’t say tits, but you can say boobs. In fact, boobs is an answer now on Match Game. I had boobs, Gene. Boobs, $200, tits, $200 fine maybe. You can’t say tits. You can say teats, teats is all right, providing you’re on at 5:00 in the morning and a cow is your guest. But you can’t say jugs, and you can’t say knockers, you know? That’s right, Danny, pull on the cow’s knockers. Right, grab a knocker in each hand, that a boy. Now alternate knockers, good deal. You can’t say that. Tits, tits sounds like a snack, you know? Well, I know what you’re thinking, but tits sounds almost, it sounds Nabisco to me. It sounds like Nabisco has… has reserved that name. Cause tits sounds like a thing at a party, pass the tits, would you, Bill? Say, those things are… responding. Well, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd and twat. Fart, fart is like tit, it’s one of those words that isn’t that harmful. You know, it’s just a cute kind of a thing. Farts, well, farts can be a little harmful, it depends, it depends on who’s cooking. But, fart, fart is a cute… hey kids know farts are okay. Kids know farts are fun. Farts are shit without the mess, wow. Yeah, same funny sound, same vile smell, no fuss, no muss. Fart is an interesting word in this respect, talking about television, fart is extremely interesting because, dig this, you can’t say fart on television, we know that. You can’t say fart. And you can’t say fuck, either, on television. However, you can refer to fucking, you can talk about fucking, they do that all the time. Some of the times in the show you’re watching two people are probably fucking in the other room. Fucking is all right, fucking is part of the plot. A lot of plots are based on fucking. Will they fuck, should they fuck, have they fucked, did they fuck, will they fuck again, will they get sick from fucking, are they fucking too much, will they fuck each other’s friends, will they have a baby from fucking, will they be sorry they fucked, will they be glad they fucked? All fuck stories, every honeymoon joke is a fuck joke. Have you ever noticed it? Otherwise the people wouldn’t be on their honeymoon in the joke, they’d be knights or they’d sailors or something. They’re on their honeymoon, it’s got to be a fuck joke. Every little, every news… I’m sorry… every quiz master has stood there with his newlywed couple and said, and I understand you folks are on your honeymoon. Lots of fucking going on here, Lots of fucking over here. So they talk about fucking all they want, they just don’t call it that. They don’t call it what it is. They call it other things, they call it making love, which is fine, they call it going to bed with someone, having an affair, sleeping together, but they don’t call it fucking. On the other hand, fart, not only is fart a word you can’t use on television, but they never even refer to them, that’s how bad farts are compared to fucking. They don’t even refer to farts, there are no farts on television. You’ve never seen a reference to a fart, I’ve never seen a fart reference. No, wouldn’t you think that by now one guy would have gone, whew, whew. Do you think by now that one guy on the Johnny Carson panel just once would have said, hey, Ed, move down, man? Whew, wow. That was a Clydesdale fart, Ed. Give me the lighter, will ya, Johnny, wow. Geez, Ed, next time you’re sick you ought to see the nurse, you know? God, it’s not the smell so much, it’s the burning of my eyes. Well, we might live to see that, you never know. Remember when you were a kid, and maybe you were a little boy child like me, you had on short pants, maybe sitting in church, sitting on a wooden bench in church in the middle of the summer with short pants. You gotta fart, you know? And it’s up to you, you gotta work out a little maneuver that’s called the one cheek sneak. Right in tune with the organ. That’s why they call them pews, you know? Whew, whew, whew. Did you ever notice that your own farts smell okay? Say, that’s fairly decent. I think I’ll stay home today, do some reading in the closet. Now I mentioned the three extra words, fart, turd and twat. Turd is another word you can’t say on television, turd. But, you know, when you get right down to it, who wants to say it? I don’t even care if I ever hear that one again. Twat, twat is on the list for the same reason. It doesn’t mean anything else, you know? It only has that one meaning, twat’s twat, and that’s that. It’s not like prick, prick is one of those part-time dirty words. Prick is all right, you can say prick on television. You can say I pricked my finger, just don’t say you fingered your prick, that’s all. Now there are two words left which I will wind this thing up with, one of them is not, uh, dirty all the time, one of them is. Ball or balls is a word that’s mostly clean. It has many clean meanings, but… but it has a couple of meanings that might get you in trouble. And ball is one of those words you gotta think about how you’re gonna say it, and maybe you have to watch out for just a moment, but it’s okay for sports people, perfectly all right. When you’re a kid you grow up, they tell ya, go play with your ball. Really? But it’s okay for the sports announcer on the Game of the Week to tell you that Pete Rose has two balls on him, no problem at all. The whole country nods in agreement. But the announcer can’t tell you that he hurt his balls. He can’t tell Tony Kubeck, Tony, I think he hurt his balls on that play. It looks like it, he’s holding onto them. Well, that’s right, generally when they hurt their balls, they hold them, and he’s holding his, and I’d say he’s hurt them. Never mention ball injuries, they don’t say the balls were hurt, they say groin injuries. He had a groin injury. Do you know why we call it a groin injury, that’s the noise you make when you get hit there. Groin. Now, then, the other word I wanted to remind you of was the word fuck, which of course is the champ of the all-time dirty words. When they’re always dirty, by God, fuck is right at the head of the pack. Fuck’s a good, strong word. It’s a good, strong word for its purpose, and it’s a word that a lot of people have trouble with. Uh, it’s a… it’s an honest word, it’s a… it’s a forceful word, it has a lot of emotional baggage with it. When you hear the word fuck, you’re not just hearing the word, you’re hearing everything you ever heard about fucking. I mean, we have a lot of attitudes about fucking, some of them are rationale, and some of them aren’t. Some of them have joy in them, some have guilt and fear and all sorts of things, and the word fuck carries with it a lot of emotional baggage. When they say fuck. You go what, oh, oh, good. Oh, I thought you meant do it right away. God, you know, it’s, uh, it’s just a word that, that, well, it’ll clear the room awfully quick in some households. It’s a heavy, good, strong word. It’s a proud sounding word to me. Fuck, fuck, I am fuck. Who are you? Fuck of the Mountain. I just, uh, I just feel the word is getting a bad shake. The word has an image problem. The word fuck needs public relations help. It’s just a word, you know? That’s what you have to remember, it’s just a word, but it’s in such bad shape. Here’s a word that started out okay, it started out all right, nothing wrong with the word fuck originally. I mean, there it was, you’re not a bad word, you’re not a bad word, you’ve just gotten in with bad company, people. That’s all, just the word was all it was. The word in the original old English, as best I can find, fuck only meant to hit, to smite, to… to perhaps hit with a stick, to fuck the tree, to fuck the rock, to fuck thee. That’s all, and pretty soon, that’s all, I’ll hit you with my dick, honey. Look at that, that’s all it was, just a little, I’ll knock a little fuck on you there. That’s all it was, was a love tap when you get right down to it. That’s all fuck ever meant. All fuck ever meant was to make love, and to make life at the same time. That’s pretty magic. I mean, pretty noble things we think about, making love and making life, here was fuck hanging around with words like love and life. How did it get such a bad reputation? We fucked it up. Yeah, well, we… we put the aggression back into the word. Fuck you, fuck you, you fuck. Fuck you, you fuck. Who the fuck do you think you’re fucking with, some kind of a fuckhead? Fuck you. Who the fuck do you think you’re fucking with, me? Don’t fuck with me, I’ll fuck over you. You fuck with me and you’ll get fucked, you fuck. Don’t fuck with me, I’m the fucker. Don’t fuck with the fucker. God, it sounds like combat, man. It’s got an awful lot, there’s an awful lot of hostility in the way that word is used. There’s an awful lot of aggression going down in the name of fucking, imagine that. I’d just like to help a little, my feeling was, hey, here’s a word that, uh, maybe we could save, you know, just by paying a little close attention to it. The trouble is with all that aggression and all that violence, that we lose track of those two things, and people start talking about sex and violence like they’re one thing. There’s some sort of an overlapping, there’s some sort of a gray area between sex and violence that some people really are confused about. There are people running around talking about sex and violence as if it’s one thing, as if it starts with an S and ends with a E. We’re gonna stamp it out of the comics, we’re gonna stamp it out of the Dixie Cup, we’re gonna stamp it out of homes. Sex and violence, hey, they are different, after all. And, some people even like them together, there are, true, people who do like a little violence with their sex. I’m not… I don’t care for that myself, I like my violence a little earlier in the afternoon, you know? Right around 2:00 o’clock a real good ass kicking and then everything’s all right. But, uh, the word make love, not war, someone pointed it out finally, they made it very clear for us. Make love, not war. I wish I had thought of that phrase, you know? I really would have been very happy with myself if I had thought of that one. Man, I would have retired the same day. I would have left my car at the red light, man. I’d say that’s it, folks, I’m going to the beach. You got it, make love, not war. Well, I didn’t think of it, but I do have my own phrase; make fuck, not kill. It’s not as graceful a phrase, but I’m not looking to retire, either. The whole idea of make fuck, not kill, is simply to switch the meanings of the words. I suggest that for one year we trade meanings on fuck and kill, just fuck for kill, and kill for fuck, that’s it. Don’t worry about what they really are, someone else will take care of real fucking and real killing. I’m just worried about what we call it… them. We call them fucking and killing. I say switch them around. I think it would be an insight, I think we’d get a new slant on how we feel about these words if we just change fucking for killing for about a year, that’s all. Imagine it. Sure would be fun watching TV during that time, huh? Better get down off the horse, Sheriff, we’re fixing to fuck you now. Mad fucker still on the loose. Not anymore, he’s made his first big mistake, my friend, he fucked a cop today. That makes him a cop fucker. Pardon me, boys, my horse broke his leg, I’m gonna have to fuck him, I’ll be right back. Shamu, the fucker whale. And To Fuck a Mockingbird, hold gently by the wings. So all I’m trying to suggest is that fuck you can be a positive phrase. If you hear it from across the street… Fuck you. Okay.
And thank you for being a part of this, and I mean it a lot. And I thank the people that aren’t here tonight that were here the other two nights. And there’s an awful lot of people to thank, but I want to do one thing before I go any further, cause I am gonna split. There’s somebody that’s very important to this project and to me. Brenda, would you please come here? I want to introduce you to my wife of 17 years. She is the associate producer, and she is my honey, and if she don’t come out here now, come here, honey, I want you to give me a kiss. My wife Brenda Carlin. Come here, honey. Thank you, lover. See you later. Thank you all, and goodnight, I love you, and fuck you.
