Last Words by George Carlin & Tony Hendra

Author:George Carlin & Tony Hendra [Carlin, George & Hendra, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Performing Arts, Comedy (Performing Arts), Entertainment & Performing Arts - Comedians, Entertainment & Performing Arts - General, Entertainment & Performing Arts, George, United States, Comedians, Carlin, Biography & Autobiography, Comedians - United States, Comedy, Rich & Famous, Biography, Biography And Autobiography
ISBN: 9781439172957
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

There is a clear line of evolution between “Shoot” and “Seven Words.” The piece grew out of a desire to talk about language standards and the inconsistency in them. So by being authentic about what had happened to me I found a way into a new comedy that was accurate and natural.

The hair and the beard—which had to have been a factor in the firing, a clear signal in divided times that I had come down on one side of the Kulturkampf—were getting longer. As hair emerged from my head, material did too. I’d already written the “Hair” poem, which was my way of telling straight, parent-aged people that “You should discount my hair as a reason to discount my material.” This too became a cut on the “FM” side of the next album:

I’m aware some stare at my hair

In fact to be fair

Some really despair of my hair

But I don’t care, ’cos they’re not aware

Nor are they debonair

In fact they’re just square

They see hair down to there, say, “Beware!”

And go off on a tear

I say, “No fair!”

A head that’s bare is really nowhere

So be like a bear, be fair with your hair

Show it you care

Wear it there … or to there …

Or to THERE if you dare!

Then there was the beard:

Here’s my beard

Ain’t it weird?

Don’t be skeered

Just a beard!

The word “beard” shakes a lot of people up. Not AMERICAN-sounding. BEE-AR-D! Lenin had a BEE-ARR-D! Gabby Hayes had … WHISKERS!

The hair was certainly part of the next and final disaster. Daily Variety for Monday, November 30, 1970, carried the bare bones of the story:

Comic George Carlin was cancelled and asked to leave Lake Geneva (Wis.) Playboy Club after the audience got ugly during his second show Saturday night. Management said it feared for his safety. It was his shtick about materialism in American society, press censorship, poverty, Nixon-Agnew and the Vietnam War that apparently incensed the late-night crowd. Club manager said Carlin “insulted the audience directly and used offensive language and material …” Reacting to his statements about poverty, one woman heckled “You don’t know anything about poverty. We don’t have any in this country!” A comment about going through Cambodia to get out of Vietnam brought the retort: “How do you know? You’ve never been shot at!” Club manager said comic would have been in danger “if he’d gone anywhere the audience could have got to him.”

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