"The Greatest thing since sliced bread". So this is it, huh folks? The Pyramids; The Great Wall of China; Even a lava lamp, to me is greater than sliced bread. You got a knife, you got a loaf SLICE THE FUCKIN' THING!!
I think he was a great social commentator in the vein of Mark Twain (not the novelist but his public persona) and Will Rogers. In my case as a North American, Irish, Catholic, Atheist, I understood his perspective.
Most people get lower key when they get older. George got angrier. He was willing to take on religion in a country where you are pretty much not allowed to do that. Where the most idiotic idea, if it's author calls it "religion", gets you on CNN during prime time. There is no other 1st world nation where that happens.
As Jon Stewart said, the good thing about George is that he left us thousands of hours of video.
In all that video and audio, one really always makes me chuckle. The famous 7 words lunched a law suit. One minister objected to them being aired. At some point during the process, George said:
Hey Reverend, the radio has two knobs, although I am pretty sure he is uncomfortable with anything that has two knobs. But, the first knob changes the station. The second one TURNS IT OFF.
What was also amazing is that I even missed the first decade and a half of his career, due to my age, yet he was a comic presence from my teens until my mid-forties. He never caught on as an actor, like other comedians, but he did do a children's show!
Along with Richard Pryor, and even before them Lenny Bruce, he expanded the boundaries of what was acceptable in stand-up comedy. But like a Picasso of gags, George knew the rules he was breaking. A lot of today's comics are obscene and vulgar, but far from Picasso-like, they are monkeys flinging paint at canvas.
George, as much as any single performer, actor or individual artist, seemed to take my brain where it was going to go anyway – but he paved the way.
Unfortunately, unlike Twain, rumours of his death were not at all exaggerated.
RIP You irreverent old Hippie!
Tom
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