Wednesday 3 November 2010

GEORGE CARLIN – LIFE IS WORTH LOSING (EARDRUM/ATLANTIC)


GEORGE CARLIN – LIFE IS WORTH LOSING (EARDRUM/ATLANTIC)

This is one of the hardest comedy records in existence.  Carlin is quite frankly on fire nailing so many issues with a classy ferocity that so few inhabit.  Recorded in 2005 and released in 2006 this was his eighteenth album and his thirteenth live special broadcast on HBO which is an incredible body of work from a comedian that is unlikely to be matched.  Carlin survived so many greats as his topical stance coupled with a strategy for the long game.

Recorded at Beacon Theater in New York his gravely voiced address is awesome from the off as his introduction as “A Modern Man” is a rapid dose of poetry contrasting current tongue twisting jargon often rendering it as nonsense and contradiction.  In just under four minutes Carlin highlights how the human condition has been conveniently tucked into little boxes in the most reductive fashion.

“I got 341 days sober and next year is my 50th anniversary in show business, let’s do a fucking show.”

Carlin was always a most tight and professional act.  There isn’t the looseness in this performance that comes with so many comedy heroes but there is a sharp and focused execution.  The bits here are more like essays, well crafted and thoroughly nailed by the point of presentation.  This performance is watertight.

Life Is Worth Losing is a dark exploration into contemporary life and appraisal of the awful.  The album features Carlin at his grizzly and gruff best, taking aim and hitting many targets in execution.

The show title is born of a ferocious drive for live.  Soon Carlin is addressing suicide with the rational perspective “where do you find the time?”  On that note he goes through the working process of “The Suicide Guy” and the exhausting amount of effort it takes to plan such a deed and act.  He highlights the fact that men are four times more likely to commit suicide even though women attempt it more.  In other words (his words): men are better at it.  If you have ever been pushed to such a point in your life this material is golden as you can’t help but associate with it and appreciate the dark humour tied to such times.  The manner with which he enters the mindset is uniquely insightful, realistic and very funny.

As the set continues Carlin keeps things light reviewing human behaviour and stating how it would take little more than the removal of electricity to turn society upside down.  If nothing else, his message is that life is fragile and cannot afford to be wasted on nonsense, especially reality TV.  And bearing this was recorded in 2005 he prediction of “The All-Suicide Channel” feels even less exaggerated in this climate.

“Dumb Americans” is his rally call, a cool word in the ear of the listener advising precaution and promoting personal empowerment in the face of so much corporate and government control.  He refers to the USA as having been turned into one large shopping mall.  His frustration and anger exudes as he tears into the docile consumer culture that has engulfed the western world.  By the end of the address he stating how the owners of the country are the people coercing such lifestyles.  Without hesitation Carlin states that politicians are only in place to give off the illusion of choice.  No, everything and everyone is owned.  And the owners want more.  What they don’t want is an educated and informed society that questions such truths, reality and critical thinking (“that’s against their interests”).  No, what they want are obedient workers, “people just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but dumb enough to passively accept increasingly shittier jobs.  “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”.

With his “Pyramid Of The Hopeless” bit, Carlin heavily reminds me of Bill Hicks and his terminally ill stunt people concept but taken to the extreme.  Surely these two are not the only people to have noticed how cheap the value life has become.  Still, the idea of rebranding suicide as “extreme living” might have something going for it before long especially if coupled with the popularity of “scarfing” (also known as autoerotic asphyxia).

In many ways he appears to become crankier the more the set continues as by the end he paints his greatest disaster scenario.  As he predicts another dangerous fate it feels good to be in on the joke, prepared and modestly protected.  The “Coast-To-Coast Emergency” that closes the set is a broken down nightmare born from a sharp imagination.  And his point being: don’t fuck with nature.

George Carlin was a master of picking apart his surroundings and lending a fresh perspective and vision to the subtle beauty and horror that stands beside us everyday.  In dark and enthusiastic fashion there was always the intention to lay convention to waste, to illuminate and change minds.  Life Is Worth Losing was the final show released/broadcast during his lifetime, a life that was full of victory.

Thesaurus moment: perspicacity.

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