One Comic, Twice the Laughs

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George Carlin: 1937-2008

The comedian, who died June 22 at age 71, was best known for his social satire and risque language.

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His death came just days after the Kennedy Center announced that he would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Carlin (whose breakthrough album, "FM & AM," was recorded in Washington in 1971) will receive the award posthumously, with an evening of tributes Nov. 10, the Kennedy Center announced yesterday.

Aside from attending his concerts and wearing out his albums, my one encounter with Carlin was as a student reporter at UCLA in the late '70s. I'll never forget his arrival. Carlin drove to campus for our interview that day in an exquisite dark-blue Bentley, which instantly destroyed my image of him as some kind of proto-hippie. The man who emerged from that magnificent vehicle, however, certainly was what I expected. With his stringy long hair, tangled beard and T-shirt and jeans, Carlin could have been the much elder brother of the kids striding around campus.

We spoke for perhaps two hours, sitting on the lawn under a tree. Carlin was by then a comic superstar -- only the original "Saturday Night Live" cast members and such rising absurdists as Steve Martin and Richard Pryor were then as big -- but he was so modest, quiet and understated that his presence barely registered with the dozens of young people passing by.

I like to think that I caught Carlin right at a critical transition in his career, a phase in which the acerbic social critic was about to become the wry humorist. He said as much during the interview, that he was moving from commenting about "things that divide us" (war, religion, sex, foul language) to "things we have in common" (such as the fact that there always seem to be two pennies in the tray in the long middle desk drawer).

But instead of becoming one kind of comedian, Carlin did something more interesting -- he became two. Gentle George was then in gestation; Angry George survived and matured, until Carlin's ailing heart gave out.

"You live 80 years and at best you get about six minutes of pure magic," he once said.

Carlin's time was shorter, but he produced many more minutes of magic for everyone else.