GEO CARLIN, R.I.P.

GEO CARLIN, R.I.P.
George Carlin was a 50s hipster who became the “high” priest of Boomer comedy, and I remember my introduction to George through his albums in the early 70s when my cousin, Danny, came over, insisting we all listen to George’s diatribes in

“I used to be an Irish Catholic…”

I was maybe 12 years old, but, busting a gut, with my brothers and sister. My mom, of course, was appalled.

“Faddah? Can God build a rock so big, that he himself cannot lift it?”

My cousin, Dan, was a recovering Irish Catholic, a veteran of an all boys catholic high school. Fortunately, I was spared from Catholic school because my ‘Fadah’ was too cheap to pay for it and sent us to the free public school instead.

Lace Curtain Irish were we, and we had the requisite nuns and priests in the family, which included trips up to a Catholic Cancer Hospital in the Bronx where my ‘cousin the nun,’ worked as a nurse. We were paraded around to visit all the terminally ill Cancer patients (with tubes up their noses) to ‘cheer them up, and be traumatized, but I will forever associate Catholics with Cancer.

So, George Carlin became my personal Catholic Savior as my mother took us ‘shrine hopping, ‘ visiting every Catholic Shrine on the East Coast, and to vigil masses that went on for days, suffering asphyxiation from some horrific incense during Stations of the Cross. If ever I lost something, I had to say a prayer to St. Anthony, and then there was Lent- oh, god, no candy or ice cream until Easter.

Mostly, I remember little straw hats with a rubber band under my chin to hold it on that pretty much choked me to death. . And then there were three day wakes and funerals and when you are Irish, there’s about two or three a month. Personally, I have 4.5 million relatives.

So, not only was George Carlin a brilliant rhetoritician, comedy commando, but he was a recovering Irish Catholic and now a bonafide saint. Rest in Peace, George.