My cousin, Cindy, bought me my first George Carlin album for my birthday when I was 12 years old. The album was Toledo Window Box. I doubt that my parents knew what she had bought me or what it would do to my life.

I played the hell out of that record. Over and over again; from start to finish. I would listen to each joke and, as I got to know the material better, would anticipate each punch line and wait for the audience reaction. I would try to picture the audience. It was recorded at the Paramount Theater is Oakland, CA which I imagined was small and crowded with thick clouds of cigarette smoke and the collected body heat combined with the spotlight on Carlin that the red brick walls were sweaty with condensation. The audience was in pitch black only broken by the occasional glow on an inhaled cigarette. The only light in the room was the piercing spotlight trained on Carlin.

I wanted to be there so bad.

After I had devoured that album I got my hands on AM/FM; the Rosetta Stone of stand up comedy which included “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”.

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits

I was in heaven!

Carlin spun words like Frisbees. He twisted them around and turned their meanings on its ear. With each twist he not only told a joke but made you think. While I enjoyed Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Groucho Marx and others Carlin came along just at that moment in life when the grey matter is beginning to gel and independent thought starts. He opened my mind to truth and hypocrisy and how each deserves scrutiny and scorn. He also taught me how to do it with humor so as to make the other person think; maybe not at the moment of the joke when they are laughing but later when they have time to digest the idea behind it and go, “Hey, yeah, he’s right!”

I went through dozens of phonograph needles memorizing those albums. I would eventually recite his routines for other kids while waiting for the late bud a Gorton Jr. High School; and I killed each time! My first year in high school I did his “Al Sleet. The Hippie-Dippie Weather Man” routine for our Letterman’s Follies; and I killed.

I found out that Carlin started as a radio disk jockey so it was only natural that was the route I first chose for career. While my career did not go as well as his it did cause our paths to cross three times. I emceed one of his shows and interviewed him twice. He was very professional; almost too much so as his tight schedule (and more than likely other outside “issues” at the time) never allowed me the moment to tell him how much of an influence he was to me and thank him for bringing so much laughter into my life. But I did get to shake his hand and look him in the eye and, to me, that was almost like meeting Elvis.