Last Words from George Carlin - a book review

Last Words, George Carlin's posthumous memoir, is a must read for every fan of Carlin as well as those who want a look inside the mind of the word-obsessed, meaning-searching, stand-up comedian. What we find inside is not always pretty, but it's as open, honest, and truthful as any memoir can be.

While the book is, at times, uproariously funny, the focus here is not on making comedy, but on how comedy is made. Humor, it turns out, is no laughing matter. Carlin worked meticulously on notes on topics, slowly and carefully shaping his 'bits' over years, carefully nursing them until they were ready for public view. This book, too, was decades in the making, and the effort paid off.

But also on view here is the private Carlin. The father who tried so hard not be the over-bearing parent that his own mother was that he missed huge chunks of his daughter's childhood. The addict and co-dependent with an addict wife. The workaholic who's career was declared dead several times, and who fought back with comeback after comeback.

Those who hate Carlin will find reason here to find him as the self-centered, uncaring, drug addled freak that they expect. And those who love Carlin will find the working class intellectual who rose above two-dimensional shtick to rip the lid off polite society and show it for the hateful, greedy, violent mess that it is, and did so with great humor. They're each part of who George Carlin was, and what made his work unique.

I miss George Carlin, I miss his work, and I am grateful that this book invited inside his head one last time.

The Dream About the Van Dyke

Last night I dreamed that I accidentally shaved off my mustache.

For some reason I was shaving in the dark, without a mirror, and it was only after running the razor over the right side of my upper lip that I realized that that was a mistake.

I felt around, to asses the damage, and that one swipe had pretty much eliminated the hair from that region for the first time in several decades. I considered what to do. Should I leave it as is, with one side intact and the other reduced to stubble? Should I shave off the rest of the mustache? Or should I shave off everything, mustache and beard?

In the dream, I decided to continue on the other side of the upper lip and remove the mustache, but I left the goatee on the chin below. Yes, I thought, it will now truly be "just a goatee." No longer the full Van Dyke... Van Dyke; a much nicer term than "goatee" for a far more symmetrical beard. Yes, I thought, I like the symmetry of hair above and below the mouth, connecting at the sides.

I remembered this dream not when I first woke up, but later, as I stood before the mirror, preparing to shave. I wondered for a second whether I'd take the dream as a dare or even a prophecy and go for a new look. But, no, I left the Van Dyke intact.

I've worn my beard this way for nearly a decade. Previously I had a full beard and mustache, but I trimmed it back to the Van Dyke on the advice of one of my staff who thought the full beard was "too rabbinical."

I've also considered cutting it all down even further, to not even a goatee, but a mere triangle of fuzz below the lower lip: The Soul Patch. A minimalist approach to facial hair that's perhaps the coolest beard of them all. If I do it, of course, I'd also have to shave my head to go with it.

And I'd do it today - soul patch and shaved head - if I didn't think I'd wind up looking like Howie Mandel's chubbier brother. Not that I don't love Howie. He's an incredibly funny guy. I just don't want to encourage that kind of comparison. No, the "Full Howie" will have to wait.

For today, and tomorrow, at least, the Van Dyke survives. Except in my dreams.

A New Year and a Look Back

Happy 2010 to one and all! Personally, I'm glad to leave 2009 in the dust. Not that it was the worst year, far from it, but it wasn't quite the best either.

Probably the best highlight that comes immediately to mind this New Years' morning was when my short film, "Gravehunting With Steve," was accepted as an Official Selection at IndieFest USA, to be held at Downtown Disney, Anaheim, CA. So, in August, I went Behind the Orange Curtain to spend a week as a "real filmmaker." It was a great week, and the fulfillment of a long-time goal.

Other highlights of 2009 also revolved around a bit of in-state travel. We went to Desert Hot Springs in April, up to Bodega Bay and the Sonoma Coast in July, and shorter weekend getaways to Carmel/Monterey (twice) and the wine country (Napa and in-land Sonoma Counties).

Unfortunately, the major downer event of 2009, my car wreck in May put a bit of a dark shadow over the rest of the year, as I'm still dealing with major back pain and a very slow recovery from that. (The wreck was not my fault: I was rear-ended at high speed by a hit-and-run driver).

As a result of being somewhat incapacitated, we've had to put off a lot of work around the house that I'd planned to do over the late spring and summer. Yes, contractors would do most of it, but I was unable to even do the basic prep, cleaning, and moving of stuff so the contractors could start. So now, 2010 will have to be "the year of the house."

The upside of having your car crushed while you're sitting in it is that you get to pick out a new car when it's all over. I picked out the new VW Tiguan and filled it up with nearly all the options. I am loving that, but I'm sure there must be easier (and less painful) ways to get a new car.

Work-wise, 2009 was good and busy, with a mix of rewarding projects and stress. When your work is about nonprofits in trouble, recessions can be a boost to business. While so many of my friends are out-of-work, or "under-employed," I'm not going to complain about being busy. As my friend Tom likes to say; "High quality problems."

Socially, 2009 was also very good, with Bay Area visits from many friends from the on-line world of YouTube. In fact, today will be spent having a traditional Southern New Years lunch of Hoppin' John, Corn Bread, and Mississippi Mud, and we'll follow that up with a wild night of Karaoke and drinks in San Francisco (we'll get a room in the city and take a cab to the club - no drinking and driving this weekend) ... Each with YouTube friends.

Yes: Online community is true community!

Which leads us to the last highlight of 2009, a creative collaboration that resulted in a fundraising event. Gary (known on YouTube as Anakin1814 - and one of tonight's karaoke participants) noticed that a lot of us vloggers are also into photography, and organized a 2010 calendar of our photos from around the world. Best part: the proceeds from the calendar will all be donated to the Nature Conservancy!

Learn more about that collaboration and the calendar at vloggerhood.org.

Have a great 2010 and thank you for being with me for 2009.

Last minute gift idea...?

It's Christmas Eve, have you done all your holiday shopping? Looking to make one last online order?

How about yourself... Are you set with a beautiful new photo calendar for 2010?

Well... my good friend Gary (aka aka Anakin1814) has organized the 2010 "As Seen on YouTube" vloggerhood calendar with 15 photos by our online friends (including myself).

This has been a fun project to be a part of, and I'm thrilled with how the calendar has turned out. It's a fifteen month calendar (Jan 2010 - March 2011), and each picture is spectacular.

The best thing? All creator royalties will be donated to the Nature Conservancy. What are you waiting for? Order a few right now!

... Purchase the calendar today! (only $18.99)...
... Get more info on the project (including thumbnails of the 15 images)...
... Get more info on the Nature Conservancy...

The Right Policy Too Late?

Watching the President last night one thing is certain; you could see that he knew he was making the unpopular decision, that he was set to anger those who'd voted for him, and fail to appease those who didn't. One conservative friend commented via twitter, "Have to wonder what the cadettes sitting in the stands thought of this weak man before them." I, too, was wondering what the cadettes thought of him, but not because he was weak. I think it took a tremendous amount of strength to go forward with that difficult decision in the face of overwhelming opposition. But strength of mind does not make you right.


Beyond announcing the 30,000 troop surge to "finish the job" in Afghanistan and be back in time for July 4th fireworks in 2011, President Obama also went through great pains to tell us that a) the delay in announcing the decision wasn't really a delay since the plan he was asked to consider doesn't go into effect until January, b) we are progressing in the plan to get out of Iraq, even if we haven't really noticed any difference yet, and c) Afghanistan is where we should have been putting our efforts in the first place, as it was from here that Osama bin Laden planned the 9/11 attacks.


I don't think anybody can seriously argue against 'c' - whether or not you believe Iraq was justified or just a distraction, bin Laden is the confessed ringleader behind 9/11, and he was certainly on the run in Afghanistan. And, on at least one occasion following 9/11, we had him in our sight and failed to capture or kill him.


But that was 2002 and this is 2009. What makes us realistically believe we have a better chance at getting bin Laden or neutralizing al qaeda today? What makes us realistically believe that more foreign soldiers on their soil is going to help de-radicalize the Afghan populace? And by what magic leap of faith do we believe that 30,000 is the magic number of troops to finish it all up in eighteen months?


As eloquent and powerful as the words he spoke were, these are the questions that were left unanswered. Many good things were said, and much that I agree with. But it all fell short of selling me on the surge. Yes, if either war was justified it was the one in Afghanistan. But has the opportunity for success there passed? Is the mision still relevant? And do the American people have the will to support it? I'm afraid the time has passed. The right idea, just a few years too late.



Looking back at my archives here, I found my review of the speech in which President Bush announced his "surge to the finish" in Iraq, back on January 11, 2007. What I wrote about the Iraqi surge that day was;

... it's not exactly the same failed strategy. It's more of the same failed strategy. It's the same, but different.

Well, as they say, history repeats.

The one highlight last night was shortly after the  speech when The Onion came out with the headline Obama Tells Nation He's Going Out For Cigarettes. In the Onion story, the President gets a paragraph or two into his speech and says,

"Anyway, I'm going to go get some smokes, but I'll…be right back," added Obama, his voice trembling slightly. "Don't wait up."

We won't wait up.

Am I Wasting Your Time?

Today, my good friend Tom Guarriello, asked a rather innocent question on Twitter, "Is it just me or are all Facebook apps really, really annoying?" He then commented on some of the responses he received in a post called What('s) A Waste Of Time? on his True Talk blog.

I'll get to his first question in a second, but first, more about his blog post... After quoting some dialog from Hamlet in which the title character defines Denmark as a prison while Rosencrantz says that it's not that bad, Tom comes to the conclusion that just as one man's prison may be another's paradise, the same goes for whether or not Facebook apps are an annoying waste or not.

But here's the part I want to comment on... Following the Hamlet scene, Tom writes:

... Western culture has a pretty sturdy set of guidelines about activities that are not, de facto, a waste of time:

1. Economic - anything leading to personal financial gain
2. Education - anything leading to fulfilling requirements for a diploma, certificate or degree
3. Exercise - physical activity for the sake of maintaining bodily fitness (this is a relatively recent addition to the Western canon of acceptable endeavors)

Activities in either of these categories (let's call them "productive") are safe from the charge of wasting time.

Time spent doing things that fall in other categories is more "questionable," i.e., if you do, it's likely that someone or other will think that you are being "unproductive"; wasting time (and, by "thinking make it so").

1. Entertainment - anything done for personal enjoyment/amusement
2. Expression - any creative activity that is not directly tied to vocational/economic/educational/fitness purposes
3. Exploration - anything done out of curiosity; i.e., doing things "for no good reason"
4. Philanthropy - anything done for the benefit of others

As somebody who's spent his entire career pretty much in that final category, I'd like to suggest that the line between the two groups is not as clear cut as Tom might suggest. I'd say that even the three items in teh first group could be considered "questionable" by some.

Why is activity done for "personal financial gain" automatically useful, while activity done "for the benefit of others" is questionable? I can think of several professions that I would define as a drain on society (anybody want to post a comment defending telemarketers?). And I would defend true philanthropy - doing for others without any expectation of return or recognition - to be the highest calling to which any of us could aspire.

And, really, just where the hell do I fit into this continuum? After all, I work in the charitable/philanthropic sector for personal financial gain. Which part of that equation is the waste of time?

Now, I'm sure Tom didn't mean to imply that crime was "not, de facto, a waste of time" but it is, after all, purely for personal gain and not for the benefit of others (unless you're Robin Hood). And, while I believe in education and (occasionally) try to get to the gym, I know that there are many people who consider both education and exercise to be major wastes of time (probably to their own detriment).

Meanwhile, how much scientific discovery would have been stifled had the discoverers remained in the lab because they felt guilty about wasting their time by going out "exploring"? Curiosity may have killed that cat, but it's also led to a greater understanding of the world around us.

The truth is, everything is a waste of time - including Facebook apps - to the person who has no interest in it and everything is worth pursuing if the person doing the pursuing gets one moment of pleasure from it - including Facebook apps.

It's just fine that some (most?) people think that everything I do is a waste of time, just as my opinion of how they spend their lives is completely irrelevant to them (or, at least, it should be).

I'm sure I had more to say on this topic, but my crops are ready to harvest in Farm Town...

Defending Sarah Palin

This isn't what you think it's going to be. No, I'm not going to bash those defending Sarah Palin's self-serving, ghost-written memoir. Nor am I going to comment on her book, or the controversy it's stirring up at all (beyond that first sentence). I'm actually going to defend Sarah Palin against an unfair attack myself. (Pause for the gasps from the readers).

The group American Right to Life (ARTL) has claimed that Palin secretly supports abortion rights based on her having appointed to the Alaska Supreme Court a judge who has served on the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood. On their Prolife Profiles page on Palin, they have archived the press release about Judge Christen's appointment. The press release details many of Christen's qualifications, but makes no mention of her service to Planned Parenthood. But, what I did find very interesting, was the last sentence of the press release:

Under current judicial selection procedures, the Alaska Judicial Council received applications from six Alaska attorneys, winnowed the list to two names, and forwarded them to the governor.

So, only six people wanted the job, only two were qualified, and Governor Palin selected one of those two. Without knowing who the other candidate was, and what their "prolife profile" would say, how can ARTL crucify Palin for the selection she made?

Learning that Palin may have actually, in some cases, put her duties as Governor ahead of her personal agenda is something knew and interesting to me. Good for her!

It should come as no surprise to any of my regular readers that I do not support ARTL's mission, but clearly these people are out of line and way overboard when they describe Judge Christen as "an abortionist" (she's not; she's a lawyer who served on a nonprofit Board), and just as wrong when they use guilt by association (and a rather tenuous association at that) to try to discredit Palin (and here's where I get in my digs; Palin does enough to discredit herself).

Okay. So don't let it be said that I'm a hypocrite of an independent who only sticks up for the liberals and leaves the conservatives out to hang when unfairly attacked. Now, excuse me while I go scrub my hands.