HBO is showing a bunch of his concerts over the next two nights, including stuff from the late 70's and early 80's, back when he was still funny. http://tinyurl.com/648sgu Harold
I watched about 45 minutes of the 7 words. It almost seemed cliche.. but some of it was still funny. He timed the "you can prick your finger but you can't finger your prick" perfectly. I suspect it was a bit of a tired looking routine because it has been copied so often since then. Therefore I suspect delivery was developed by him.... part of the reason he was not funny anymore is because everyone took his act. Was he the first guy doing that observation comedy routine with that kind of timing?
That depends on what things you want to get done. It concerns me that he stole alot of my material. The seven words you can't say in the bible are... Jesus
Lenny Bruce first. Pryor at the time was the King. Carlin never reached the critical praise of Pryor while Richard was working. But you have to give George credit - when 7 came out, there was nothing like it. HBO didn't start until 73. So, at the time, it was shocking, funny, groundbreaking. Now, comics are making efforts to work clean, because the young people grew up on this. I think Pryor could be called observational. I remember he came back from Africa, said he wouldn't use the "N" word...... I was thinking, "no, Richard." Stay pure, as in purely in the gutter.
More people like Carlin in this land and we could tell the A-rabs and the rest of the 4th World to shove their Oil back up their pipes. But no, not only aren't there many more, but there's one less.
This is what entertainment was like in the sixties. You got one rock group on Sullivan. I think they performed two songs, 15 and 45 minutes in, so you had to watch some opera singer, and a guy with plates. Only in the early 70's did Midnight Special come on. And then, there were the comics who could do nothing but family stuff. You won't believe this, knowing what came after. <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="480" height="400" id="player" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.yourememberthat.com/player/player.swf" /> <param name="menu" value="false" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /> <param name="FlashVars" value="url=http://www.yourememberthat.com/files/a95375dd9d7d.flv&autoplay=1&watermark=http://www.yourememberthat.com/flv_watermark.php&buffer=6&full=0&siteurl=http://www.yourememberthat.com&interval=16&totalrotate=5" /> <embed src="http://www.yourememberthat.com/player/player.swf" menu="false" quality="high" FlashVars="url=http://www.yourememberthat.com/files/a95375dd9d7d.flv&autoplay=1&watermark=http://www.yourememberthat.com/flv_watermark.php&buffer=6&full=0&siteurl=http://www.yourememberthat.com&interval=16&totalrotate=5" bgcolor="#000000" width="480" height="400" name="player" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object>