Seriously, George Carlin really just died. The man who, without whom I would not have become hyper-aware of the even words that would largely make up my favorites in the English language has died in Los Angeles. He was only 71 years old.

At this point (the story just broke minutes ago, as far as I can tell) I can’t even really think of anything truly insightful to say about this great comedian and satirist. It seems like just yesterday that I was sitting in the corner of my best friend’s basement, tape deck and smuggled comedy tapes in our hands. We would spend hours listening to his father’s Richard Pryor and George Carlin collection, stifling our giggles and guffaws, lest we be caught listening to “Seven Words You Can’t Say” and a myriad of other riffs that struck us as hilarious, even if we didn’t understand the social constructs behind many of the jokes. I was eight years old.

As a teenager, I would fall asleep with headphones on, listening to these same kings of comedy, as well as the lesser princes and jesters, soaking up every word as gospel, no matter how dirty or taboo. And while it was always fun to laugh at Sam Kinison or Eddie Murphy, it was George Carlin that I always came back to. I owe so much of my worldview and cynicism to his acerbic wit and alternate take on what we all take to be reality.

Earlier this week, I heard the news that Carlin was going to be honored with the Mark Twain Humor Prize at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. this fall, the date of the ceremony just happening to fall on my birthday, November 10th. I in no way equate myself as a person of any consequence in comparison to Carlin, but I felt lucky to have someone that I held in such high regard be given such a high honor on the anniversary of my birth.

Sadly, it will now be a posthumous award. He won’t be there to both thank the assembled dignitaries and contemporaries for their presence, but to also mock the inanity of the whole thing, and probably make more than a few off-color remarks along the way.

But he wasn’t just a blue comedian. He came up with routines that made you think about everything you had come to accept as fact, from euphemisms to even base language that we use every day. It was because of Carlin that, when I finally became a home-owner, I understood that all I was really buying was a bigger place to keep all of my stuff. Every time I get on a airplane, I get a little smirk when I’m told that we are getting ready to “pre-board” the plane. These are just two examples of a multitude of times in the course of every single day that I’m reminded in some way or another, of George Carlin.

There was a special humanity in his humor that so many others seemed to overlook. Those of us who got it either spent our time parroting his lines ad nauseum or trying to come up with pithy observations of our own. (See: Denis Leary, Bill Hicks, just about every angry social-commenting comedian working today, that guy in the cubicle next to yours who thinks he real clever but actually isn’t)

George Carlin gave us as a people so much with his humor and his passionate tearing down of the zeitgeist that we have built up around ourselves, and he did it over 50 years, finding a way to touch every generation from the Greatest Generation to Generation Y. He was not only a pioneer (along with Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, et al) but he was an icon and a mentor all who took his word to be gospel. His shadow of influence will stretch far beyond his untimely passing and his memory will outlast our children and our children’s children. Rest easy knowing that the world will never be the same because of you, George. We’ll miss you, even though you’re with us always.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, man.

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