Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for May 11, 2016

Straight from the horses mouth.

How about a list of the words you can’t use in a newspaper comic strip without ticking off the geezers? I’ll throw in the first one::1. Booby (even if you’re referring to the bird).

“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.”

I don’t e’en wanna know who George Carlin is, do I?

I’m impressed, Stephan only Xeroxed 2 2/1 panels today! Well done old boy, well done! LOL!

No Pig, give us Filthy Words

For those who don’t know Filthy Words is Carlin’s follow up to the far more famous Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television skit that appeared on the album Occupation: Foole (SWYCNSoT is on Class Clown. On it Carlin says he’s since come up with some that aren’t on the big seven list and should be. But Filthy Words gives us that wonderful explicative “Ah bat guano” (and for those who don’t know what guano is, look it up to get the actual word I’m not mentioning).

Can remember when I first heard SWYCNSoT, was a trip back in ‘90 to visit my maternal grandmother one last time before she passed. Rented RV and mom had a copy of Class Clown Was maybe a couple years later I got a two tape set of his first three albums. Despite what some may want to claim do to language, Carlin was a great comedian. I don’t just think “Oh yeah, swearing makes for great humor” because if that were true I’d be laughing at a ton of comedians.

It’s a shame that Carlin is known for going against the rules to say his seven words on the air, when they were on a record and explicitly identified as words you couldn’t broadcast. (The press took notice when some disc jockey decided to play that not-for-broadcast record on the air anyway; Carlin had nothing to do with that decision.).It’s also a shame that someone who made his reputation by noticing funny quirks about the illogical way we sometimes talk and the things we sometimes do spent his last years as a cantankerous old coot who just hated everything without distinction.

Oh, Cartoon Boy! Since when have you been so concerned about words you can’t say in the comics?

Humor like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder………RIP George .

He was very insightful about most things. I always liked him, even though his views on God were diametrically opposed to mine. I have to say “God”, and not “religion”, because he tended to at least get the religion part right. (“Religion” gives God a bad reputation.) ;-)

“Continuing dark through the night, followed by widely scattered light in the morning.”-The Hippy Dippy Weather ManCarlin couldn’t play a college campus today.

I remember when he was a suited borscht belt comic and was in Milwaukee when he was arrested for those seven words. (the “joke” heard round the world) Ah, Bill Hicks! Haven’t thought of him in ages.

A few Carlin one-liners:

When someone asks you, “A penny for your thoughts” and you put your two cents in . . . what happens to the other penny? ~Why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren’t they just stale bread to begin with? ~I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me . . they’re cramming for their final exam.

`

Toon Boy stifled that dumb Pig just in time.

Hilarious!!!! George would have loved this one.

I loved that George, (and then later Ringo Starr) was Mr. Conductor on Shiny Time Station. Who’d have thought “children’s show material” in context with those two!

His “Baseball vs Football” was magnificent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXacL0Uny0

Did not know that May 12 was Carlin’s b’day, and will likely forget that fact by May 15. But for me, he was the funniest man I ever heard or saw. There are so many great bits, some mentioned above, that it seems a disservice to mention only those I can recall right now. He would have me laughing so hard it hurt, and I could scarcely breath. Topical, observational. He and Richard Pryor are cited by virtually every comedian alive today as their primary influences. He also was the first, and I believe still the most frequent, guest host on SNL.

The sad thing as he got older, he became angrier, bitter, and cynical

Now there’s a switch… Usually the characters interrupt Pastis.

when did Rat get a job?

I went to a Carlin show many years ago. He had greatly expanded the list from seven to about 500. He had them categorized and read most of them that night from his list. Extremely talented and greatly missed.

One time I found a party-a-day calendar, that offers 365 reasons to party. I turned to my birthday, November 22, a day not historically known for fun. The holiday on that day was Rodney Dangerfield’s birthday. So the idea of celebrating a comedian’s birthday is not new to me.

What’s wrong with: Stool, Coitus, Urine, Box, Fellator, Oedipus, Mammaries?

and now for a few baseball scores3-21-05-3AND8-7

I dare you, come to Milwaukee and say those words in public. We still have the rail used for Carlin.

Just checking in from Colorado , where we have given George’s High over the Rockies a refresher & are REALLY enjoying it !

“Jerry Seinfeld is a good example of humor without vulgarity. I really miss George Carlin.”-I miss him, too. I don’t miss his vulgarity.

Should be a holiday. America’s greatest philosopher.

I’d cheer for Cartoon-Boy’s successful intervention in panel 3, too, except that I realize that, like a “reality” TV show, this is all scripted in advance.What we should applaud is how well the cast performs this little morality play, day in and day out.Bravo, Goat, Rat, and Pig! And I guess Cartoon-Boy, too….

Stephen, I believe that’s the Comic Strip Censors job! You created him so you gave him the job.

Just saying.

xxx

We all miss you, George :-(

In my opinion the 2 1/2 frames being identical drop us, the reader, into an already in-progress scene where the 3 characters are simply hanging out making small talk, and, provide a greater contrast for the unexpected burst of action in the final frame. More funny. Well done!

It’s a great talent to immediately set the stage of a story and to set up the gag using comic style drawing. It’s an art of being able to say more with less.

You had it lucky. Our parents, my 14 brothers 22 sisters and i lived in a shoebox in the middle of Monty Python Road. We got out of the shoebox at 2 a.m. each morning, licked the road clean, ate a lump of gravel, and worked 22 hours in the coal mine. When we got home, our dad killed us and danced on our graves. But if you try to tell this to the kids today, they don’t believe you.

Now, there are only five words you can’t say on television. Four on TBS.

@F6FHellcat Major “Bat” Guano was the paratrooper who captured Group Captain Mandrake at Burpelson AFB in the movie Dr. Strangelove!

“No standup act, pre-Lenny Bruce, could actually get away with swearing, if they were being recorded at all, because “obscenity” was regarded as a criminal act (still is, I suppose, to some extent, but that’s a much smaller extent, at least).” Redd Foxx, who later became Fred Sanford on Sanford and Son and his childhood friend LaWanda Page, who played LaMont’s Aunt Esther, Elizabeth’s sister, were really “blue comics” before Lenny Bruce. But they did their “blue comedy” in clubs. Bill Cosby was quite funny working clean comedy for mass consumption. See Bill Cosby is a very Funny Fellow for an exposition on Noah and the Ark. It was clean.

Yes Lord? HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?!?

So close. So very close Pig.

alt 21948#5

Well, son of a monkey—who knew??

How can anyone rag on Carlin when I hear the the CRAP of today’s “artists”. The word "mother$&#@r is used so often I wonder whether today’s younger generation has any brains at all. As far as the “geezer” comment, f&#k you :-)

Lenny Bruce really set the stage for topical comedy as well as being uncensored in a time when that was illegal. Here’s an excerpt from a concert, a bit called “Christ and Moses”, recorded in the early 60s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-J4O-6hANU (it begins part-way through, and fades out near the end)

Two questions:1. WHY isn’t it a national holiday yet?2. With all the other stuff they allow in society these days, why are the 7 words still NOT allowed??