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Last Words

Page 20

by Carlin George


  the stage door. Summer night, and I'm thinking, "Gee, here I am,

  where I used to stand waiting to get Gene Krupa's autograph." And

  now I'm going to come out the same doors where I once got his autograph, twenty years before.

  Gene Krupa was my hero. I have had very few heroes in my life—

  mostly they're people who've been arrested. But when Gene Krupa

  came out those doors, he had on a fucking camel's-hair, wraparound

  overcoat, he had the forelock hanging down in all its marvelous arranged casualness and he had a terrific-looking blonde on each arm.

  With a big smile and chewing gum. I got his autograph and all the

  other guys'. Jazz at the Philharmonic. I still look at those autographs

  and play the music from that night.

  I yelled out during the show because I knew they were

  recording—there was a sound van outside the stage door. My pal

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  Doug and I were there and we were loaded. It was the midnight

  show during a slow ballad medley and Charlie Shavers was taking

  a really romantic solo. Right in the middle, at the top of my lungs,

  I yell, "Make me cream, Charlie." That way I figured I'll be on the

  record.

  Later, when I'd be recording, it was done to me. Many times.

  Carnegie was a completion of a loop, a coming back to a beginning. It was also something of a trauma for my mother. This was

  Carnegie Hall, after all—just as much a pinnacle for her as it was for

  me. And here I was at my very hottest, doing "Seven Dirty Words"

  and all the other stuff, making light of the Church and God and of

  the business world she loved. And they gave me a standing ovation.

  She was profoundly shocked that in a place like that what I was saying would be so rewarded by approval. When she came backstage

  after the show, she was ashen. Brenda and I often used that word

  about her face that night. Ashen.

  But she soon had the approval of Holy Mother Church, thanks

  to the Corpus Christi nuns who loved what I was doing, and roses

  returned to the cheeks of the Rose of Tralee.

  As usual, a price had to be paid for all this pleasure. I discovered

  in July of '72 that not only could you not say the Heavy Seven on

  television, you couldn't say them in Milwaukee either. Here's how

  the AP reported it:

  Comedian George Carlin was taken into custody Friday night and

  charged with disorderly conduct after he allegedly used profanity during a performance at Summerfest, a ten-day festival on the

  city's lakefront. Henry Jordan, executive director of Summerfest,

  said, "Carlin got up on stage and . . . he used a lot of profanity. The

  police went up on stage after he had finished his act and arrested

  him." Jordan said he supported the police, adding that many in the

  crowd of 70,000 were children.

  According to the arresting officer and complainant, Patrolman

  Elmer G. Lenz, about forty of the many thousands of children

  were "youths in wheelchairs who were physically unable to leave

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  the showgrounds even if they found the show was in bad taste." Of

  course, wheelchairs are so named because they include wheels with

  which their occupants can propel themselves wherever they wish

  to go, but that wasn't foremost in Patrolman Lenz's mind in bringing their presence up. When it came to words, he knew right from

  wrong.

  What Lenz didn't know was how close he came to really nailing

  me. While I was out onstage at Summerfest, Brenda came on under

  the pretense of bringing me a glass of water. She says: "There's police backstage, and when you come off they're going to grab you and

  arrest you." Now, I have a lot of cocaine in my jacket pocket. I have

  at least a full vial, probably a vial I'm working from and whatever

  else I have in a little bag. It's all on me out there onstage. I can't give

  it to her, so off she goes. She comes back on a little later and says:

  "We'll all make like you're coming off one side. Then you come off

  the other side and Corky or Jim (two of the musicians from the band

  who were opening for me) will be over there and take your jacket."

  So I come off the side where the police weren't and handed my

  jacket to these guys. I'm clean and they're happy as hell. They have

  all my drugs.

  Throughout the trial I was represented by the distinguished

  civil-rights attorney William Coffey—who had also represented

  the Milwaukee activist Father Groppi. Five months later, one

  Judge Gieringer threw out the complaint, saying that while he

  had no doubt indecent language was used, he didn't believe anyone was violently aroused. Interesting, because at the concert, I

  had been talking about "fuck" meaning loving and at some point

  I'd told all these people that I'd like to fuck them. You'd think that

  would have aroused at least one or two Milwaukeeans in a crowd

  of seventy thousand. I'm a nice-looking guy. And I had more hair

  then.

  Actually, it wasn't a recording of the concert that was played in

  court for the judge but the cut from Class Clown. "During the recording," wrote the Milwaukee journal, "Judge Gieringer grinned

  and laughed softly, though self-consciously." Patrolman Lenz was

  incensed by the judge's ruling and said the hearing was a "railroad

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  job"—although the only person who eould've been railroaded was

  me, and I hadn't been.

  Judge Gieringer's decision sidestepped the little matter of the

  First Amendment and its pesky guarantee of free speech. That

  wasn't the case in my second "bust." By now what I used to refer

  to as the Milwaukee Seven had spawned an equally mind-rotting,

  spine-curving, peace-without-honor sequel called "Filthy Words,"

  which first appeared on Occupation: Foole:

  The list is open to amendment. Lots of people pointed things out

  to me, and I noticed some myself. The first thing that we noticed

  was that the word fuck was really repeated in there because the

  word motherfucker is a compound word; it's another form of the

  word fuck. If you want to be a purist, it can't be on the list of

  basic words. Also, cocksucker is a compound word, and neither

  half is really dirty. The word sucker is merely suggestive. And the

  word cock is a halfway dirty word; f i f t y percent dirty, dirty half

  the time, depending on what you mean by it. Remember when

  you first heard it in sixth grade, you used to giggle, "And the

  cock crowed three times! Heyyy! It's in the Bible! Cock is in the

  Bible!" And the first time you heard about a cockfight, remem-

  ber? "What!" "Nooo! Are you kidding?" "It's chickens, man."

  Then you had the four-letter words of old Anglo-Saxon fame-

  slut and fuck. Shit is an interesting word because for the middle

  class it's still a rude, dirty, gooshy kinda word. But the word shit

  is okay for the man at work—he can say it like crazy:

  "Get that shit outta here, will ya?" "I don't wanna see that shit

  anymore." "I can't cut that shit, buddy." "I've had that shit up to

  here." "I think you're full of shit m y s e l f , man." "He don't know

  shit from Shinola." (I alw
ays wondered how the Shinola people

  felt about that. "Hi! I'm the new man from Shinola!" "Hi, how

  are ya? Nice to see ya") "I don't know whether to shit or wind my

  watch. Guess I'll shit on my watch." "Boy, the shit is gonna hit

  the fan!" "Built like a brick shithouse." "He's up shit creek." Hot

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  shit, holy shit, tough shit, eat shit. Shit-eating grin. (Whoever

  thought of that was ill.) "Shit on a stick." "Shit in a handbag"—!

  always liked that—"He ain't worth shit in a handbag." Shitty.

  "He acted real shitty, you know what I mean? I got the money

  back, but a real shitty attitude." "Yeah, he had a shitfit! Wow!

  Glad I wasn't there!" And all the animals: bullshit, horseshit,

  cowshit, ratshit. Batshit! First time I heard batshit I really

  came apart. Guy in Oklahoma said it, man. "Awww, batshit!"

  Snakeshit. "Slicker than owlshit." "Get your shit together." "Shit

  or get o f f the pot." "I gotta shitload fulla them." "I got a shitpot

  full, right?" Shithead, shitheel, shit in your heart, shit for brains,

  shitfaced—heyyy! Always t r y to think of how that could have

  originated . . . the first guy to say that. Somebody got drunk and

  fell in some shit, you know? "Hey... I'm shitfaced! Shitfaced

  today!" Anyway, enough of that shit.

  The big one, the word fuck. That's the one that hangs them up

  the most. 'Course, in a lot of cases that's the very act that hangs

  them up the most. So it's natural that the word would have the

  same e f f e c t . It's a great word, fuck. Nice word, easy word, cute

  word. Easy word to say: one syllable, short u . . . Fuck! Starts

  with a nice soft sound, " f f f f f , " ends with a "KKK"! Right? It

  has something for everyone: fffucKKKKK! Good word. Kind

  of a proud word too. "Who are you?" "I am FUCK! FUCK of

  the MOUNTAINS!" "Tune in again next week to Fuck of the

  Mountains.'"

  I've also found three more words that you could never say on

  television, and they are fart, turd and twat. Those three. Fart

  we talked about, it's harmless, it's like tits, it's a cutesy word,

  no problem. Turd . . . you can't say, but who WANTS to? The

  subject never comes up on the panel, so I don't worry about that

  one. But the word twat is an interesting one. Twat! "Right in

  the twat!" Twat is the only slang word applying to a part of the

  sexual anatomy that doesn't have another meaning to it. Like

  snatch, box and pussy, all have other meanings, man. Even in a

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  Walt Disney movie you can say, "We're gonna snatch that pussy

  and put 'im in a box." But twat stands alone.

  On October 30, 1973, WBA1 in New York broadcast this cut during a program called Lunchpail, in the course of a discussion about

  society's double standards toward language. The host warned the

  audience in advance that, "If you don't like this sort of thing, don't

  listen."

  "A New York man," said a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court summary, "who, while driving with his young son, heard the WBAI

  broadcast, wrote a letter to the F C C complaining about the use of

  such language on the air." After some back-and-forth between the

  F C C and WBAI, the F C C released in 1975 a declaratory order concerning the broadcast of "indecent" language, defining "indecent"

  as words that describe "in terms patently offensive as measured by

  contemporary community standards sexual or excretory activities

  and organs at times of the day when there is a reasonable risk that

  children may be in the audience." The FCC found my routine to

  be indecent by that standard and put what amounted to a warning

  in WBAI's license file. WBAI—actually the Pacifica Foundation,

  which owns WBAI—fought it, won in the U.S. Court of Appeals,

  the F C C appealed to the Supreme Court, and in 1978 the Supreme

  Court—surprise, surprise—found in favor of the FCC, 5-4.

  The Los Angeles Times ran the news as its front-page lead on

  July 3, 1978-"Court Bans 7 Dirty Words," blared the headline.

  Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority decision, saying:

  "The broadcast media have established a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans. Patently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen . . . in the

  privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone

  plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder." Why

  can't the individual reach out his or her hand and turn that little

  knob? "To say that one may avoid further offense by turning off the

  radio when he hears indecent language is like saying that the remedy for an assault is to run away after the first blow."

  I'm no lawyer, but this guy seems to be saying that anyone whose

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  language he finds indecent is like a burglar coming into his house

  with a gun or a mugger hitting him in the head with a pipe. Which

  is a pretty paranoid view of free speech.

  Justice William Brennan wrote the dissent: "In our land of cultural pluralism there are many who think, act, and talk differently

  from the members of the Court and who do not share their fragile

  sensibilities. It is only an acute ethnocentric myopia that enables

  the Court to approve censorship of the communications solely because of the words they contain . . . The Court's decision . . . is another of the dominant culture's efforts to force those groups who do

  not share its mores to conform to its own way of thinking, acting,

  and speaking."

  All right, Bill Brennan! We Irish stick together. And he got it

  right. Words were the issue. The Court was banning not just words,

  but ways of thinking, acting, speaking, communicating with one

  another. There was plenty more hypocrisy at work. The original—

  and sole—complainant wasn't some average Joe who conceivably

  might have been speaking for contemporary community standards,

  if there are such things. He was a character named John Douglas, a

  member of the board of a big-time right-wing watchdog group called

  Morality in Media. John Douglas was, in Nat Hentoff's words, "a

  professional offendee." Of course he couldn't turn off the radio, because that would've meant taking his right hand from its ten-to-twoo'clock position on the steering wheel and committing the hideous

  sin of reckless driving.

  But he could have told his "young son" to change the station. His

  young son was actually fifteen, several years older than I was when

  I made my original longhair-fucking-music-prick-Kraut-cunt-burlyloudmouthed-cocksucker list, way back in 1950, in a simpler, more

  innocent time. Was John Douglas really claiming this angelic midseventies teenager had never heard the word "shit" or "fuck"? Of

  course not. Other than turning out another fucked-up, tight-assed

  clone of himself, John Douglas's complaint showed not the slightest

  interest in his son's welfare, poor kid.

  Kids are always the giveaway. "Young sons." "Youths in wheelchairs." The main reason to outlaw indecency, wrote Justice Stevens

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  in his majority opinion, is that "broadcasting is uniquely accessible

  to children, even those too young to read." W
hich in turn means

  that the only thing you can safely broadcast anytime, anywhere, in

  any medium, is material that's suitable for kids. Could this be why

  our society shows so many signs of arrested development?

  FCC v. Pacifica Foundation has become a standard case to

  teach in communications classes and many law schools. I take perverse pride in that. I'm actually a footnote to the judicial history of

  America.

  The one part of this I really love is that all nine members of the

  Berger Court had to sit around listening to the "Filthy Words" cut

  from Occupation: Foole. I've often wondered if, during the presentation of the evidence against me, any of them grinned and laughed

  softly, though self-consciously.

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  HIGH ON THE HILL

  Iused to mark my really severe drug use by the years I couldn't

  remember who won the World Series. There were three or four

  years in there, mid to late seventies. Cincinnati Reds? Twice in a

  row? When the fuck did that happen? How the fuck did that happen?

  I've always been scrupulous—overscrupulous—about keeping

  records of every appearance I made anywhere. But during the breakout success after my changes, roughly 1972 to 1975, the record keeping broke down. Anal became cocainal.

  As the period kicked in, we were still living the good hippie life

  down in Venice. But when the money began to flow we decided to

  move back into a house—in Pacific Palisades, way at the top of a hill.

  An area of the Palisades which was at that time almost entirely populated by executives from the RAND Corporation and their families. I was the town hippie—a rebellious weird longhair with a weird

  family who screamed at one another all night long and had strange

  people coming in and out at odd hours carrying small packages.

  One night, Kelly and I sauntered outside at twilight in front of

  the house. Across the way, there was an outdoor cocktail party going

  on, a gathering of suits. They had obviously come from the RAND

  Corporation and were having a little meeting-with-barbecue. They

  were drinking, and definitely within earshot. I don't know how

  loaded I was but I said, quite loud enough for them to hear, "Hey,

  Kelly, look at those assholes over there!" A useful life-lesson for an

 

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