George Carlin: Jammin' in New York (1992 TV Special)

George Carlin: Self

Photos 

Quotes 

• George Carlin : [on airline announcements]  Here's one they just made up: "near miss". When two planes almost collide, they call it a near miss. It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss! BOOM! Look, they nearly missed. Yes, but not quite!

• [on the airport announcements] 

  George Carlin : About this time, someone is telling you to get on the plane. "Get on the plane. Get on the plane." I say, "Fuck you, I'm getting IN the plane! IN the plane! Let Evil Knievel get ON the plane! I'll be in here with you folks in uniform! There seems to be less WIND in here!"

• [on airline announcements] 

  George Carlin : "In the unlikely event..." This is a very suspect phrase, especially coming, as it does, from an industry that is willing to lie about arrival and departure times. "In the unlikely event of a sudden change in cabin pressure..." ROOF FLIES OFF! "... an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Place the mask over your face and breathe normally." Well, I have no problem with that. I always breathe normally when I'm in a 600 mile-an-hour uncontrolled vertical dive. I also SHIT normally! RIGHT IN MY PANTS!

• George Carlin : The next sentence I hear is full of things that piss me off. "Before leaving the aircraft, please check around your immediate seating area for any personal belongings you might have brought on board." Well, let's start with "immediate seating area." SEAT! It's a goddamn seat! Check around your seat! "For any personal belongings..." Well, what other kinds of belongings are there besides personal? PUBLIC belongings? Do these people honestly believe I might be traveling with a fountain I stole from the park? "... you might have brought on board." Well... I MIGHT have brought my arrowhead collection! I didn't. SO I'M NOT GOING TO LOOK FOR IT! I'm going to look for things I BROUGHT on board! It would seem to increase the likelihood of my finding something, wouldn't you say?

• George Carlin : The planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE! Pack your shit, folks. We're goin' away.

• George Carlin : People add extra words when they want things to sound more important than they really are. "Boarding process". Sounds important. It isn't.

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : It's just a bunch of people getting on an airplane. People like to sound important. Weathermen on television talk about "shower activity". Sounds more important than "showers". I even heard one guy on CNN talk about a rain event. I swear to God. He said, "Louisiana's expecting a rain event". I said, "Holy shit, I hope I can get tickets to that!"

• George Carlin : This country is only two hundred years old, and already we've had ten major wars. We average a major war every twenty years in this country. So we're good at it!

  [laughter and applause] 

  George Carlin : And it's a good thing we are. Can't build a decent car, can't build a TV or a VCR worth a fuck. Got no steel industry left, can't educate our young people, can't get health care to our old people. But we can bomb the shit out of your country, all right!

  [laughter and applause] 

  George Carlin : We can bomb the shit out of your country, all right! Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh, we like that, don't we? That's our hobby! That's our new job in the world, bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya, you got some brown people in your country, tell them to watch the fuck out or we'll goddamn bomb them! Well, when's the last white people you can remember that we bombed? Can you remember the last white people we bombed? Can you remember *any* white people we've ever bombed? The Germans! Those are the only ones, and that's only because they were trying to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world. Bullshit, that's *our* fucking job!

  [laughter and applause] 

  George Carlin : THAT'S OUR FUCKING JOB!

• George Carlin : I watch television news for one thing and one thing only: entertainment. That's all I want from the news; entertainment. You know my favorite thing on television? Bad news. Bad news and disasters and accidents and catastrophes. I want to see some explosions and fires, I want to see shit blowing up and bodies flying around!

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : I'm not interested in the budget. I don't care about tax negotiations. I don't want to know what country the fucking pope is in. But you show me a hospital that's on fire and people on crutches are jumping off the roof and I'm a happy guy! I'm a happy guy!

  [laughter and applause] 

  George Carlin : I'm a happy guy! I want to see a paint factory blowing up. I want to see an oil refinery explode. I want to see a tornado hit a church on Sunday. I want to see people... I want to know there's some guy running through the K-Mart with an automatic weapon firing at the clerks. I want to see thousands of people in the street killing policemen. I want to hear about a nuclear meltdown. I want to know the stock market dropped two thousand points in one day. I want to see people under pressure. Sirens, flames, smoke, bodies, graves being filled, parents weeping. Exciting shit. My kind of TV. I just want some entertainment. It's just the kind of guy I am. It's the kind of guy I am. You know what I love the most? When big chunks of concrete and fiery wood are falling out of the sky and people are running around trying to get out of the way. Exciting shit. That's why I watch auto racing. That's the only reason I watch auto racing. I'm waiting for some accidents, man! I want to see some cars on fire. I don't care about a bunch of redneck jackoffs driving five hundred miles in a circle. Five hundred miles in a circle. Children can do that, for Christ's sakes. Doesn't impress me. I want to see some schmuck with his hair on fire running around punching his own head trying to put it out. I want to see the pits explode! I want to see a car doing a two hundred mile an hour cartwheel. Hey, where else besides auto racing am I gonna see a twenty-three car collision and not be in the son of a bitch?

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : And if a car flies out of control, lands in the stands and kills fifty spectators, fine. Fuck 'em! Serves 'em right. They paid to get in, let 'em take their chances with everybody else. Just means more fun for me. More fun for me!

• George Carlin : They tell you to locate your nearest emergency exit. I do this immediately!

  [mimes looking for the exit] 

  George Carlin : I locate my nearest emergency exit, and then I plan my route. You have to plan your route. It's not always a straight line, is it? Sometimes there's a really big fat fuck sitting right in front of you. Well, you know you'll never get over him. I look around for women and children, midgets and dwarves, cripples, war widows, paralyzed veterans, people with broken legs, anybody who looks like they can't move too well; the emotionally disturbed come in VERY handy at a time like this. You might have to go out of your way to find these people, but you'll get out of the plane a lot God damn quicker, believe me. I say, "Let's see... I'll go around the fat fuck... step on the widow's head... push those children out of the way... knock down the paralyzed midget, and get out of the plane where I can help others."

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : I can be of no help to anyone if I'm lying unconscious in the aisle with some big cocksucker standing on my head. I must get out of the plane, go to a nearby farmhouse, have a Dr. Pepper, and call the police.

• George Carlin : Have you ever been talking to yourself, and someone else enters the room, and you have to make believe you were singing?

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : And you hope to God the other person REALLY believes there's a song called "What Does She Think I Am, Some Kind of Putz"?

  [laughter] 

• George Carlin : As soon as they close the door to the aircraft, that's when they begin the safety lecture. I love the safety lecture! This is my favorite part of the airplane ride! I listen very carefully to the safety lecture, especially that part where they teach us how to use the seat belts! Imagine this: here we are, a plane full of grown human beings... many of us partially educated, and they're actually taking time out to describe the intricate workings of a belt buckle!

• George Carlin : [about plane flights]  They may mention "carry-on luggage". The first time I heard "carry-on", I thought they were going to bring a dead deer on board. I thought, "What the hell do they need with that, don't they have the little TV dinners anymore?" Then I thought, "Carry-on, carry-on, there's going to be a party, people are going to be carrying on, on the plane!" Well, I don't care for that, I like a serious attitude on the plane, especially on the "flight deck", which is the latest euphemism for "cockpit"! Can't imagine why they wouldn't want to use a lovely word like "cockpit", can you? Especially with all those stewardess going in and out of it all the time!

• George Carlin : [talking about the safety lecture; mocking flight attendant]  "Place the small metal flap in to the buckle." Well I ask for clarification at that point!

  [mocking a passenger] 

  George Carlin : "Pardon me please. Excuse me, yes. Over here. Thank you very much. Did I hear you correctly? Did you say 'place the small metal flap in to the buckle,' or 'place the buckle over and around the small metal flap?' I am a simple man. I do not possess an engineering degree, nor am I mechanically inclined. Sorry to have taken up so much of your time, please continue with the wonderful safety lecture!" Seatbelt. High-tech shit!

• George Carlin : The safety lecture continues: "In the unlikely event of a water landing..."

  [grimacing as he thinks for a moment] 

  George Carlin : Well, what exactly is "a water landing"? Am I mistaken, or does this sound somewhat similar to CRASHING INTO THE OCEAN? "... your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device." Well, imagine that. My seat cushion! Just what I need, to float around the North Atlantic for several days, clinging to a pillow full of beer farts!

• George Carlin : Speaking of places to eat and what they're called, or named, Beverly Hills has a brand new restaurant specifically for bulimia victims. It's called the Scarf 'n Barf.

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : Well, they were going to call it the Fork and Bucket. Thank God good taste prevailed.

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : How about a restaurant for anorexics? What would you call it? "The Empty Plate."

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : "The Lonesome Chef."

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : "Start Without Me, Guys."

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : See, somehow, I can't feel sorry for an anorexic, you know? Rich cunt, don't want to eat? Fuck her. Fuck her. Don't eat! I give a shit. Like I'm supposed to be concerned about this. "I DON'T WANNA EAT!" Go fuck yourself.

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : Why don't you lie down in front of a railroad train right after you don't eat? What kind of a God damned disease is that, anyway? "I DON'T WANNA EAT!" How do we come up with this shit in this country? Where do we get our values from? Bulimia, there's another all-American disease. This has got to be the only country in the world that could ever have come up with bulimia. Got to be the only country where some people are digging in the dumpster for a peach pit, other people eat a nice meal and puke it up intentionally.

• George Carlin : [about airline announcements]  They tell me to put my seat back forward. Well, I don't bend that way. If I could put my seat back forward, I'd be in porno movies.

• George Carlin : It's the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving a problem; it's called declaring a war. We got a war on poverty, the war on crime, war on litter, the war on cancer, the war on drugs. But you ever notice there's no war on homelessness, is there? Nah. No war on homelessness. You know why? There's no money in that problem.

  [applause] 

  George Carlin : There's no money in that problem. Nobody stands... it's true. Nobody stands to get rich off of that problem. You could find a solution to homelessness, where the corporate swine and the politicians could steal a couple million dollars each, you'd see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty god damn quick, I'll guarantee you that.

• George Carlin : Did you ever notice how awful your face looks in a mirror in a restroom that has florescent lights? Every cut, scrape, scratch, scar, scab, bruise, boil, bump, pimple, zit, wart, welt, and abscess you've had since birth all seem to come back at the same time. And all you can think of is "I gotta get the fuck outta here!"

• George Carlin : [about airline flights]  As part of this pre-boarding, they say, "We would like to pre-board those passengers traveling with small children." But what about those passengers traveling with *large* children? Suppose you have a two-year-old with a pituitary disorder. You know, a six-foot infant with an oversized head. The kind of kid you see in the National Enquirer all the time. Actually, with a kid like that, I think you're better off checking him riding with your luggage at the curb, don't you? Well, they like it under there. It's dark; they're used to that.

• George Carlin : The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showin' up at those jobs.

• George Carlin : This country has only been around for 200 years, and we've already had ten major wars. We average a major war every twenty years in this country. So we're good at it.

• George Carlin : [on flight attendants]  Sometimes, they actually refer to these people as "uniformed crew members". Ah, uniformed, as opposed to the guy sitting next to me in the Grateful Dead t-shirt and the Fuck You hat... who's working on his ninth little bottle of Kahlua, I might add.

• George Carlin : About this time, they tell you you'll be landing shortly. That sound to you like we're going to miss the runway?

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : "Final approach" is not very promising, either, is it? "Final" is *not* a good word to be using on an airplane. Sometimes the pilot will get on, and say "we'll be on the ground in fifteen minutes." Well, that's a little vague, isn't it?

• George Carlin : I hate to be repetitious, but God, we are a warlike lot, you know? We can't stand not to be fucking with somebody.

• George Carlin : I got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem. I know where we can build housing for the homeless: golf courses.

  [laughter and applause] 

  George Carlin : Perfect! Golf courses! Just what we need. Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods. Land that is currently being wasting on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in, primarily, by white, well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer among themselves.

  [applause] 

  George Carlin : I am getting tired... really getting tired. I am getting tired of these golfing cocksuckers in their green pants, and their yellow pants, and their orange pants, and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts. It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless. Golf is an arrogant, elitist game, and it takes up entirely too much fucking room in this country.

  [applause] 

  George Carlin : Too much fucking room in this country. It is... it is an arrogant game on its very design alone. Just the design of the game speaks of arrogance. Think of how big a golf course is. The ball is that fucking big!

  [pantomimes the size of the ball, to roars of laughter] 

  George Carlin : What do these pinheaded pricks need with all that land? There are over 17,000 golf courses in America. They average over 150 acres apiece. That's over three million plus acres. That's 4,820 square miles. You could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently devoted to this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, racist... racist; there's another thing. The only blacks you'll find in country clubs are carrying trays. And a boring game! For boring people. Did you ever watch golf on TV? It's like watching flies fuck! And a mindless game. Mindless. Think of the intellect... think of the intellect it must take to draw pleasure from activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then... walking after it.

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : And then... HITTING IT AGAIN!

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : I say "Pick it up, asshole! You're lucky you found the fucking thing! Put it in your pocket and go the fuck home! Go the fuck home! You're a winner!" No... no chance of that happening. Dorko in the plaid knickers is gonna hit it again and walk some more. Let these rich cocksuckers play miniature golf. Let 'em fuck with a windmill for an hour and a half or so; see if there's any real skill among them. Now, I know there are some people who play golf who don't consider themselves rich. FUCK 'EM! And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist pastime.

• George Carlin : It amuses me that no one can really trust the water anymore. And the thing I like about it the most is it means the system is beginning to collapse, and everything is slowly breaking down. I enjoy chaos and disorder. Not just because they help me professionally.

  [raucous laughter] 

  George Carlin : No, they're also my hobby. You see, I'm an entropy fan. I'm an entropy fan. When I first heard of entropy in high school science, I was attracted to it immediately. When they told me that in nature all systems are breaking down, I thought "What a good thing. What a good thing. Perhaps I can make some small contribution in this area myself."

• George Carlin : Explosions are fun! And hey, the closer the explosion is to your house, the more fun it is! Did you ever notice that? Sometimes you have the TV on and you're working around the house, some guy comes on television and says "Six thousand people were killed in an explosion today"; you say "Where? Where?". He says "... in Pakistan." Say, "Oh, fuck Pakistan! Too far away to be any fun." But if he says it happened in your hometown, you'll say "Whoa, hot shit! Come on, Dave, let's go look at the bodies! Let's go look at the bodies!" I love bad news. I love bad news. Hey, the more bad news there is, the faster this system collapses. Fine by me. Fine by me. Don't bother my ass. Don't bother my ass none. I'm glad the water sucks. I'm glad it sucks. You know what I do about? I drink it!

• George Carlin : Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It's arrogant meddling! It's got what got us in trouble in the first place. Doesn't anybody understand that? Interfering with nature! Over ninety percent... over, WAY OVER ninety percent of all the species that EVER lived on this planet, EVER lived, are gone. Wssst! They're extinct! We didn't kill them all. They just... disappeared. That's what nature does. They disappear these days at the rate of 25 a day, and I mean, regardless of our behavior. Irrespective of how we act on this planet, 25 species that were here today, will be gone tomorrow. Let them go gracefully. Leave nature alone. Haven't we done enough?

• George Carlin : We're so self-important. Everybody's going to save something now: save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails, and the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these people fucking kidding me? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We haven't learned how to care for one another yet - we're going to save the fucking planet? I'm getting tired of that shit! Tired of that shit! Tired! I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths! People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract, they don't. Not in the abstract, they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

• George Carlin : [on airline announcements]  As part of this boarding process, they say, "We would like to pre-board." But what exactly is that anyway? What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on? That's another complaint of mine, too much use of this prefix "pre-". It's all over the language now: "pre-" this, "pre-" that. "Place the turkey in a preheated oven." It's ridiculous! There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: heated or unheated! "Preheated" is a meaningless fucking term! It's like "prerecorded": "This program was prerecorded." Well, of course it was prerecorded! When else are you gonna record it, afterwards? That's the whole purpose of recording, is to do it beforehand! Otherwise, it doesn't really work, does it? "Preexisting", "pre-planning", "pre-screening". You know what I tell these people? "Pre-suck my genital situation!"

• George Carlin : As far as I'm concerned, that whole thing about the Persian Gulf was nothing more than a big prick-waving dick-fight. In this case, Saddam Hussein had questioned the size of George Bush's dick. And George Bush had been called a wimp for so long... "wimp" rhymes with "limp"... George has been called a wimp so long that he has to act out *his* manhood fantasies by sending other people's children to die. Even the name "Bush"...

  [scowls] 

  George Carlin : Even the name "Bush" is related to the genitals without *being* the genitals. A bush is a sort of passive, secondary sex characteristic. Now, if this man's name had been George *Boner*, well, he might've felt a little better about himself and we wouldn't have any trouble over there in the first place.

• George Carlin : You know my favorite thing on television? Bad news! Bad news and disasters and accidents and catastrophes! I'm looking for some explosions and fires, I want to see shit blowing up and bodies flying around! I don't care about the budget, I'm not interested in labor negotiations, I don't want to know what country the fucking Pope is in. But you show me a hospital, it's on fire, and people on crutches are jumping off the roof, and I'M A HAPPY GUY!

• George Carlin : Any activity engaged in by more than... four people, in this country, has got a fucking magazine devoted to it. Skydiving, mountain climbing, snowmobiling, backpacking, bungee jumping, duck hunting, shooting someone in the asshole with a dart gun, jerking off. They probably have a magazine for that. I'm sure they have. I know they have a magazine. Walking! WALKING!

  [laughter] 

  George Carlin : There's actually a fucking magazine called "Walking"! 'Look, Dan, the new "Walking" is out!' Here's a good article: putting one foot in front of the other!

• [on the Persian Gulf War] 

  George Carlin : It's the first war we ever had that was on every channel, plus cable.

• George Carlin : Somebody got fucked in the ass. Plbtt. Plbtt.

• George Carlin : [about the Persian Gulf War]  I don't feel about that war the way we were told we were supposed to feel about that war, the way we were ordered and instructed by the United States government to feel about that war. You see, I tell ya, my mind doesn't work that way. I got this real moron thing I do, it's called "thinking", and I'm not a very good American, because I like to form my own opinions. I don't just roll over when I'm told to. Sad to say, most Americans just roll over...

  [makes a clicking sound] 

  George Carlin : ... when they're told to. Not me!

• George Carlin : I don't take seriously the media or the press in this country, who, in the case of the Persian Gulf War, were nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defense and who most of the time, most of the time functioned as an unofficial public relations agency for the United States government. So I don't listen to them. I don't really believe in my country, and I gotta tell you folks, I don't get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I consider them... I consider them symbols, and I leave symbols to the "symbol"-minded.

• George Carlin : [objecting to how the United States expects people to feel about the Persian Gulf War]  I got this real moron thing I do, it's called "thinking". And I'm not a very good American, because I like to form my own opinions. I don't just roll over when I'm told to. Sad to say, most Americans just roll over...

  [makes a ticking sound] 

  George Carlin : ... on command. Not me!

• George Carlin : Nobody trusts their water supply. Nobody! And that amuses me. I like that. It amuses me. I admit, I'm a bit perverted, but it amuses me that no one can really trust the water anymore. And the thing I like about it the most, the reason I like it is that it means the system is beginning to collapse and everything is starting to break down.