George Carlin dies at 71
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Then he realized that he could do a 180 and instead do a routine attacking the system. That's when he really took off. He hit his stride during the late 60s/early 70s with a completely new and growing market: the kids.
This is a good example of the same product (Carlin) working at a mediocre level in one market and being a complete success in another. It takes guts to change your market positioning!
I loved some of his stuff. In all fairness, to me some of his stuff towards the end sounded like "old angry hippie tries to stay relevant"
But he was a genius by any measure. Somewhere up in Vallhalla Odin is probably laughing right now at the cats and dogs routine.
Bill Hicks on marketing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put it away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: ‘I’m saving food!’
Then a month later when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: ‘I’m saving my life!’
In other words: You demean the work by dividing it into the bits and pieces you consider polite.
We're in agreement on this point. But the reality is that if one wanted to point out his impact on the entertainment industry, one of the most important aspects was that he (along with a handful of others) made it OK for a mainstream comic to work blue. Really, really, incredibly blue.
My favorite of his bits were actually pretty clean. But let's not water the old man down. He's no longer able to defend himself against sanitization.
And, I don't think his seven words bit was lacking in intelligence. I think it was one of his more astute social observations, and it was so controversial partly because it did touch a deep nerve in American culture. And the "ratshit, batshit" cheer was about the funniest thing I'd ever heard in my life. I don't know if I'd call it smart, but I'd certainly call it funny.
I managed to find the bit where he talks about "passing away": http://youtube.com/watch?v=RrvyrxUpibg&feature=related (starting around 4:30).
I feel an impulse to post it in a comment on every blog or article that uses a death euphemism (I did http://searchengineland.com/080623-082447.php already :-)).
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Carlin was damn interesting and someone I'd bet many many hackers looked up to.
;-)