Our mantra this week: If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.
It’s been a long day. A road trip with my dad, who is 86. Three hours down, six hours visiting, three hours back.
It’s time for …
“The 11 O’Clock News,” George Carlin, from “FM & AM,” 1972. Recorded live at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., in late June 1971.
This is Carlin’s third record, but the first on which he starts to move from mainstream comedian to caustic counterculture observer.
This is one of my favorite Carlin bits, complete with Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weather man, and a partial score.
It’s one my dad and I heard Carlin do on television back then, and one we still could enjoy together today. You can’t say that for some of the Carlin bits that followed. Only one of us dug those.
AM, Then FM 
Ah, yes — remember those glorious days when comedy bits made it onto Top 40 radio … Like Cosby’s “Noah,” etc. The Hippy-Dippy Weatherman was one of my favorites back then. But I also — at Summerfest 1972 in MIlwaukee — saw George get busted (on stage, after his routine) for saying “the seven words you can’t say on television. (Don’t remember if he was the warmup act for Arlo Guthrie [“Coming into Los Angelees, bringing in a couple of keys … ” or vice versa.) Most of those seven words are said routinely in Prime Time these days, and I’m not sure we’re better off as a result. I didn’t follow Carlin that much after that — he got pretty predictable — but I’m not sure he ever got a lot funnier than the HDW. RIP George — you had to be there …
I loved this line from the weatherman:
“Tonight’s forecast: DARK! Continued mostly dark throughot the night with widely scattered light in the morning.” I also loved the bit on the over-the-counter birth control pills.