Carlin at Carnegie

Everybody's heard the old joke: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?";

Practice, man, practice.

Well, like most people, I did all my practicing at home

in my own neighborhood.

I grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City,

General Grant was one of my neighbors.

I had a lot of fun in my neighborhood,

I did a lot of practicing.

And sooner or later, I just wanted to get downtown

to show them what I could do.

And I had to find out how to get there.

In New York City if you don't know how to get somewhere,

all you gotta do is ask somebody, they'll tell ya,

even if they don't know.

Hey, tell me something, you got a second?

Uh-huh.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

I don't know, I gonna really tell you.

I don't know how to get to Carnegie Hall.

Yeah, you from around here?

Uh, yeah, I live right there, man.

I don't even know where I am now,

how the hell could I tell you how to get to Carnegie Hall.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

From here?

Well, no, from the moon.

Take the bus up on the corner there down to 57th Street,

get off there, that's a block walk.

Can't I take the subway here?

Got a gun permit?

Take the plane.

Take the plane? The 59th Street plane?

Well, that depends on which way you wanna go.

Well, all I can say, you can take a car down there.

Take the bus, it'll leave you right in front of there.

Okay.

I don't know the number, but I get there.

Jump on a cab, tell the man to take you downtown,

you ain't got no bread, just jump out.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Yeah.

Well, if you don't have a car, you use subway.

And then if you don't have money, you hop the turnstile.

You hop...

Hop the turnstile.

Then if you're for real, you go to court.

As you can see, not everybody agrees on how to get there.

Now, when I was a kid, if you wanted to get somewhere,

you had to take whatever ride was available.

I believe my ride has just arrived.

We want George, we want George, we want George...

Hi there, how are you?

Hello there.

How you doing? Good evening everybody.

Hello there. Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

Have you noticed that most of the women

who are against abortion

are women that you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, good evening,

my name is George Carlin, and I am a professional comedian,

as opposed to the kind you run into at work all day long.

It's nice being a comedian, there are, uh,

certain advantages, naturally.

And a few disadvantages,

there are some drawbacks to being a comedian.

No one on death row has ever said,

before I die, I wanna talk to a comedian.

You ever hear anyone at the scene of an accident say,

quick, call a comedian, for God sakes!

But it would be kind of fun at an accident

to push your way through the crowd and say,

may I be of help, I'm a professional comedian.

And sooner or later, at least once in your life,

when the policeman says to you, what are you, a comedian?

You've gotta look him right in the eye and say,

actually, yes.

Even criminals have no respect for comedians.

What do they say, first thing they do when they hold you up?

Don't try anything funny.

First one makes a funny move gets it.

Whenever they're not looking I go.

Well, that's my job, thinking up goofy shit.

Thinking up goofy shit, coming around every now and then,

letting you know what it is,

or reminding you of things you already know

but forgot to laugh at the first time they happened.

We all have things like that, you hear it during the day

and then you don't remember it at all.

For instance, I've noticed they have disposable douche,

and I'm wondering who would want to keep it in the first place?

I had an interesting morning, got into an argument...

got into an argument with my Rice Krispies.

I distinctly heard snap, crackle, fuck him.

I don't know which one of them said it,

I was reaching for the artificial sweetener

and was not looking directly into the bowl.

But I told them, I said,

well, you can all just sit right there in the milk,

far as I'm concerned you can sit in the milk

until I find out which one of you said that.

A little mass punishment for my breakfast food.

The idea is to turn them against one another.

Just sit in the milk, far as I'm concerned.

Silly me, big punishment, that's what they do anyway,

Sit in the milk.

That's their job.

That's Rice Krispies' job, sitting in the milk.

You've seen them, haven't you?

Floating along,

little beige blisters of air,

riding proudly in the milk.

But you can't sink them, they float for a long time.

And you know why, they stay together.

They gather together in little groups,

little groups of eight, ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen,

but always an even number if you've noticed.

It's the polarity of the Krispies that attracts them.

They form little colonies of Rice Krispies.

But you can't sink them, you try to sink them with a spoon,

they come up over the sides.

You can't sink them, that's what the fruit is for,

sinking the Rice Krispies.

Good size peach will take down 80 or 90 of them.

If I'm really pissed, I'll drop a watermelon on them.

But I say interesting about my morning

'cause it was, it's not... I don't have a nice day anymore.

I don't bother much with that.

I think I'm beyond that now,

I think I've outgrown the nice day.

I think I've had my share.

Why should I be hogging all the really nice ones?

Let somebody else have a few.

Of course, everybody still wants me to have one.

Everybody wants me to have a nice day.

Have a nice day!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wanna give me my fucking change, please?

I'm triple parked.

Some of them are really insistent,

I said have a nice day!

All right, all right, goddammit, all right, I'll give it a shot!

That's the trouble with have a nice day,

it puts all the pressure on you.

Now you've gotta go out

and somehow manage to have a good time,

all because of some loose-lipped cashier.

Have a nice day, maybe I don't feel like having a nice day.

Maybe, just maybe, I've had 116 nice days in a row,

and I'm ready, by God, for a crappy day.

I never hear that, let them wish one of them.

Hey, have a crappy day.

Thank you, and to your wonderful family, as well.

A crappy day, hey, that would be easy, it's no trouble at all,

a crappy day.

Just get up.

There's no planning involved for a crappy day.

I know what it is that bothers me about that whole thing,

it's the word nice.

It's just a weak word,

it doesn't have a lot of character, you know?

Nice. Isn't he nice?

Oh, he is so nice.

And she's nice, too.

Isn't that nice?

How nice they are.

I don't care for that, you know?

That's like fine.

There's another word. How are you? Fine.

Bullshit!

Nobody's fine.

Hair is fine.

How's your hair? Fine.

That makes a lot more sense to me.

Some guys are great.

Did you ever meet those guys? Great.

Isn't this great? Goddamn, this is great.

Look, they're kill that guy. Isn't that great?

That's great.

No, not me, I'm not nice, I'm not fine, I'm not great.

People ask me how I am, I say I'm fairly decent.

I don't give them any superlatives,

nothing to gossip about.

Relatively okay.

Sometimes I'll say I'm moderately neato.

If I'm in a particularly jaunty mood,

I'll say, I'm not unwell, thank you.

That pisses them off

because they have to figure that one out for themselves.

So...

it reminds me of something

my first grade teacher used to say to me,

a little lady.

She used to say,

you show me a tropical fruit,

and I'll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala.

No, that, that was someone else, that was someone else.

I think it was someone I met in the Army.

Always confuse them, I don't know what it is.

Ever been looking through the refrigerator