Last Words Read online

So I want to thank the Pentagon, the Soviet Union and the military-industrial complex from the bottom of my heart. Without them, I could never have become the man I am today.

  6

  TWO GUYS IN THEIR UNDERWEAR

  Jack Burns (left) and George

  (Courtesy of Kelly Carlin-McCall)

  The most important milestone in my early career was meeting Jack Burns at WEZE in Boston in 1959.

  After the air force and I parted ways, I continued as a deejay at KJOE back in Shreveport for a few months. But I wanted to be nearer New York and in a larger market, and when one of the guys from KJOE moved up to Boston, I asked him to get me a spot there, no matter what kind of station it was.

  WEZE was a far cry from KJOE. An NBC network station, they still carried soap operas, quiz shows and other antiquated programs. I got on the air as a board announcer, doing live copy and running the board when network came in. I did have a two-hour music stint late at night but I had to play shit like Sinatra, Vic Damone, Keely Smith and Louis Prima.

  Jack was a newsman at the station. He and I hit it off immediately. We both did much the same Irish street character—who later became my Indian Sergeant and all the other Sergeants he spawned. Jack’s version was a Boston-Irish bigot who later became famous in his classic taxicab routine with Avery Schreiber.

  Jack’s guy had more of an edge. My guy had a more human side to him. These two guys would talk together for hours. They were great characters for saying things you weren’t quite willing to say yourself. Jack and I found ourselves being very inventive in each other’s company. We thought fast on our feet and struck up a great friendship. Even dreamed a little about doing a comedy act …

  Then, as usual, I got canned.

  I caused two major crises at WEZE. The first was the Cardinal Cushing Rosary Incident. In 1959 Cardinal Cushing was a big deal in the Catholic Church and, being very close to the Kennedys, an even bigger deal in Boston. Every evening from 6:45–7:00 he said the rosary on the air and was a longtime favorite of the Catholic-Irish faithful.

  So I’m riding the board and Cardinal Cushing is in his palace or wherever the fuck they live. He’s on remote—a phone line. This evening he’s doing the Five Sorrowful Mysteries. Before he began the rosary he would always say a little something about life in the Boston archdiocese. This evening he starts in about the Little Sisters of the Poor. “The Little Sisters of the Poor have been working selflessly for years in the Boston wards where children with chronic diseases …” He gets carried away by the wonderful saintly Little Sisters and starts the Five Sorrowful Mysteries late.

  Now seven o’clock is creeping up and His Eminence is only at the Third Sorrowful Mystery. (“The Crowning of Our Lord with Thorns,” for those who care.) I’m faced with a major executive decision. At precisely seven o’clock an Alka Seltzer–sponsored newscast is due from the network. Alka-Seltzer and NBC versus Cardinal Cushing and the last two Sorrowful Mysteries? A no-brainer. I lower the cardinal’s pot. He’s off the air.

  The news comes on with that little NBC jingle. Not a minute goes by before the phone rings and I hear a voice of thunder: “I’d like to speak to the young man WHO TURNED THE HOLY WORD OF GOD OFF THE AIR!”

  Apparently he had a fucking air-check monitor in his ear and he’d heard NBC News coming in. I said: “Cardinal Cushing, this is George Carlin. I’m on duty. I have a log to follow and the FCC …”—you know how you go for everything in a crisis situation—“This is a Federal Communications Commission regulation I have to follow …”

  The station backed me up, but it was a huge black mark. Crisis Number Two—the News-Unit Incident—was even huger and blacker. Several times, on weekends when I needed to score pot, I’d taken the station’s mobile news-unit, a vast boat of a station wagon stuffed with equipment and gaudy lettering along the side reading “WEZE 1260, News of the Moment!’ and driven it to New York.

  This particular weekend, there were about six or seven of us, crowded in with the equipment, driving through Harlem looking to score. Everyone knew someone: “Let’s go see if Paco is around 111th and Madison.” No dice with Paco, so now it’s “Georgie, Georgie, I know, Santos! Let’s try Santos!” and off we cruise to 145th and Amsterdam. All over the city in a huge fucking car with huge fucking letters on it, trying to score illegal drugs. Great PR for NBC News.

  When I get home there’s a call from the station manager in Boston. He says: “Guess what? We got a prison break at Walpole State Prison. Started last night. We couldn’t find the news-unit. I assume you have it?” “Yeah, I got it. It’s fine!” “Well, it’s not doing us any good down there in New York.” I said, “They have a shitload of prison breaks at Walpole. There’ll be another within a month. Don’t sweat it.”

  He didn’t appreciate that. Sayonara, George.

  KXOL, the number one station in Fort Worth, took me in and gave me a great spot: the seven-to-midnight segment doing Top 40. The “homework shift,” they called it: kids doing their homework and listening to the number one station playing all the cool records.

  Before long I got to be a bit of a local celeb so I had a lot of contact with those kids. And for the first time I got a whiff of that unnamed, unspoken, unformed conspiracy of the young against authority and old rules that seemed to be fermenting in the heartland. In Fort Worth, of all places! (“Cowtown! ’N proud of it!”) At sock hops you could see the degree of influence black music and dance had had, even on these white—basically segregated—Protestant kids. They were trying to learn cool moves even if they weren’t doing them as freely as their role models.

  Then after about six months at KXOL, who comes floating in the door one day but Jack Burns.

  He’d quit WEZE, while doing the early morning news with a massive hangover. The station was in the old Statler hotel, which had long windows like the Today Show does now, through which the public could peer in and be part of the exciting world of radio— like newsman Jack Burns doing the early morning news. In the middle of reading the headlines Jack looks up to see an old wino pissing on the window right in front of him. If there were no glass he’d be pissing on Jack.

  And Jack thought to himself: “I do not want to be pissed on while delivering important news of the day.” And quit.

  Now he’s on his way to Hollywood, “to give them one more chance.” But he’s broke and his tires are bald and he’s taken a detour to Cowtown to see if I could find him work.

  In more ways than one it was something that was meant to be. A guy had just quit our newsroom without notice and they were looking for a newsman. Authoritative, knowledgeable newsman Jack got the job on the spot.

  We picked up right where we’d left off (as did our Irish alter egos), and started rooming together. And Jack resumed his steady radicalization of me that he’d begun in Boston.

  In my home, Republicanism was a given. Both my mother and my aunt had worked for William Randolph Hearst and were terminally infected with the Westbrook Pegler–J. Edgar Hoover–Joe McCarthy virus. My mother was always happy to proclaim that while her dad had been a lifelong Democrat, she’d become an Eisenhower Republican.

  Part of the reason was that she rubbed shoulders with big business, working as executive assistant to Paul B. West, the president of the Association of National Advertisers, a lobbying outfit for the advertising industry. (She was his executive assistant, not his secretary. No taking dictation for Mary.) She was on first-name terms with the marketing chiefs of big corporations like Philco, Ford, General Motors, General Foods, General Electric, U.S. Steel. She loved to throw their names around. And had taken on board their Republican beliefs lock, stock and barrel.

  Then there was McCarthy. In 1954, between high school and the air force, when I briefly worked at Western Union, his Senate hearings were really boiling. Because of what I’d absorbed at home I was very pro-Joe. I was surprised at how many of the WU managers—who’d come up through the union ranks—were not. Nonetheless, after I left home, I continued to assume his ravings
were correct. Of course there were Communists everywhere! And if you were commies wouldn’t you try to get into the State Department?

  These feelings (rather than opinions) weren’t really part of my overall personhood. My mother had simply grafted them on to the personality of an outsider and rebel.

  At WEZE I still had that conservative graft. It would come out on air sometimes. On one particular occasion Jack called me on it. I can’t remember why I did this on an easy listening station in an ultraliberal town—some news event must have provoked it—but right in the middle of the Mantovani-style music mush I issued a call for the preemptive bombing of Red China.

  When I came off the air Jack was waiting for me. He said: “How the hell did you work nuking China into an intro for Andre Kostelanetz?” I had no idea what he was talking about: it seemed normal enough to me. Jack said: “Let’s go get a beer. There’s some things I gotta talk to you about.”

  From Jack I heard a very different slant than the one I’d grown up with. That the Right was interested in things but the Left was interested in people. That the Right defends property and property rights, while the Left fights for civil and human rights.

  Jack turned me on to Castro, who’d recently ousted the Cuban dictator Batista. Jack had been in Cuba back when he was in the Marines and “just another right-wing Irish reactionary” (like me), but after the revolution he’d gone back and been really impressed with Castro. He even interviewed Castro when he came to Boston, one of the first English-language interviews Castro gave in the United States.

  I began to realize the error of what had been handed to me through the Catholics, the Irish, my mother, through the Hearst legacy in our family. It didn’t take much reasoning. It immediately struck a chord. Of course that’s how I feel! Of course I’m for the underdog! Of course it’s right-wing business assholes who’ve been keeping me down! The first time those doors opened for me was thanks to Jack.

  We started going to a coffeehouse called the Cellar on Houston Street where you could get drinks even though Fort Worth was dry. In white Protestant Texas Cowtown, a bunch of beatniks at an all-night coffeehouse with illegal alcohol was really living on the edge. (There was one guy there who wore a blanket and an eagle on his shoulder. A fucking eagle!) These were Cowtown’s outcasts. That was attractive somehow. All food for these new feelings.

  One night we got up and started riffing on the bits we’d played around with at home, letting our Irish guys talk, improvising on the floor. We heard laughs, amazing, real laughs. And that was the beginning. The genesis of everything that came afterward. The first time I ever stood up in front of an audience of complete strangers and intentionally made them laugh. There is nothing like that feeling. Nothing. Nearly half a century later it’s still as powerful as ever.

  We continued to get up at the Cellar and continued to get laughs. And a great deal more confidence. Some of it was because we were local favorites from the radio. But we were also doing these things with great abandon. The Cellar was our gymnasium, our laboratory. It belonged to us. And it allowed us to develop an expansive onstage collective personality, which in turn led to taking chances.

  JB: Hi, kids, it’s time for Captain Jack …

  GC: And Jolly George!

  JB: What a show we’ve got for you today, kids. Remember yesterday on cartoon time we left Clarabelle the clown and Hermie the hermaphrodite all hung up in the back room? What were they trying to do, kids? That’s right—hide the booze before Clarabelle’s Mommy came back!

  GC: How about you, kids? Manage to get the booze hidden before Mommy staggered home? Watch out: Mommy don’t wanna see you getting smashed too. Tell you what you do. You watch where Daddy hides his booze, then you put yours in the same place! If Mommy finds it, he gets busted, not you!

  JB: Hey, kids, listen up! Today is absolutely the last day to send off for your Captain Jack and Jolly George junior junkie kit!

  GC: Boy, you’ve gotta have this kit, kids!

  JB: Why is this the last day? Well, we were down in Tijuana and our dealer’s been busted by the fuzz. So we’re running a little short of the stuff. Now—this is pure heroin you get. No cuts. No milk, sugar, flour. Dy-no-mite stuff, kids!

  GC: Captain Jack and I shot up a bag right before the show. Lemme tell you, kids, I’m TWISTED! Look at my EYES! One taste and I’m STONED!

  JB: In the kit you get a U.S. Army surplus 12 cc hypodermic needle …

  GC: And a genuine Roger’s silverware bent spoon. That’s to mix the fix … The bent spoon is available in Modern, Traditional, Provincial or Rosemead. Make sure you specify which pattern you want when you send in the cash.

  JB: AND—you get 3,669 feet of rubber tubing to wrap around your arm to get that vein popping out there.

  GC: AND you get a thirty-day supply of cotton to keep the spike clean. Don’t want to get no abscessed vein. You know, Captain Jack—we’ve gotten a lot of letters from kids shooting up with a dirty spike—and getting abscessed veins. You keep that spike clean, kids. And when you see that big bluish, purple splotch creeping up your arm it’s time to switch to the main vein.

  JB: Now, this is just for the girls! You boys, out of the room! Okay, girls, today is your last day to send for your Lolita kit. You get an autographed picture of Vladimir Nabokov and the original Lolita. You also get an instruction booklet. If you girls read those instructions and do the exercises prescribed …

  GC: That’s kind of fun in itself, girls …

  JB: … in just two weeks you’ll be walking and talking and acting like girls twice your age. Then you can pick up a little cash after school. Call those boys back in!

  GC: Okay, kids, time to go. We want to leave you with our thought for the day:

  JB/GC: Whatever you do—don’t forget to PRAYYYY!

  Something else happened during that period that had a nice wistful, romantic flavor. We would watch The Jack Parr Show (“where dreams are made”), and be full of fantasies about appearing on it.

  We’d sit around in our underwear—it was very hot in Texas so we’d always be sitting around in our underwear—and improv getting on Parr. One would play Parr, the other Burns or Carlin. “So tell us, guys”—that soft, serpentine hiss Parr had—“how did you two get together?” “Well, I was dating Jack’s mother. She’s black, by the way. So I’m going down on her one night and Jack walks in …”

  We decided we had to leave Fort Worth. I went to the station manager, Earl. (Earl was one of these periodic alkies who wake up in Seattle and call the office: “I’ll be in, in about a week.”) I tell him we’re going to Hollywood to become nightclub comedians. He says, “Well, George, a lot of people have left here to go to Hollywood and a lot of them had to come back. We put a lot of money into promoting you and taking your picture just right. And now you’re just going to leave.” I said, “I gotta do what I gotta do.” He said, “George, if you do come back we’re going to have to use the same picture.” I said, “Okay.”

  We bought a Dodge Dart, real good-looking two-door, light blue car. Tinted windows and everything. We just got in the car and drove west on old Highway 80 toward El Paso. Mike Ambrose, the midnight guy (who went on after my shift was over), kept saying goodbye to us as we drove out of the signal’s reach. Talking to us on the air, “They’re on their way. On their way to Hollywood. They’re going to be big stars.” Then he played “El Paso” by Marty Robbins. Just a wonderful feeling.

  We went to El Paso, Las Cruces and points west. It was On the Road with Jack Kerouac. One night we found ourselves driving through some desert landscape working on a six-pack and there was a full moon. So we turned off the lights and drove for miles and miles. Hurtling through the Great American Night in the late fifties. Wonderful. Crazy. Taking chances.

  We decided to go into Mexico and drive the rest of the way to California through Mexico. There was a Highway 2, but we weren’t sure if we were going the right way. There weren’t enough signs, and if there were they were in a fucking foreign language
. Night fell and I looked up and there was the Big Dipper. And I said, “The Big Dipper was over there last night when we were going west. It’s over there tonight. So we’re still going west.” And I felt I really knew how to take care of shit.

  Eventually we turned north and came to the outskirts of L.A. on the Hollywood Freeway. There’s one section of the Hollywood Freeway, coming from the Harbor Freeway, where you suddenly see all these tall, tall palm trees, the ones that have nothing on top but the little fronds.

  Right afterward there’s the sign that reads: “Next Six Exits: Hollywood.” The ultimate moment! The ultimate destination of all those movie dreams I’d had in the dark of the Nemo Theatre on 110th Street.

  What I remember most about the ambience of Hollywood was this amazing morning feeling. This promise of wide-open possibility. Something about the way the air smelled. And tasted good—and no, this is not a smog joke. There was a goldenness to the atmosphere. Even with all the traffic, a kind of quiet, a peace free of hustle and agitation. You felt safe but at the same time able to have different dreams every day. Or picture a hundred futures.

  The reality was that we checked in to the YMCA and immediately hit places like Villa Capri hoping Frank Sinatra would come in. Or that someone would say, “Look at those two interesting young men at the bar. Shouldn’t they be in show business?”

  We had some money saved so we bought suits at Sears, cool RatPacky three-button deals. The kind of suits that in one light look green and in a different light look brown. So it’s like having two suits.

  We hit the Brown Derby on Vine Street. Going in we met Rock Hudson coming out. My first realization that everything is not what you’re led to believe in the fan magazines: Rock was so light in his loafers he barely touched the sidewalk.

  Another night in the Brown Derby we spotted this guy in a banquette with two or three women, an older guy, sharply dressed. And he had a telephone at his elbow! Actually in the banquette! We figured he must be a really fucking cool agent guy. A few weeks later our new manager arranged to have somebody come into the nightclub we were working and take photos of us while we were on stage. It was the really fucking cool agent guy.