O.C. COMEDY REVIEW : Venom, Vision Still Work for George Carlin

It’s just like George Carlin to face the ‘90s with a chip on his shoulder--and a stream of dirty words on his tongue.

The graying but unbowed Carlin--one of hip comedy’s respected elders, a veteran of the ‘60s who for years has combined angry topical commentary with a corkscrew-shaped view of life--brought all sorts of hot opinions to the Celebrity Theatre on Saturday night. George Bush, Jesse Helms and (of course) Dan Quayle all got drenched in Carlin spleen.

Plenty of it was rant and cant, Carlin’s yelps about how things should be, like when he took on the hypocrisies of the gay movement. Or just a lot of belching of four-letter words and dwelling on the bodily functions of people and their pets. You know, kid’s stuff.

But much of it was signature Carlin, an often right-on combination of venom and vision that was as intent on getting you to think as getting you to laugh.

As is his custom, Carlin kept coming back to the nature of language, both as a symbol of freedom and as a tool for the good and the bad. In Carlin’s world, people should say what they want, whenever they want, that’s what the U.S. Constitution is all about, anybody who tries to stop us is asking for it.

Carlin has a history of getting worked up over any abridgment of freedom of speech, going back to 1973 when his “seven dirty words” piece triggered a five-year Supreme Court battle on obscenity and the First Amendment. That list has grown into quite a monster by now and, as usual, Carlin closed his show with a raw reading of the censored slang he calls “primitive folk poetry.”

But before that, Carlin took on anybody--from Tipper Gore to feminists to the disabled--who in his view tries to prevent us from speaking our minds. He wondered why crippled has been expunged from the lexicon: It’s a perfectly accurate word that’s not an insult, he contended. Removing it, he continued, only shows our inability to face the realities of the handicapped.

He provided several examples of how the government has diluted the language to fit its own needs. In what turned into a mini-plea for Vietnam veterans, Carlin pointed out that during World War I, combat disorders simply were called shell-shock . Than in World War II, they became battle fatigue. The Korean War gave us operational exhaustion . And finally, soldiers returning from the Vietnam War suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder .

“I wonder if those guys would have got the help they needed a lot sooner if the government had said they were ‘shell-shocked,’ ” Carlin yelled. “The pain is buried under jargon.”

The performance wasn’t all political; about half focused on Carlin’s cockeyed observations and little stories, many about people and their pets, especially dogs. A particular favorite concerned the proud redneck dog owner who kept telling everybody, “My dog is different, you gotta admit he’s different. He’s got one leg. I always have to lean him against something.”

Then there were Carlin’s ideas for new products, like a yo-yo with a 2,000-foot string that you use at the Grand Canyon, and the flashlight “that only shines at things worth seeing.”

He also gave some advice on how to annoy people. Want to bug a bank teller? Wait in the longest line and then ask for change for a nickel. Want to bug your cleaners? Ask them to rotate the buttons on your shirt or take the stains from one pair of your pants and put them on another.

Not all of his bits settled well. In contending that any topic is worth humorizing, Carlin tried to make light of rape. Yes, rape can be funny, he said, asking the audience to “picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.” It escalated into a routine that wasn’t funny, but shortsighted and insensitive.