Tough Love

George Carlin is still in love.

The 62-year-old comedian has become such an irascible, acid-tongued grouch over the last decade that it can be hard to see through his invective-laced material, which he brought for the first time to the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Sunday.

But look close and it’s obvious the love’s still there. Not for anyone or thing in particular, as he pointed out during his opening 30-minute bit running down the lengthy list of “things that [tick] me off.”

It’s a lifelong affection for language and passion for the truth that continue to fuel his performances.

Over the last 40-some years he’s evolved from button-down stand-up (in the ‘60s) to counterculture icon (‘70s) to razor-edged social critic (‘80s) to professional grump (‘90s). If we were electing a National Curmudgeon next year, he’d be a shoo-in.

Pacing the lip of a black-curtained stage and outfitted in black polo shirt, trousers and work shoes, Carlin rarely relented expressing--in the grittiest terms--his intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society.

“I don’t have pet peeves,” he announced at the outset of his 70-minute show. “I have major, psychotic [expletive] hatred.”

Hatred for airport security, strutting macho cigar smokers, disingenuous politicians, religious types, the police and even--perhaps especially--children.

He makes the hatred funny--something he manages much of the time--through his skill with words and observational powers. When he fails, it’s because he falls back on artless cursing of one of the targets of his wrath.

“Everybody says we have to protect the children,” he noted. “Well [expletive] the children!” Then he suggested that with the ever-growing number of laws and regulations enacted to protect kids, “Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid--just to save a few thousand lives!”

In the post-Seinfeld era of stand-up comedy that celebrates meaningless minutiae of middle-class daily life, Carlin still forces audiences to weigh the real trade-offs we make in the name of security.

Many comics, for instance, try to milk laughs from the near-universal experience of dealing with airport security. Only Carlin researches the laundry list of weapons that are allowed in carry-on bags, which he recounted with machine-gun like rapidity: “A knife, a hatchet, a chain saw, knitting needles . . . “ and beyond, building to an absurd climax that was precisely his point about the futility of trying to assure passengers that they are ever truly safe from danger in the skies.

“Take a [expletive] chance!” he brayed, in what really is one of his cornerstone themes.

Carlin’s appearance at the Performing Arts Center, incidentally, constituted a chance taken, even though center officials merely rented the hall to an outside promoter rather than make him one of their offerings.

Remember Carlin’s classic bit on oxymorons (“large shrimp,” “military intelligence”)? At one time, it could have included “George Carlin at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.”

On Sunday, he used most, if not all, of the infamous “seven dirty words” you can’t say on television, and several dozen times apiece at that. Never has the crimson interior of Segerstrom Hall glowed so blue.

More than perhaps any other show, Carlin’s confirms the arrival of a new millennium, culturally as well as chronologically, at a facility where coffee and cola were banned for a decade for fear they’d stain the carpets.

The audience--made up mostly of adoring baby boomers, but also a strong sprinkling of equally enthusiastic teenagers and those in their 20s--lapped up Carlin’s act, never seeming to take umbrage that so much of his rage is aimed at them and their suburbanite peers.

To close, he stopped his grousing and dusted off his classic routine about the differences between baseball and football and how the language of each reflects how our culture has changed from the advent of baseball (“a 19th century pastoral game”) to the rise of football (“a 20th century technological struggle”).

He said he was taking a rare dip into his past partly to sharpen up the bit so he could to use it tonight when he appears on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Like a rock star playing one of his greatest hits, Carlin coursed confidently through its familiar passages--”In football,” he announced in stentorian tones, “you wear a helmet; in baseball,” his tone shifting to kidlike playfulness, “you wear a cap!”--throwing in a few refinements to keep it fresh for the devoted.

It’s a beautifully constructed piece, a thing of wonder--even when you know the punch lines--that distills Carlin’s expertise with language. That’s what makes him a treasure--even when he’s in a bad mood.