Jerry Seinfeld on George Carlin

Today in the New York Times, Jerry Seinfeld has an op-ed piece about George Carlin. It's short, so I'll plunk it in below in its entirety:

DYING IS HARD. COMEDY IS HARDER.
June 24, 2008
By Jerry Seinfeld

The honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO. Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster.

You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke and another comedian would say, “Carlin does it.” I’ve heard it my whole career: “Carlin does it,” “Carlin already did it,” “Carlin did it eight years ago.”

And he didn’t just “do” it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.

But his brilliance fathered dozens of great comedians. I personally never cared about “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” or “FM & AM.” To me, everything he did just had this gleaming wonderful precision and originality. I became obsessed with him in the ’60s. As a kid it seemed like the whole world was funny because of George Carlin. His performing voice, even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the naughtiest, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story.

I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, “Carlin already did it.”

What a great piece. It refrains from any oozing sentimentality and captures some sincere peer-to-peer reverence, which in my book is pretty much the best kind. Best of all, the article itself is structured like a great stand-up joke: a throwaway anecdote ends up the basis for the punchline at the end.

I wonder if there is a term for this type of joke set-up already, like Hitchcock's MacGuffin. If not, I'm ready to coin one: the sleight-of-hand execution reminds me of Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem in the Harry Potter books. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry runs across the "discolored tiara" when he's hiding his Potions book from Snape. And, of course, that old trinket ends up being pretty important by the time we get to Deathly Hallows.

Well diademed, Mr. Seinfeld. And happy travels, George.

More Mood-Killing Political Humor!

In the June 2nd issue of The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright has a piece on the current fractious state of Al Qaeda, going back to its roots at Cairo University in 1968 with the group Al Jihad. It is absolutely worth a read, if only to humanize and make fallible the ideologues behind it all. The article focuses on the rift between two former cohorts, Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant) and Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (who goes by Dr. Fadl, and who authored two of the most influential books on modern jihad). It seems Fadl has come to believe that indiscriminate violence is not the most effective way to spread Islam, and has written a new book from prison in Egypt that renounces his old methods of jihad as ineffective and against the will of God.

Last May, Fadl sent a fax to the London branch of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat briefly stating his new beliefs: "We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that...[t]here is a form of obedience that is greater than the obedience accorded to any leader, namely, obedience to God and His Messenger."

So why does this bit of news belong on my comedy blog? Because two months later, Zawahiri released a snarktastic video response, proving that even that even those with the most misanthropic view of life can somehow still be funny. "Do they now have fax machines in Egyptian jail cells?" he inquired. "I wonder if they're connected to the same line as the electric-shock machines."

How odd that Zawahiri, a man partly responsible for probably thousands of deaths, goes to sarcasm as his first line of defense. I guess unfettered, wild-eyed zealotism isn't something you can constantly sustain. And for me, it's particularly uncomfortable because that sounds like something Ben Karlin and his team would have come up with for Jon or Stephen. Comedy is a strange weapon, isn't it?

Profile: Maung Thura

I've been aware of Burmese comedian Maung Thura (he goes by "Zargana," which means "tweezers") since 2006, when I read this article in the Washington Post about the oppression of comedians in Myanmar. Here's an excerpt from that article:

"Most of the jokes in our country satirize the government and its corrupt system so the authorities are afraid of our jokes," said Maung Thura, a dental student turned stand-up comic barred from the stage since May. "It is very difficult to perform nowadays. Most of the comedians are banned."

Myanmar's brand of humor would seem innocuous in most societies, like a joke now making the rounds that Maung Thura told about a chat by an Englishman, an American and a man from Myanmar, also known as Burma.

"Our man who had no legs could climb Mt. Everest," brags the Englishman, and the American shoots back, "Our man sailed across the Pacific with no hands." Then the Burmese chimes in: "That's nothing. Our country has been ruled for 18 years by a group of men who have no heads."

But such cracks are enough to land comedians among Myanmar's more than 1,100 political prisoners, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch. The organization says the ruling junta "continues to ban virtually all opposition political activity and to persecute democracy and human rights activists."

The recent cyclone in Myanmar has been a severe test of this junta's unrelenting, bitchy chokehold on its citizens. Zargana has a track record of working on behalf of the people, from making films about HIV/AIDS awareness to speaking out in support of political uprisings. In the wake of Cyclone Nargis, he has been no different. Zargana has been working hard to provide relief to victims: he organized deliveries to outlying villages, to the tune of $6,500 worth of goods per day. This work has been financed by other entertainers and rich business professionals--essentially, people who can afford to help but are unwilling to deliver the aid themselves, for fear of government retribution.

Unfortunately, the donors were right to be hesitant. On Wednesday evening of this week, Zargana was arrested at his home in Yangon. The police trashed his house and seized a bunch of computer files ("they're in the computer?!"), including photos and videos of cyclone victims, as well as footage from the super-extravagant 2006 wedding of the daughter of the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. Talk about a class gap. You can read more about it in this recent New York Times article.

Predictably, this is not the first time Zargana has been detained. In 1990, he was jailed for four and a half years, along with other such dangerous criminal minds as democracy advocate and Nobel Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi and two students each given 19-year sentences (!) for writing some questionable poetry. The closest American equivalent of locking Zargana up that I can think of would be the FBI arresting Lewis Black for volunteering at the 52nd Street Project (which he does, which is awesome). Pretty unthinkable. So what makes Zargana so dangerous?

Well, for one thing he prefers Benny Hill to Mr. Bean (zing). He is also an acclaimed film director, master of the political double entendres (who knew there was such a thing?) and accomplished satirist--essentially, Zargana is a Burmese Beppe Grillo. In this 2006 BBC news article, a reporter asks to hear some of his material:

"Ah," he said, almost apologetically, "I'm afraid Burmese jokes can be rather subtle and long".

But he told me one about a newspaper article. A man was reported to have died of an electric stock but everyone knew the paper was lying because the economy is in such a mess that most of the time the power is off.

I suppose if I were an uptight, insecure ruling junta, I'd want Zargana out of my hair, too. Isn't it impressive how relevant comedy can be when it is plopped into a pressure cooker? It's like watching the Daily Show when Jon is having a really "on" night. Except no one is going to break into Jon's Manhattan apartment and throw him in the clinker for showing a montage of clips proving Dick Cheney is a big squidgy liar.

So send positive, pie-in-the-face vibes out into the world for Maung Thura and his comedic compatriots. In that vein, let's close with some Aaron Sorkin-y inspiration, via that 2006 Washington Post article:

Even faced with a performance ban, Zargana seems resolute and brash. He speaks of a "whispering campaign" and insists under-the-table humor will persist in Myanmar's taxicabs, teashops and dining rooms.

"Burmese people love to laugh," he said. "But if I can't speak, jokes will still spread. The people will make them up themselves."