Friday, April 29, 2005 | 8:57 a.m.
Note to comic genius George Carlin: Lighten up, dude. Chill out. Take a pill. Smoke something. Sip some wine and relax. An edgy comedian on edge, cursing his audience, isn't a pretty site.
"Please don't help me," Carlin growled at someone who said something indistingu ishable to most of the all-but sold out room. "Your name is not on the ticket, so shut the (expletive deleted) up, would you please?
"This (expletive deleted) is very exact and I don't like to get confused. Just laugh or go home or don't do anything, I don't give a (expletive deleted), but I don't need the (expletive deleted) comments."
Then he turned on most of the rest of us.
"This audience is bad enough," he said. "This is a Saturday night group. There are a lot of tight (expletive deleted) here ... Las Vegas is a crap shoot. These (expletive deleted) people wearing short pants scratching their (expletive deleted) they're from (expletive deleted) Thailand or something ..."
That was early in a performance one night during his premiere week at the Stardust Theater, where Carlin is appearing since parting ways with the MGM Grand.
Executives at the MGM thought he was becoming too morbid with his extended routine about suicide, so Carlin a brilliant observer of humanity and all its weaknesses packed up his (expletive deleted) and moved up the street, where he gave free rein to his thoughts about suicide.
"Statistics show every year a million people commit suicide," Carlin said. "That's 2,800 a day, one every 30 seconds."
He paused and looked at his watch.
"There goes another guy," he said. "I say guy because men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women even though women attempt it more. So men are better at it.
"That's something else you gals want to be working on. If you want to be truly equal you're going to have to start taking your lives in greater numbers."
During the suicide bit Carlin again became agitated with the audience, sparked by someone saying something, again indistinguishable to us farmers ("This is a typical Saturday night Las Vegas (expletive deleted) farmer audience," he said. "Farmers. We've got a lot of farmers and golfing (expletive deleted).")
His rage against us went on longer than some of his bits.
"Does security patrol this (expletive deleted) wild animal section over here?" Carlin said. "Don't we have a system? I'm new at this hotel. We used to just shut them up and kick them out on the second warning."
This from a guy who has made a nice living complaining about the loss of certain freedoms in this country, especially freedom of speech (those seven words that can't be uttered over the airwaves).
Today, Carlin is censoring his audiences.
Perhaps they thought that since he was such a fanatic about freedom of expression they could get away with expressing themselves during his show.
Wrong. Just ask the guy who was escorted out by a security guard.
Or the female who joined in the occasional verbal battle between Carlin and the audience, some of whom booed and yelled, "Get him out of here."
"Just calm down," he told the female. "Everybody knows you're here now. We're all happy to see you."
Then he turned to the audience again.
"Folks, one of the things I've done in all my shows is complain," Carlin said. "I don't believe there are many people here who ever followed my (expletive deleted). I don't believe you when you say you did. I don't believe that applause when I said HBO (he's got a special coming up).
"If you knew the kind of things I did you would have enjoyed this (expletive deleted) show (tonight), which you did not -- well some of you did, but for the most part this audience really (expletive deleted) sucked."
Carlin checked himself into a drug and alcohol rehab center last year after developing an addiction (moderate by most standards) to Vicodin and admitting abuse of other substances -- specifically wine and marijuana.
During an interview he noted that most of his life he had a low-level buzz on.
Maybe the loss of the buzz helped unleash his vitriolic outbursts. He seemed more wound up than usual, less willing to put up with the interjections by the customers.
When he wasn't spewing venom, he put on the show you would expect from Carlin, a rapid-fire, often hilarious dissertation on the human condition, language and society.
He opened the evening with the breathless bit, "Modern Man."
"I'm a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke free; a diversified, multicultural post-modern deconstructionist; politically, anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I've been uplinked and downloaded; I've been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing; I know the downside of upgrading; I'm a high-tech low-life, a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art bicoastal multitasker ..."
At the end of the evening, after completing a routine in which he explained why he liked natural disasters, especially those with high death tolls, he threw a bone of appeasement to the fans.
"You were good on that, you were better on that," he said. "I appreciate what you did on that one. Thank you for being better than I thought. You were alright in my (expletive deleted) book."
Big (expletive deleted) deal.
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