comedy raze i got to see george carlin perform live in detroit fifteen years ago. as a thing i got to cross off the bucket list, it was pretty great. as standup comedy ... not so much. this was "life is worth losing" era george carlin. he opened with a piece called "a modern man" — a dazzling display of verbal dexterity that proved his clean material was sometimes even better than the blue stuff. it was all downhill from there. even with a younger, more depraved mind, i couldn't find the humour in jokes about autoerotic asphyxiation and what george called "posthumous female transplants". don't google that. just don't. at his best, this was a guy who pulled the world apart with his fingers and belched fire on all the bullshit and hypocrisy. there wasn't much of that happening at this show. it felt like he'd run out of ideas and turned the shock value up to thirteen to compensate. what stuck with me was the opening comic. i forget his name. i forget most of his jokes. one of them was about how mick jagger was getting so old, roadies for the rolling stones were going to have to start shocking him with a defibrillator when his heart stopped beating onstage, and after the electric current brought him back to life he was going to start singing "start me up". that was about as good as it got. he got a few laughs from the audience. i couldn't even force a smile. halfway through his set, his eyes locked onto me. i stared at him. he froze. he forced out an embarrassed little laugh, sucked in his breath, and then everything stopped for a second. he gave me a look that seemed to say, "i'm sorry. i know i'm not funny." it was the closest thing to a moment of humanity the night had to offer. it almost made me wish i could make myself laugh at his horrible jokes. almost. 210813 what's it to you? who go blather from