[Yamer]

George Carlin's American Dream - Available on HBO Max and/or Crave

There is no greater influence on how I view life and the world than George Carlin, so this documentary wasn't only important to me as a fan, but also important to me as a kind of disciple. I have seen all the specials and I have read all the books. There is still footage and perspectives that I have never seen before.

This was tough for me because some of the stuff was unseen and it felt like I had another chance to see him alive again. As a stan it was beautiful to see even further into who he was and why he was.

I have no shame in saying I welled up throughout the two parts. Hell, Apatow and company made me feel things for Garry Shandling and I didn't even know his body of work.

June 22 is still a trigger day for me because Carlin passed away that date in 2008. Learning the details of it made it worse. I'm enriched for knowing but I'm still pissed off they said it out loud, if that makes sense?

Whenever I post or talk about Carlin there are always people that say, with all respect due, they don't understand what made him so funny. They never really had the same laughs they did with other stand-up comedians. To me that's what made him special.

George Carlin had a divine sense of the world and comedy that was transcendent. He made it OK and enlightening to joke or talk about things deeply personal to us, such as culture, nationalism, and religion. These were engrained ways of life critically dissected, deconstructed, and destroyed through the very foundations on which they were established. It was an absurdist take on modern philosophy, and I'll never stop yearning for Carlin's takes on every stupid human thing that happens. Any time you find yourself nodding along and agreeing, even if you weren't rolling in the aisles laughing, meant you got the whole of his performance without necessarily knowing or acknowledging.

I'll never accept or come to close the loss of George Carlin's unmatched and timeless brilliance to the world, but this was as good a bookend I could imagine. #### I miss him.