If George Carlin has been known to use outrage and combine it with a razor-sharp wit to express his comedy, and if in his previous outing: DOING IT AGAIN, he was his usual manic, curmudgeonly self, JAMMIN' IN NEW YORK finds him just this shy of pure rage.
It comes to no surprise to anyone who has seen Carlin on stage that he isn't one to shy away from telling it like it is for better or for worse. He begins his routine by immediately going political: about the Persian Gulf War, he says, "It's first war we've had that was on every news channel, plus cable. We like war because we're a war-like people (...) We're good at it. And it's a good thing we are, we're not very good at anything else anymore!" With this he begins his attack on how we as a nation can bomb other countries, especially "brown people" (except Germans, and only because they were trying to 'cut in on our action.'). He talks about being his own person, someone who thinks for himself, and about how war is about "prick-waving" and nothing else. And seeing it today as yesterday it makes sense: all he's pointing the finger at is on the general situation and where we're headed, and no one is better than he in making war as a concept a sexual thing and an issue of manhood.
But he soon gets the political stuff out of the way, and goes into dissertations on embarrassing situations -- the trivial things we go through -- which are flat-out funny. No one better than Carlin to talk about how when there are times when you're coming up the stairs and think there is one extra step, or when you've woken up and not known which day it was. And of course, his forte: language, and our misuse or over use of it for things that don't need such technicality. Who better than he to talk about the minutiae of airplane instructions? Carlin, with his wonderful language and powerful wit, makes it happen. Often, it's funny, sometimes, a little cringe-inducing, but give me someone who does not like his humor and his incursions into the darker side of humanity and I will give you a liar. What is comedy, than a reflection of people's foibles and human tragedy?
