George Carlin...

Before I type another word, let me openly, freely, and gladly say what you might be thinking; who in hell am I to eulogize a giant like George Carlin?

I have no right. Really, no right at all, no standing, none.

Like millions of others, though, I was a fan, a huge fan. As such, maybe a few thoughts are at least OK.

It wasn't all that long ago that I wrote a paragraph or two about George Carlin, and of how he could still make tears roll down my cheeks more than forty years after I'd seen him for the first time.

At the time, what popped into my head was that Parade Day in Scranton was such a spectacle that it could probably give him ample material for three separate hour-long HBO Specials.

And I don't for one second think that any of Carlin's observations on Scranton's annual weekend rites of being Irish would have made any friendly sons or daughters very happy.

Carlin was Irish, used to be Catholic, grew up in the "New York City Irish Culture," and I do believe there is such a thing, yet didn't seem particularly proud to be Irish.

Not at all unproud, as in ashamed or embarrassed, mind you, just not much impressed by the roll of the ethnic dice that brings us all to where we are today.

Carlin also had trouble with "God Bless The Irish!" Why the Irish alone, he asked. I understood.

"God Bless America!" Great, what about the rest of the world? That bothered him, too. Same here.

It is indeed presumptuous of me to write something, anything, about a man who I believe to be one of the funniest who's ever lived. Granted, admitted, confessed, I have no idea what passed for funny, oh, two hundred years ago, or really even a hundred years ago. Sixty or seventy years ago what Americans laughed at wasn't really funny.

Why do you think Vaudeville faded away? It didn't go out of style, people just one day realized that what those slapstickers up on stage were doing wasn't really funny.

Some years later, Americans finally admitted that The Lucy Show wasn't funny, neither was Bewtiched, when you got right down to it.

God forbid I say it, but Gilligan's Island was never funny. Today, we love those shows for one reason; they bring back our childhood, in turn making us all warm and fuzzy.

Carlin was never warm and fuzzy. Funny he was. He was funny from the very beginnings of the 60s, then on through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and right up until his last edgy performance, little more than a week before he died.

George Carlin was funny. American knew he was funny as long as forty years ago. It might be closer to fifty years ago. I first saw him on The Ed Sullivan Show. He was funny. Straight, clean, and clean-shaven with short hair, he was fall-down funny.

Now all I keep hearing is him referred to as a "counterculture hero." I don't think that's quite right. It's not adequate to pidgeon-hole him as some sort of "funny hippy." If he was a hero to some counterculture, it was a counterculture he himself created, controlled, and ruled.

It's also a counterculture populated by most living and breathing Americans. If that be true, and I propose it is, no such counterculture exists. It couldn't.

Last week, I watched Larry King's hour devoted to Carlin. Clearly, Mr. King was a big fan. He'd had Carlin on many times, where he managed to get him to be himself, to engage him in honest conversation. A lot of comics can't do that. Take away their rehearsed, studied, and honed routine, and they're naked. The don't know quite what to say, or how to say it. They seem to have trouble being themselves, which just might be why they became comedians in the first place.

Jerry Seinfeld hopped on via satellite with King. Seinfeld, and I'm not an un-fan, seemed lost, bewildered, and uncomfortable. The one-on-one interview is not Seinfeld's venue.

King was joined live in-studio by Bill Maher. Maher was a completely different story. Very comfortable, more than capable of answering direct questions.

Maher said one thing that really struck me, one thing that turned my attention even tighter.

Lenny Bruce's name inevitably crept into the conversation. I knew it would, I could feel it coming.

For forty years so many have rigidly drawn so many parallells betwen Carlin and Bruce. The comparisons have become routine and predictable. I missed Bruce by a couple years, I'm just a little too young(even at 58) to remember his career hitting apogee before self-destruction. I have, however, seen movies, watched old film clips, and sat through several of Bruce's archived routines.

What Bill Maher said was that Lenny Bruce wasn't funny, but George Carlin was. I agree.

Lenny Bruce's strength was in having the nerve to stand on a stage and lob F-Bombs at the audience. Absent the F-Bombs, Bruce really wasn't funny. That's what Maher said. That's also what I have long thought of Lenny Bruce.

Bold, groundbreaking, cutting edge, courageous...but not particularly funny. Tragic, heroic, compelling in his sincerity, but simply not funny.

Then came Carlin. Early on, no F-Bombs, yet funny. As he grew and matured, bring on the F-Bombs. No one used an F-Bomb like George Carlin. He was masterful in their use. To me, it's obvious why his use of profanity was so effective; it wasn't just profanity, it was profanity used properly, woven within incredibly funny material.

George Carlin is dead. There isn't another George Carlin out there. I doubt there ever will be.

And if George Patrick Denis Carlin was as honest with us as he led us to believe, he really doesn't much care that he's dead.

It's Just Not Fun...

Some time back I got to whining about the difficulty of getting across Pennsylvania by air, of how connecting to one of America's major cities which sits within our state is hours and hours away, regardless of how you cross the miles. Pittsburgh is not a quick trip.

You drive, roughly five hours plus change. That alone argues against driving. That doesn't factor in the monotony of I-80. So help me, there is no bigger fan of green space anywhere than right here behind these keys, but crossing Pennsylvania via I-80 means looking at the same tree for way too long.

By rail, are you kidding me? By rail is only possible via Harrisburg, and that makes for a seven hour trip.

So the easiest way is by air. Actually, although not easy, it is still the quickest trip at three to three and one half hours. However, as indicated earlier, you need to picky about what flights you use, or else turn the trip into an all day event.

So it was on a recent cloudy morning I parked in the new garage at The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, yanked the handle on my spinner, and walked into what is truly a beautiful new facility. No joke there. None. The place is impressive. I hadn't flown from Avoca since the new terminal opened. It is very impressive.

Impressive in an empty cathedral kind of way.


Walking up to the check-in I smiled and said, "Uhh, am I the only passenger in the building?"

Without missing a beat, the pleasant guy behind the counter said, "Right now, yeah, you're about it." Do you suppose he's heard that before?

Let me stop here and tell you that out and back, all airline personnel, both on the ground and in the air, were terrific. All NSA personnel were cordial, effective, and quick in the performance of their duties. And best yet, all flights were on time.

But something is wrong. What it is is pretty basic, and it applies to so much these days - it's just not fun anymore.

Wander back to a different time, not all that long ago, when flying was, well, flying was special. Special is an overworked word, no argument here, but it fits. Flying was every bit a special event. It was not something you did every day.

Leaving from Avoca meant allowing a leisurely hour to have drink or two in the lounge prior to boarding. A couple of belts always made flying easier for me, which is another reason I was partial to afternoon departures. That's not to say that a couple belts can't be had early in the day. Connecting in Philadelphia last week I noticed the bar nearest our gate was full. Saddled up on every stool was a flyer who finds the skies far more agreeable with an eyeopener or two. Looked like a nice variety on tap, too.

Boarding meant walking down a jetway and stepping inside a big jet.

That big jet was, somewhat chronologically for me, a DC-9, a 727, next the MD-80, then finally a 737. Real airplanes for real people doing something special. Real airplanes of which there were many, and I assume there still are. What did they do with them all? Are they mothballed somewhere in the desert?A couple seconds poking around and my own question is answered - yes - yes they are mothballed in a desert, the Mojave Desert. Above is a lonesome fleet of ex-USAir 727s sitting in the Mojave, never to see service again. I'd be willing to bet that at least one of those Boeings up there was in and out of Avoca daily for years. I'll bet I was on it.The first big jet I ever boarded at Avoca(I don't care where it really is, I'm still calling it Avoca.)was just like the one above; an Allegheny DC-9. Back then, Allegheny had just become USAir and most of the fleet had yet to be repainted. There's a pile of DC-9s sitting in the Mojave, too.

Boarding also meant smiling faces of flight attendants, of which there were at least two, sometimes three. Whether two or three, they'd get you settled and be around with the cart shortly after wheels up. Now, there is no cart. Now, there is but one flight attendant. Now, flying sucks.


Finding your assigned seat didn't mean playing Twister with a half dozen sweaty, nervous, and exasperated cabin-mates who'd about had it with flying before the push-back.


The center aisle was wide enough so that you weren't acutely aware that the pressure on your thigh was the backside of someone you really, really don't want to touch as they bent in half trying to insinuate him or herself headlong into a window seat designed for the frame of an athletic nine year old.

So, with that in mind, let's fly out, then fly back. One route there, a different one here.

Avoca to Philadelphia...Check-in took less than a minute. Security, took less than a minute. At the gate, a lovely woman behind a counter from whom to buy coffee and have a bit of a gab. Assembled for the flight, very few people. There was me, and there was...me. Within minutes another passenger arrived. Good. After a few more minutes passed, an announcement; the flight was delayed an hour. Oh, crap. I have a connection to make in order to make a 2:00 PM meeting in Pittsburgh. Another couple minutes go by and another announcement; the flight is back on schedule. Boarding begins. Nothing remarkable, except that it's a regional jet, about the biggest we get here nowadays. What puzzled me were the number of people who showed at the last minute to catch this flight. We're up, we're down. The regional jet is small, uncomfortable, crammed, cramped, and really plain old shoddy looking on the inside. Presumably, it's aeronautically fit and airworthy. Right? Roughly twenty minutes of air-time and I'm now getting coffee in Philadelphia along with my travel-mates, Bill and Lynn, with whom I didn't sit. They made it so much easier. Thank you. I owe you one or two.

Philadelphia to Pittsburgh...Rinse and repeat. Same deal, same flight experience, only a bit longer, maybe an hour in the air, maybe a little less. Oh, we got something to drink, orange juice, water, soda, etc. Yipeee.

Pittsburgh to Cleveland...Quick check-in. Crowded, jammed security, but fast. Shoes off and through in under five minutes. Why Pitt has a land-side terminal and an air-side terminal, I don't know. You hop a subway from one to the other, it takes maybe a minute. This is where the suck part begins. Commence the sucking. I walk to my gate. I look out. No plane. Shortly, there is a plane. It's not what I wanted to see, and sure as hell is not what I wanted to board and fly. To see what I don't want to see, I have to look down, way down. There it sits, a dinky, high-wing twin engine prop job. It's 2008. I'm about to board a plane that looks like something Allegheny Commuter used to fly out of Avoca in the early 70s. We have to walk down a flight of stairs, like we're going into a basement, then walk across the ramp, placing our carry-ons onto a cart ourselves. Now we walk up maybe three steps into a pathetically small aircraft within which the temperature had to have been a chewy 117 degrees. The only AC is the one you'll get once this plane makes altitude (hopefully) and begins to suck in the cooler air to be found at 21,000 feet. To say that everyone in that plane was soaked with sweat is the very definition of understatement. The FA apologizes dozens of times for the conditions. It's not her fault. She's as moist as the rest of us.

Cleveland to Avoca...Same exact experience, only a little longer. The flight is a bit beyond an hour. Once on the ground in Avoca, the pilot actually came out of the cockpit and he apologized for the miserably flawed conditions under which we just paid a lot of money to fly. He, of course, is and was right. Flying is not fun these days, it's barely acceptable. If you ask me, it's not acceptable. Lacking an alternative, we're stuck.

To wrap this up...

Our brand new airport was as empty upon return as when I left. What troubles me is that it's really not at all indicative of some of the great things that are happening here. If your first exposure to NE PA is our airport, you're off on the wrong foot, you've got the wrong idea about this place so many of us are proud to call home.

Demanding that we do something, anything, about the situation is pointless. By all accounts, fewer and fewer people are flying. Even fewer are anticipated to do so in the near future, which makes the future of air travel shaky.

The expense alone is shutting down the occasional pleasure flyer, the person who, perhaps on impulse, wants to wing up to Boston for a weekend, or out Chicago just to sightsee, or feels like the dry heat of New Mexico in the middle of February.

To be sure, air travel will always be there. Also to be sure, major American cities will always have choices and options. It's the little guys like us that worry me.

Failure To Blog...

Bits and pieces, odds and ends, scraps and trimmings, all say about the same thing. They help preface you having something to say about a number of different matters, but not a lot about any one of them. Random thoughts is another one. The way I see it, most of my thoughts are random. Life is the process of weaving a whole pile of random thoughts together and bringing them to life...or it's something else altogether.

All the above have been used to nausea over the years. Personally, my least favorite is bits and pieces.

How else do you slide into these things?

The art of the segue, I suppose, is a leftover from my broadcasting days. In radio, and to some extent television, you just don't pop right into a subject, or jump from one topic to another like someone who never heard the word focus. You go gently, smoothly. You make the seamless transition. That, at least, is what you hope to do.

At times, you get lucky. At others, you do not.

On my mind today, a number of things.

Butterflies and hummingbirds. Used to be we had an abundance of both on our property, whether resident here or just passing through. Now, we do not. Used to be that, when we put out the hummingbird feeder, we'd see hummers within a half hour. Now, we do not. Our feeder's been hanging from the deck for at least two weeks. So far, not a single hummingbird's been spotted. That photo is from at least two years ago. We've all heard of the perplexing decline of honeybees. I fear a decline of other pollinators as well. More than anything else, I hope I am wrong.

Property reassessment. I've yet to hear one county taxpayer complain about the new tax rate. What I do hear is non-stop is complaining about the new Fair Market Values of most properties. Nine out of ten people I know are absolutely convinced that what they are now being told is the market value of their little piece of paradise is nowhere near what anyone would pay to separate them from that piece. Given our new value, I've joined the absolutely convinced and do believe a lot of mistakes were made. We're now hearing the average mistake, whether over or under, is 41%.

Lack of air-conditioning. Twice in the last three days I stopped at different retail outlets, department stores in malls, and felt like I had stepped off a tramp steamer at port somewhere in The Java Sea at high noon. I can only suspect some retailers are looking to ease the pain of utility bills by either A) eliminating AC altogether, or B) Cranking it way on back to the point where your shoes get gooey. That's not nice.

Nothing on TV. Sweet Mother of The Universe, is there nothing can be done about the abundance of nothingness on my television? We were cable, then went to DBS, now back to cable, a story for another time. I don't know how many channels we have. Sitting there counting them always seemed an arrogant waste of what time we are all allotted aboard this planet. But I'll go a good guess and say it is well over 200, including a dozen or more feeds of a premium(and not including music channels, of which there are too many.)

I know, I know, I know. It's me, right? In many ways, yes, it is me. And it's you, too. It gets worse with age. You find less and less that floats your boat no matter where you go, what you look at, where you look. Yet, there is one glaring exception that may suggest it's not all age-related. Do you find that the one thing you stumble across that you might want to see is inevitably on one of the scant handful of channels your provider doesn't provide? Yeah, me too, it never fails. We end up watching a lot of SpongeBob.

How much for the sign? Now that the Diocese of Scranton is abandoning the former Bishop Hannon/Holy Cross High School, what about the new sign that hangs over the entrance on Wyoming Avenue? I figure they just bought it, so what do they want for it? If they don't sell it, what happens? Do they stick it in an attic somewhere? Whoops, can't do that, the diocese is running out of attics. Did the diocese know they were going to close the school when they bought the sign? If so, what did they pay for the sign? Surely they didn't spend the bucks to buy a really good sign, right? So, how much for the sign? While we're at it, how much for the school? It is for sale, correct?

Train Service...Again. The talk is back in the news one more time. This latest edition of The Train is Coming! focuses on not only service NYC to Scranton, but service NYC to Syracuse via Scranton and Binghamton. Amtrak is about to study. Or to study if they should study. Could be that's a pre-study feasibility study on studying that they have under advisement. Whatever. Hearing about it wears me out. It'll never happen.

As many like to borrow from Vonnegut "...and so it goes."