I just spent a couple of minutes semi-frantically rummaging through a packed closet, looking for a box of photos that I know I have somewhere behind another box behind another box. I’m not gonna find it, so I can’t post the picture of a tiny distant speck that is George Carlin performing on a stage in the West Gym of SUNY Binghamton. I’d like to show you the picture, and I’ll keep looking later, but I’ll try to describe why I want to find it in less than 1000 words.

I literally just finished watching Bill and Ted Face the Music. If you’re remotely a fan of the earlier movies then this is worth the money, unless you want to donate it to your favorite Democratic political candidate, which arguably is a better use for $20 if you have to choose between the two. Otherwise it’s exactly the sweet scoop of optimistic whipped-creamy hope that I personally think the world needs at this moment on a Friday night, trying to take a breath before the world does it’s thing again. I’m not a movie reviewer, I don’t really care if you like it. I liked it. Spoiler alert: George Carlin’s dead. Spoiler alert: they do a pretty good job homaging him a couple of times. Spoiler alert: watch all the way through the credits. (I know that’s not how spoiler alerts work).

George Carlin came to our campus to perform in 1989, which means it was either freshman or sophomore year. That practically guarantees that my seat was part of a block of tickets that probably took up a better part of a row. I believe strongly, if I don’t know for a fact, that half of the guys from my freshman floor would’ve been sitting within a few feet of me for that show. Those young men, who helped raise me in my last teenage months, were the funniest, most generous, most curious about each other guys in the world. No one who lived on Champlain 3E would nominate me as the official historian for that floor in that group. I missed a bunch. I’m not qualified to speak of all the amazing guys in all the amazing details and all the best stories that happened those years. My personal nomination would be Stuart Flamen, who is also the funniest of us. Guys would just pack into a dorm room and listen to Stu read Dave Barry columns. I had my head up my ass for a good portion of it, so Adam with his mohawk Mike O with his constant heavy metal guitar, Arnold and Michael, Mike and beautiful dear departed Rob, RA Mike P, Mark who smoked, Mark who ran, upperclassmen John and Andy, who lost the housing lottery and wound up on a freshman floor, but were subsequently worshiped as gods, Dan, and even my wonderful roommate Steven, were sometimes supporting cast in my own personal version of Say Anything. 

Seeing a hologram of George Carlin in a movie threw me back in time to seeing the real George on stage surrounded by many if not most of the young men of that hall.  I can remember sharing meals, days, nights, classes, church masses, high holiday fasts, alcohol, and most importantly laughter. I choked up when I saw George on the screen, and I’m choking up composing this. I am a part of a generation of men that does not tell other men that they love them, and that is one of the only ways in which I am deprived, but gentlemen if you lived with me on a long hallway in Vestal New, York at the end of the 80s, or in a house at the beginning of the 90s know that I love you as honestly and fully as I know how. I loved you then, and I hope I showed it in every way I could.