I also don’t care if an athlete’s wife had a baby, how she is, how the baby is, how much the baby weighs or what the fuckin’ baby’s name is. It’s got nothin’ to do with sports. Leave it out!

GEORGE CARLIN

brain droppings

And I’m tired of athletes whose children are sick. Healthy men with sick children; how banal. The kid’s sick? Talk it over privately. Don’t spread it all over television. Have some dignity. And play fuckin’ ball!!

Nor do I wanna know about some athlete’s crippled little brother or his hemophiliac big sister. The Olympics specialize in this kind of mawkish bullshit. Either his aunt has the clap, or his kid has a forty-pound mole, or his high school buddy overdosed on burritos, etc. Can’t sports exist on television without all this embarrassing, maudlin, super-sentimental, tear-jerking bullshit? Keep your personal disasters to yourself, and get in there and score some fuckin’ points!

And I don’t care for all that middlebrow philosophical bullshit you get from athletes and coaches when someone on the team has a serious illness or dies in an accident. They give you that stuff, “When something like this happens, you realize what’s really important. It’s only a game.” Bullshit! If it’s only a game, get the fuck out of the business. You know what’s important? The score. Who won. I can get plenty of sad tales somewhere else in this victim-packed society. Fuck all that dewy-eyed sentimental bullshit about people who are sick. And that includes any athlete whose father died a week before the game who says, “This one’s for Pop.” American bathos. Keep it to yourself. Play ball!

And I shouldn’t even have to mention severly injured athletes who are playing on “nothing but heart.” Fuck you! Suck it up and get out there, motherfucker.

And they’re always tellin’ ya that one of these athletes has a tumor. Don’t they know that no one gives a fuck? You know when you care about a tumor? When you have it! Or someone

close to you. Who cares about an athlete? No one cares if a rock star gets a tumor. What’s so special about an athlete? By the way, you ever notice you don’t hear as much about rock stars getting these tumors as you do about athletes? Maybe the drug life is a little better for us than all that stupid sweaty shit the athletes put themselves through. Just speculating.

And I don’t wanna know about sports teams that sew the i initials of dead people on their jerseys for one whole season as if it really means something. Leave that mawkish bullshit in the locker room. I don’t wanna know who’s in mourning. Play ball, you fuckin’ grotesque overdeveloped nitwits!

And you can skip tellin’ me about the Chevrolet player of the game. A thousand-dollar contribution to a scholarship fund in the athlete’s name. Shit. A thousand dollars won’t even keep a kid in decent drugs for one semester. Fuck Chevrolet.

And when are they gonna discover that no one cares if an athlete is active in local charities? People don’t want to know about some coke-headed, steroid monstrosity who’s working to help the National Douche Bag Foundation. Or how much he cares about inner-city kids. Can the cocksuck-er play ball? Fine. Then suit him up and get him the fuck out there on the field and let him injure someone.

One last thing on this topic. No one, repeat, no one is inter ested in athletes who can sing or play musical instruments. We already have people to perform these tasks. They’re called singers and musicians, and, at last count, it would seem we have quite enough of them. The fact that someone with an IQ triple his age has mastered a few simple chords is unimportant and of monumental disinterest. Play ball! ,,

GEORGE CARLIN PASSTHEROLES

I’m surprised that all this shit about role models has persisted a* long as it has. Why should a kid need a role model? You know what you tell a kid? “Get the fuck out there, get a job, and make a contri-. button.” Never mind that role model shit. If this country is dependent on things like role models, we’re much worse off than I thought.

People say athletes should be role models. I never looked up to ai^ athlete, did you? I liked them. I didn’t copy them. Did you ever listen to one of those guys talk? Would you want your kid to turn out like that? Willing to completely subordinate his ego and individuality for the sake of a group whose sole purpose is to compete with oth&r groups? Can’t have a mustache? Gotta wear a suit jacket? Shit! kid needs a role model and you ain’t it, you’re both fucked.

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I like sports because I enjoy knowing that many of the&e macho athletes have to vomit before a big game. Any guy who would take a job where you gotta puke first is my kinda guy. 6

I read that Monica Seles got stabbed. And although I have nothing against Monica Seles, I’m glad somebody in sports gjot stabbed. I like the idea of it; it’s good entertainment. If we”re lucky, it’ll spread all through sports. And show business, to>o! Wouldn’t you like to see a guy jump up on stage and stab soitne famous singer? Especially a real shitty pop singer? Mayrbe they’ll even start stabbing comedians. Fuck it, I’m ready! I never perform without my can of mace. I have a switchblade knife, too. I’ll cut your eye out and go right on telling jokess. 56

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In football, I root for the Oakland Raiders because they hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents, and fuckups, they have lots of penalties, fights, and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked. Also, they don’t have a lot of Christians kneeling down to pray after touchdowns. Christians are ruining sports. Someday, the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome, white, heartland teams that pray together and don’t deliver late hits.

You know the best thing I did for myself during the past five years? I told sports to go take a flying fuck. I was fed up with the way I related to professional sports, so I reordered the relationship on my own terms. I became a little more selective.

I couldn’t believe how much time I had wasted watching any old piece of shit ballgame that happened to show up on TV. I must have thought there was some inborn male obligation to tune in and root every time a bunch of sweaty assholes got together to mix it up in a stadium somewhere.

I also realized I was wasting perfectly good emotional energy by sticking with my teams when they were doing poorly. My rooting life was scarcely better than those Cubs fans who think it’s a sign of character to feel shitty all the time. It’s absurd.

I decided it’s not necessary to suffer and feel crappy just because my teams suck. What I do now is cut ‘em loose for awhile. I simply let them go about losing, as I go about living my life. Then, when they’ve improved, and are doing well once again, I get back on board and enjoy their success.

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GEORGE C A R L I N . pressure, and widespread gambling scandals. An earthquake Uj–. in a ballpark isn’t such a bad thing to me, either. I don’t give a shit about the outcome of the game, I’m just looking for an interesting story. I pray that some year the baseball postseason will include ^ only teams with outdoor stadiums in cold-weather cities. And then I hope there are repeated freak storm systems that keep K coming through the Midwest and the East, and all during the playoffs there are constant rainouts and postponements. And I pray for the whole thing to continue for months, so the games are pushed further and further back, and eventually the World Series is played in January. And then I hope it’s cold and windy and icy and snowy, and a lot of players get <J hurt, and the games turn out to be a national disgrace. That’s f the kind of shit I root for. f

Then there are other times when I’m not as positive. And I think to myself, Fuck sports! Fuck sweat, fuck jock itch, and fuck all people who are out of breath. Fuck the players, 0 the sports media, the owners, and above all, the sports fans. Double-fuck the sports fans. Actually, though, to tell you the truth, if I had to endure those owners on the same day-today basis as I do the sports fans, I’m sure the owners would . quickly work their way to the bottom of my list. Lower than a snake’s ballbag. Remember, owners are always rotten people no matter what they own, and no matter where they turn up in life.