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Louis CK honors George Carlin

Bromista5 · 4.9M views · 2011-09-05 · 9:59

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Overview

Louis CK speaks at a 2010 NYPL tribute to George Carlin about how Carlin's habit of discarding material and writing a new hour each year changed his own career. He becomes emotional describing it.

On Hacker News

HN finds the story inspiring beyond comedy: getting good by throwing out your old work and starting over.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2011–2025

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What people said

shinykitten · 2011-12 · Strong recommendation

In this video [1], he explains what happened "somewhere along the way". TL;DW: He failed at being a successful comic by telling the same jokes for 15 years, then got inspired by and emulated George Carlin, threw everything away and started over. His story is not only inspiring, it transcends comedy. The idea that a mixed but passionate reaction is better than a lukewarm one applies to startups as well as entertainment. [1] [VIDEO]

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goatforce5 · 2013-04 · Recommendation

Here's 10 mins or so from Louis CK at a tribute to Carlin: [VIDEO] He says his first hour of comedy took 15 years to build up, and he hated all of it. Then he heard an interview with Carlin where he said every year he threw all his old jokes away and would have to come up with a new hour of material, forcing him to get to the core of what was important and real (or something)... And that's when Louis says his career took off.

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dijit · 2025-01 · Reference

If I'm being honest with myself, the "Happy Birthday" pre-written text forces me to choose something else to write as my personal message. Yeah, it's frustrating in the moment that the exact sentiment I want to express (have a happy birthday) is already taken and repeating it seems lazy, but when I think about it: it's lazy to just express such a generic sentiment anyway. Asking them to think on the year, and to look ahead, maybe reminding them of some things they've done and achieved is not only nicer to receive, it's nicer to write too. I don't hate Hallmark for this (though I do in the moment that I'm confronted with this random creative challenge). Lois C.K says this about George Carlin: [VIDEO] > So I was doing it at a Chinese restaurant called Kowloon in Boston, it’s August, Massachusetts, and I was sitting in my car after the show just feeling like, “This was all a big mistake, I’m not good enough, and I felt like my jokes were a trap, and I listened to a CD of George talking about comedy and workshopping it and talking about it seriously, and the thing that blew me away about this fellow was he kept putting out—specials, every year there’d be a new George Carlin special, a new George Carlin album, they just kept coming, and each one was deeper than the next, and I just thought, how can he do that? And it made me literally cry that I could never do that. I was telling the same jokes for fifteen years, so I’m listening and they asked him, “How do you do all this materia

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Sources

Video by Bromista5, played through YouTube.

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