George Carlin – Jammin’ In New York

Jammin? In New York
George Carlin
HBO Live Performance 1991
MPI Home Video 2006
83 minutes

George Carlin Jammin’ In New York is an exceptional stand-up comedy DVD in many ways.

It was the first live on HBO George Carlin performance, it features some of this veteran and sometimes genius stand-up comic’s best comedy material ever, and also includes one of George Carlin’s longest set pieces, Airline Announcements, where the comic uses his sharp observational skills, his love of words, and his hatred for artificial language. Jammin’ In New York also includes the best comedy bit about the uselessness of golf ever.

The really scary thing about George Carlin Jammin’ In New York is how still a propos its opening number, Rockets and Penises in the Persian Gulf, is.

You know Carlin is talking about the first Iraq war and George Bush senior but it also applies to the current war in Iraq and George Bush junior as well as Dick Cheney. George Carlin is not kidding when he says “we’re a war like country” on this stand-up comedy DVD.

It is on this stand-up comedy DVD and live HBO performance that this stand-up comic is at his most socially relevant. Both Golf Courses for the Homeless and The Planet Is Fine (The People Are Screwed) are vicious but intelligent and thoughtful attacks on modern society and humanity.

In later years, Carlin is vicious but a lot of it sound and fury signifying nothing and you get the feeling he is just going through the motions his audience expects, on Jammin’ In New York the comic actually put thought behind the words and commentary.

Little Things We Share, the second cut on this stand-up comedy DVD is also very funny. Here, Carlin uses his observational skills to bring people together by pointing out what we all have in common. This, however, is just a set-up for the closing number where he rips people and their habits apart.

This stand-up comedy DVD, Jammin’ In New York is George Carlin at the top of his form, something you will not get again until his Life Is Worth Losing some fifteen years later.

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