Brain Droppings

Violent American movies like Die Hard, Terminator, and Lethal leapon do very well in places like Canada, Japan, and Europe. Very well. et these countries do not have nearly the violence of the United States. 11989, in all of Japan, with a population of 150 million, there were 754 mrders. In New York City that year, with a population of only 7.5 mil-on, there were 2,300. It’s bred in the bone. Movies and television don’t lake you violent; all they do is cha

Americans even manage to turn positive experiences into vio->nce. Like sports championships. In Detroit, in 1990, the Pistons won le NBA championship: eight people dead. The Chicago Bulls, 1993: ine shot, 1,000 arrested. Montreal, the Canadiens, 1993: 170 injured, 7 police cars vandalized, and $10 million in damages. I’m glad it’s Lappened in a place like Montreal, so these bigoted shit stains who all in on sports-talk shows can’t blame it all on the blacks.

brain droppings

I could mention plenty of things that contribute to violence. One . simply the condition of being violent; the predisposition. Everyone knows this is a cranky species. It’s especially well known among the other species. And most people can see that the particular strain of critter found in America is especially prone to graceless outbursts, being, as we are, a collection of all the strange and restless castoffs and rolling stones who proved such an ill fit back home. God bless them all, and give them all the guns they want.

Two other things that contribute to violence are religion and government, because they seek to repress and regulate natural impulses like sex and self-gratification. Of course, the two of them will always try to scapegoat movies and television. The truth is, no one knows enough or cares enough to stop the real violence, so their answer is to tone down the pretend violence. It’s superstition: “Maybe if we tone down the pretend violence, the real violence will go away. Or not seem so bad.”

And maybe the father who forbids his son to watch violent television will not beat the shit out of him when he disobeys. Maybe. I”

A man is seated in a football stadium with a small TV set tuned to the game. The sideline camera takes his picture, and his image travels through the lens, out of the camera, to the truck, to the satellite, to a ground station several miles away, back into the air, and to the man’s TV set.

He sees himself on the screen. The image travels from his eyes to his brain. His brain sends a signal to his arm to start waving. The image travels to the camera, through the lens, to the truck, to the satellite, to another ground station a thousand miles away where it is

EORGE CARLIN :ransmitted into the air and picked up by a cable company that nds it to the man’s parents’ TV set.

The image travels from the screen to his mother’s eyes, along the >tic nerve to her brain, where it references her memory and recog-tion takes place. Her brain then sends a series of signals to her ngs, throat, lips, and tongue, and she says, “Look, it’s Mike!” Baseball is different from any other sport; very different.

For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs.

In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball inten- tionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out.

Also: In football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball, and without the ball you can’t score. In baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager; and only in baseball does the manager (or coach) wear the same clothing the players do. If you had ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders football uniform, you would know the reason for this custom. Now, I’ve mentioned football. Baseball and football arel K the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And,r as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something)

brain droppings about ourselves and our values. And maybe how those values have changed over the last 150 years. For those reasons, I enjoy comparing baseball and football: Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game. Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park!

Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium. Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything is dying. In football you wear a helmet. In baseball you wear a cap. Football is concerned with downs. “What down is it?” Baseball is concerned with ups. “Who’s up? Are you up? I’m not up! He’s up!” In football you receive a penalty. In baseball you make an error. In football the specialist comes in to kick. In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody. Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting, and u

GEORGE C A R L I N

Football is played in any kind of weather: Rain, snow, 6 sleet, hail, fog … can’t see the game, don’t know if there is a game going on; mud on the field . .. can’t read the uniforms, can’t read the yard markers, the struggle will continue!

In baseball if it rains, we don’t go out to play. “I can’t go ^ out! It’s raining out!” Baseball has the seventh-i

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s a kind of picnic feeling. Emotions may run high or low, but there’s not that much unpleasantness.

In football, during the game in the stands, you can be . sure that at least twenty-seven times you were perfectly capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different: i In football the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aer-

brain droppings

ial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes -r ;,, in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line. ,;f;r In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! “I hope I’ll be safe at home!” I

Being Irish, I guess I should resent the Notre Dame nickname, “The Fighting Irish.” After all, how long do you think nicknames like “The Bargaining Jews” or “The Murdering Italians” would last? Only the ironic Irish could be so naively honest. I get the feeling that Notre Dame came real close to naming itself “The Fuckin’ Drunken, Thick-skulled, Brawling, Short-dicked Irish.”

Here’s something I don’t care about: athlete’s families. This is really the bottom of the sports barrel. I’m watchin’ a ball-game, and just because some athlete’s wife is in the stands, someone thinks they have to put her picture on the screen. And I miss a double steal! Same with a ballplayer’s father. Goddamn! “There’s his dad, who taught him how to throw the changeup when he was two years old.” Fuck him, the sick bastard! His own sports dreams probably crash-landed, so he forced a bunch of shit on his kid, and now the kid’s a neurotic athlete. Fuck these athletes’ relatives. If they wa