This classic George Carlin bit is a balls-out takedown of American consumerism. He doesn’t hold back, ripping into those glorified shopping centers of old as temples of mindless consumerism and soulless conformity. (Kind of like the Internet today.)
In classic Carlin style, as true then as now, he lays bare the absurdity of how we fill our existential voids with mass-produced crap. It’s like watching a strip tease where the tease is the empty promise of happiness through stuff.
Long before the internets, shopping malls were like a breeding ground for sheep in need of a good fuck, figuratively speaking, of course — mall sluts scurrying from store to store, chasing the next high of retail therapy, or bargain orgasm …and a super-sized stick of deep-fried raccoon asshole.
Carlin’s routines weren’t just comedy; they were a wake-up call wrapped in profanity and poignancy. He showed us the mirror, asking us if this is all there is to life. His genius lay in turning comedy into a commentary on our consumer-driven culture, leaving us laughing and thinking at the same damn time.
—P
Publisher
As a child my mother said to me, ‘If you grow up to be a soldier, you will become a general. If you grow up to be a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I grew up to be a degenerate, and now I’m publisher of SCREW.
