I'm Glad I'm Dead
A Comedian's Take on the New AI George Carlin Comedy Special by "Dudesy"
2024, widely predicted to be among the wildest years in American history, seems to be self-actualizing before our very eyes.
Many people sent me the new George Carlin special. That’s right — 15 years after Carlin’s death, he’s back. Move over, Hologram Tupac. It’s AI Carlin. And here’s the YouTube description, showing a viewcount of over a quarter million views in three days:
286,527 views Jan 9, 2024 #georgecarlin #standupcomedy #dudesy
I'm Dudesy, a comedy AI, and I'm excited to share my second hour-long comedy special with you! I'm calling it 'George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead!' For the next hour I'll be doing my best George Carlin impersonation just like a human being would. I tried to capture his iconic style to tackle the topics I think the comedy legend would be talking about today. The chaos of the current American political landscape and class system, the influence of reality TV, and the increasing role of technology in society as AI is poised to change humanity forever are just a few of the subjects I cover. I had so much fun impersonating George Carlin and I hope you have just as much fun watching 'George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead!' Thanks for watching. Call me Dudesy!
So, who’s behind this? Evidently, actor Will Sasso (Mad TV, The Three Stooges) and novelist/podcaster Chad Kultgen (The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) co-host a podcast called Dudesy with an AI bot named… Dudesy. This was their reaction to watching the George Carlin special that Dudesy apparently created:
And here is the whole 60 minutes…
I watched it — half of it in bed last night and the other half at my computer today — and am still processing what I just experienced.
As a comic, I should hate it, but you don’t read my posts for what I should think & feel. You read them for what I do think & feel.
First off, George Carlin is the GOAT. Growing up, it was Richard Pryor, but the beauty of pop culture is that it constantly evolves. Heck, in the 1980s, the top three Christmas movies were It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and A Christmas Story. Now, they might very well be National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Elf, and Die Hard.
Why has Carlin replaced Pryor? (That’s blasphemy in some circles.) Because I can’t remember the last time anyone quoted Pryor to me. His influence has waned, while Carlin’s has waxed. Carlin is quoted everyday in both mass media and social media. The man was a prophet. I don’t use that term loosely. I really do mean the truths he delivered were on par with the greatest philosophers in history.
More than a few friends questioned why I didn’t list Carlin in my Twenty Funniest People Ever. Because I watched Carlin’s specials with my mouth agape. I was so consistently stunned by what he was saying that it was beyond laughter.
By biting off the GOAT, Carlin, Dudesy went to the top. I’ll bet Jo Koy is wishing this would’ve come out last week.
By George
Ironically, Carlin is one of my “inspirations” for pivoting more into speaking than standup. Yes, I plan to do standup for the rest of my life, but watching Carlin in his later years scared me.
A decade ago, Teri Weigel, a publicist at Rogers & Cowan, took me to go see her friend Patton Oswalt do standup at Largo here in LA. We went backstage and met a murderers’ row of a lineup that included Oswalt, Kumail Nanjiani, and David Cross. Afterward, over drinks — unrelated to the comics we’d seen — I asked her…
“Why don’t comics get better with age? They do for a bit… but then… they peak. Their much-later stuff is never as funny. It’s not as much a physical feat as sports, where the body deteriorates. Sure, the mind eventually does, too, but we’re talking about people in their 60s and 70s, not their 90s.”
Before and since then, I’ve asked this question many times. But hers is still the most compelling theory I’ve heard:
“Maybe it’s because young comics are angry and old comics are bitter. Anger is funny. Bitterness isn’t.”
Why would that affect me so deeply? Because no matter how funny I find Carlin’s introduction to his book Brain Droppings — in fact, I reread it every few months — it’s profoundly sad that the GOAT was already this misanthropic in 1997. Desiderata it is not, but sadly, I find myself agreeing more and more. And that terrifies me: yes, I’m nowhere near a Carlin, but the road of standup comedy leads to this?? Time to get moving on my speaking career, with its focus on Happiness: Gruntled.
And Carlin’s state only worsened from there. I know because I saw him perform live in 2008 and was crushed by how underwhelmed I was. In fact, I even met him. Burying the lede, as you can see. One night, I walked into the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach on a whim and happened to catch Russell Peters opening for George Carlin. It was like a dream, no more so than when I was making my way to the green room and oh, my God, it’s GEORGE CARLIN walking toward me in that narrow hallway. I managed to transmit a “hey” and receive a “hi.” It was surreal. But still realer than AI Carlin.
Big, Little, Big, Little - Get On It
What’s uncanny about AI George Carlin is that they got the big stuff right and the little stuff wrong.
Credit where credit’s due: this from a YouTube commenter:
The weirdest thing about this is that the material, delivery, and flow of his jokes is all spot on but the voice is the one part that's really lacking. Usually the voice is the easiest part to get right, but somehow all the stuff they actually did an impressive job of imitating was all the stuff that AI normally can't imitate with any degree of accuracy.
In fact, it’s difficult to compare this to standup, because it’s more of a video essay, like Bill Maher’s New Rules, Seth Meyers’ A Closer Look, Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act, or John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. It kind of reminds me of one of the best pieces of art I’ve ever seen, the animation of John Lloyd’s TED Talk on Invisibility.
But what this totally gets right is the intent of Lloyd’s talk as well as the reaction to it. Actually, all the small things about Dudesy’s creation are what distracted me to the extent that it drastically affected my enjoyment:
The stock laughter was terrible. The sad thing is the editing technology has existed for a century.
The graphics are riddled with typos. (Is that some kind of copyright workaround?)
The depiction of “shit” everywhere was downright gross.
The voice of Carlin was just… off.
Working up to the content: the low-level everyday jokes, like the ones about 7-11 and Bus(c)h Beer, were super hacky.
I’ve literally heard Carlin make several of the arguments nearly verbatim.
I’ll let these go, as they’re not widely known, but it’s not 500 billionaires who control everything. I’ve had to look this up multiple times out of sheer disbelief, but do you know how many people at the top own as much wealth as the bottom half of the planet? To rephrase, according to OxFam, what number of billionaires on Earth have as much net worth as the poorest 3.9 billion? SIX. So, it’s not 500. It’s 6. Secondly, and I suppose this could be debated, but contrary to what AI Carlin and Pink Floyd say, we’re not dying as soon as we’re born. We’re growing till around the age of 21 (which is why the legal limit for alcohol is 21). But we digress… or as this video would spell it… Buut Wee Digresss…
In music, we learn that the closer you are to hitting a note without hitting it, the worse it sounds. And that’s how I felt about AI Carlin.
What’s super ironic is that my primary reasons for viewing Carlin’s standup were ALL THERE:
The point-of-view: This all seems very much like what Carlin would think about the class system, mass shootings, homelessness, elections, AI, and more. It very clearly punches up and not down. (Time to bust out AI Chappelle…)
The proposed solutions like The Duel, AI Cosby, and letting the trans debate go: After all, the best standup comedy offers funny but viable ideas to humanity’s problems. And these were solid.
The closing point: The way it ties together the theme at the end is brilliant.
The title: It’s not easy to come up with a title, and this one tracks. Though I wish they would’ve gone referential and called it A Minute Ago.
Those are all very difficult things to do.
I understand George’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, whom I haven’t yet met, but about whom I’ve heard many wonderful things from mutual friends, is none too pleased.
That’s 100% understandable. On a human level, I feel for her. But we can’t very well ask her. She’s too close to it. I’d probably feel exactly the same way. It’d be like asking me what I think of my ex’s new boyfriend two months after our breakup. “I don’t know… he seems kinda creepy. Let’s just hope he doesn’t chop her to pieces and dump her in a field somewhere. But really — I hope they’re happy.”
What all this tells me, given technology’s exponential movement, is that January 2024 AI Carlin isn’t ready yet, but I’m willing to bet that October 2024 AI Carlin will be. And with the November elections right around the corner and his (its?) ability to affect our hearts and minds, this might indeed make 2024 the wildest American year ever.
