Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about George Carlin documentary. There’s the new documentary mere moments from dropping, of course, and the recent social media sharing of old routines that have a shocking, dispiriting pertinence in our current moment. Those factors have combined to lead to all sorts of chatter about Carlin’s legacy, including the ways in which it’s misused. I will stump until my vocal cords are worn raspy for the untouchable supremacy of Carlin’s material that cuts to the marrow of American society and its rampant hypocrisies, but I also think it’s important to remember the comic great as an expert analyst of the mundane. He leveled his eager, athletic intellect and complete command of all the tools of verbal communication — language, cadence, tone, and more — at the plainness of our lives on this chaotic orb. There is arguably no better example of than the perfect machine that is “A Place for My Stuff.”

Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag.