White people hate to wait in line for anything.īeing in queue is a sure sign that one doesn’t have the connections to get into the fashionable restaurant or club ahead of the other schmucks waiting for entrance. It really is quite a universal story.Having spent so much time this week trying to track down some COVID vaccine, I have managed to sign up for waiting lists for practically any place within driving distance that is rumored to be in line to get some of the magic elixir. There’s humor, there’s trials and tribulations, there’s health scares, there’s death. It’s a family with deep love and loyalty to each other. “What I tell people is it’s really the story of any American family that started in the ’60s and moved through,” she says. “So there was that too: trying to be OK with who I am and know that maybe we don’t always agree on everything but we unconditionally love each other forever. “In the last five years before, I knew my dad’s health was not good and I was preparing myself on some level for him to die,” Carlin says. There would be a little bit of independence and autonomy and then it would feel too scary.”Īfter a history of heart problems, George Carlin died of heart failure in the summer of 2008. “It’s always two steps forward, one step back, and that’s the way it felt for me. “When you are such an enmeshed family from day one, it’s a real dance,” Carlin says. Her parents helped her along as she struggled for decades with abusive relationships, drug addiction and agoraphobia. By the time Carlin entered the picture, her parents were using drugs and alcohol, which led to a lot of family insanity and codependency.īeing swept up in her parents’ lives also made it difficult for Carlin to find her own place in the world. Her mother was Brenda Hosbrook, who met George Carlin in 1960.
The Falcon Theatre production will be her first run of the 90-minute show that chronicles her relationship with her father, in particular.Īn only child, Carlin grew up very quickly and enmeshed in the lives of her parents. Within nine months, Carlin was testing the waters at comedy festivals in Montreal, Chicago and at South by Southwest, as well as some one-off performances. Everyone was saying to me, ‘You should go on the road with this.’ ”īut Paul Provenza of Showtime’s stand-up comedy talk show “The Green Room with Paul Provenza” offered to help develop the show and direct it. They laughed and they cried and it was an amazing thing. “I put together a list of videos and I literally threw the event together that day,” she says. So he asked Carlin if she would fill a slot by telling family stories and playing videos of her dad. He had organized a fan-based comedy cruise a few years ago.Įach night, a stand-up would entertain fans in the lounge but he needed some day events for when the ship was out at sea. The catalyst for her show was a 75-minute performance she put together at the request of her friend, the hilariously apoplectic comedian Lewis Black. Her perspective on events in her father’s 2010 memoir, “Last Words,” also informs “A Carlin Home Companion.” She’s also written a memoir by the same name that’s due out from St. She’s been sharing bits and pieces of her life with Los Angeles audiences for the last 15 years.