When I was in 8th grade I became obsessed with “the Beatles,” and I mean obsessed. I became a total hippie, or at least as much as a hippie as one can be when you’re in junior high. After 8th grade was over my family bought a house on Staten Island. One day before the big move, my dad told me he was going to take a ride to the storage place.

Apparently we had a lot of old stuff in storage which we were going to get and bring into the new house. I asked my dad if there was anything cool in there. He told me "not really, some old books, boxes of photographs, some old records." My ears perked up! Records! Like “Beatles” records I asked!? Yeah sure. So I go with Dad to the storage place and take home every box of records I can find.

Now for those of you who aren’t as old as me, you have to understand, there were no MP3s, just CDs. Records still had an allure to them, an old world charm if you will. As I searched through the boxes I found so much cool stuff of my Dad’s. “The Who’s Tommy”, “Sgt. Pepper”, some “BeeGees” (okay not so cool). Then I saw it. “Class Clown” by George Carlin. Now I had seen George Carlin before; tidbits of his stand-up, his short lived Fox sitcom, and of course his role in “Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure”. But the man I saw on that album was not the same man I knew. He was young, had long hair, a six pack, cool hippie clothes, he looked to me like the coolest mother fucker I has ever seen.

On the inside of the album when you unfolded it, there was a dedication “To Leonard Schneider, for taking all the risks..." I was too young to know that Leonard Schneider was “Lenny Bruce” Carlin’s hero.

I listened to “Class Clown” on my record player, every night as I went to sleep. The album isn’t the cynical Carlin of his later years, but is just as sharp, fast and brilliant as he ever was. I used to know it by heart. There was a time in my youth where I could have performed “Class Clown” to a T. George Carlin became one of my biggest heroes at that time. He remained so throughout my varied adventures, struggles in show business, and I imagine will remain so until I too am dead.