George Carlin: 'I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium', Mark Twain award acceptance - 2011

5 November 2005, Beacon Theatre, New York City, New York, USA

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond!
I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive.

Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial!

I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers.

I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail.

But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant.

I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn.

I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity.

I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

Tina Fey: 'Only in comedy is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate', Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award - 2010

9 November, 2010, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, USA

Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you all for dressing up. God. Listening to all of these speeches and performances for the last two hours, I cannot help but feel grateful that I put a bag of pretzels in my purse.

I want to thank everyone involved with the Kennedy Centre, or as it will soon be known, The Tea Party Bowling Ally & Rifle Range. It's gonna look good, we can get about nine lanes in here. I want to thank everyone at WETA, and PBS, not just for televising this event, but for showing The Benny Hill Show so much when I was a kid. I don't know how that qualified to be on PBS -- we may never know.

I promise to put this award in a place of honour to make sure that my daughter does not pretend that it is Barbie's older husband, who lost his body in an accident.

I never dreamed that I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour. Mostly because my style is so typically Austrian.

I never thought I would even qualify for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour, I mean, maybe the Nathaniel Hawthorne Prize for Judgmental Nature, or the Judy Bloom Award for Awkward Puberty or the Harper Lee Prize for Small Bodies of Work. But never this. And yet, I hope that like Mark Twain, a hundred years from now, people will see my work and think, 'wow, that is actually pretty racist'.

Apparently I'm only the third woman to ever receive this award, and I'm so honoured to be numbered with Lily Tomlin and Whoopee Goldberg, but I do hope that women are achieving at a rate these days that we can stop counting what number they are at things.

Yes, I was the first female head writer at Saturday Night Live, and yes, I was only the second woman ever to be pregnant while on the show. And now tonight I am the third female recipient of this prize. I would love to be the fourth woman to do something, but I just don't see myself married to Lorne.

I'm so grateful to my friends who came here tonight to perform. Some people came all the way from Los Angeles, and I know that you are all very busy people with families and it means so much to me to know that care about show-business more than you do about them.

I want to thank Alec Baldwin for not coming tonight. I already have a reputation as a liberal elite lunatic, I don't need that guy followin' me around. Johnny-Huffington-Post. Actually I do want to thank Alec genuinely for staying in New York tonight, to continue to shoot at 30 Rock, so that I could be here, so thank you Alec, I love you.

I'm not gonna get emotional tonight, because I am a stone-cold bitch. But, I want to thank my family. They say that funny people often come from a difficult childhood, or a troubled family, so to my family, I say, 'They're giving me the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour, what did you animals do to me!' Yeah.

I know my Mother and Father are so proud of me tonight, so this is probably a good time to tell them, I'm putting you both in a home. We'll talk about it later.

I met my husband Jeff when we were both in Chicago and I had short hair with a perm on top and I would wear oversized denim shorts overalls, and that is how I know our love is real.

At some point in the future, our daughter Alice will find a DVD of this broadcast, or I don't know, download it into the sub-dermal iPhone in her eyelids, I don't know how far in the future we're talking about. But, I hope that it will make her laugh, and it will explain to her why her parents looked so tired all the time.

The one person without whom I really would not be here tonight, except of course for my Mother who is pretty sure she delivered me even though she had a lot of twilight sleep, the other one person is Lorne Michaels.

In 1997 I flew from Chicago to New York to have a job interview for a writing position at Saturday Night Live. And I was hopeful because I'd heard the show was looking to diversify, which, by the way, only in comedy, is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate. But, I remember, you know, I came for my job interview and the only decent clothes I had at the time, Lorne was right, was I had a pair of black pants and a sweater from Contempo Casuals. And I went to the security guard at the elevator at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and I said 'I'm here to see Lorne Michaels' and I couldn't believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, 'I'm here to see Lorne Michaels'.

And I went up to the 17th floor and I had my meeting with Lorne, and the only thing anyone had told me about meeting with Lorne, having a job interview, they said; whatever you do, do not finish his sentences. A girl I knew in Chicago had done that and she felt like it had cost her the job, and so, whatever you do, don't finish his sentences. And I was there and really didn't want to blow it and Lorne said, 'So, you're from...', and it just was hanging there, 'So, you're from...', and I found I couldn't take anymore, and I said, 'Pennsylvania, I'm from Pennsylvania, suburb of Philadelphia', just as Lorne was finishing his thought and said, 'Chicago', and I thought, That's it. I blew it. And I don't remember anything else about the meeting, because I just kept staring at him thinking, this is the guy from the Beatles sketch! I can't believe that I'm in his office.

And you know I could never have guessed that a couple years later I would be sitting in that office until 2, 3, 4 in the morning thinking, if this meeting doesn't end I'm gonna kill this Canadian bastard.

The last time I that was in Washington was in 2004 to take this Life magazine cover photo with John McCain. And Senator McCain gave my husband and me a tour of the Senate, and we all spent a lovely, busy afternoon together. And I have it on good authority that this picture of Senator McCain and myself has been hanging in his office, by his desk since 2004. And he has been looking at it every day since 2004, getting ideas. So I guess what I'm saying is, this whole thing might be my fault.

I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn't thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight, my partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that ever happened to me.

Politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women — except, of course, those who will end up paying for their own rape kit and stuff. But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years. Whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know — actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.*

All kidding aside, I'm so proud to represent American humour. I'm proud to be American. I'm proud to make my home in the Not Real America. And I am most proud that even during trying times, like an orange alert, or a bad economy, or a contention election, that we as a nation retain out sense of humour. Anyway, I don't wanna go on and on, because I know we still have to talk about the other four nominees, so thank you and good night.

* it was widely reported afterwards that this paragraph was censored from the PBS broadcast.

Jon Stewart: 'He empties the tank every time', Kennedy Center Springsteen tribute - 2009

December, 2009, Kennedy Centre, Washington DC, USA

I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I can not illuminate the context of his work or his roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nation. But I am from New Jersey, and so I can tell you what I believe, and what I believe is this: I believe that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child. As you can imagine at the time - interracial, same-sex relationships being what they were - they abandoned this child on the side of the road, between the exit interchanges of 8A and 9 on the New Jersey Turnpike. That child is Bruce Springsteen.

I didn't understand his music for a long time. Until I began to yearn. Until I began to question the things I was making and doing in my own life. Until I realised it wasn't just about the joyful parade on stage and the theatrics. It was about stories of lives that could be changed.

I was working in a bar in New Jersey as you would imagine; Central Jersey right off route 1. And every night, when I closed the bar, I would get in my car and I was driving at the time – a 1976 off-brown Gremlin. The Gremlin was a car that was invented for two reasons: 1) birth control for young males; and 2) it was invented so that the Pinto wouldn’t feel so bad about itself.

But I would get in my car every night and would put in the music of Bruce Springsteen, and everything changed. And I never again felt like a loser. When you listen to Bruce’s music, you aren’t a loser. You are a character in an epic poem about losers.

But that is not the power of Bruce Springsteen. It is that whenever I see Bruce Springsteen do anything, he empties the tank – everytime. And the beautiful thing about this man is that he empties that tank for his family, he empties that tank for his art, he empties that tank for his audience, and he empties it for his country. And we, on the receiving end of that beautiful gift are ourselves rejuvenated, if not redeemed, and I thank you.

On screen video

'The song writers who inspired me were searcher,' he said. 'Who spoke to our lives and our dreams, I searched for stories about the people I knew. In a small Jersey town life was factory jobs, making ends meet.'

[Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road]

The screen door slams
Mary’ dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again

[Jon Stewart:]
But he had a lot of heart and big dreams. And the one thing he was sure of was Rock N’ Roll.

Up and down the Jersey shore, little clubs went crazy for him. Word had gotten out. Something was happening.

[Bruce Springsteen: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out]

1, 2, 3, 4! Get down.

[Jon Stewart:] Source: LYBIO.net
A Springsteen concert is like a carnival ride that leaves you breathless and alive.

[Bruce Springsteen – Born in the U.S.A.]

Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.

[Bruce Springsteen – No Surrender]

We made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender

[Jon Stewart:]
He found himself at the centre of the Rock And Roll Universe. The Boss.

[Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run]

Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

[Jon Stewart:]
But the bigger his success, the more he questioned. For the favorite son of Rock N Roll; growing as an artist, meant taking on the bigger questions.

[Bruce Springsteen – The River]

I come from down in the valley
Where mister when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done

[Jon Stewart:]
He wanted his songs to bare witness to the hardships and heroism of everyday life.

[Bruce Springsteen – The Promised Land]

Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

The dogs on Main Street howl cause they understand
If I could take this moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land

[Jon Stewart:]
“I try to melt my voice in the story I am telling. And when a moment comes in our common history I wanna be there”, he said.

[Bruce Springsteen – The Rising]

May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin’ on the end of my line

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine

[Jon Stewart:]
Bruce doesn’t just sing, he testifies!

[Bruce Springsteen – Working On A Dream]

I’m working on a dream
Though sometimes it feels so far away
I’m working on a dream
Our love will make it real someday

[Jon Stewart:]
“I’m in the middle of a long conversation with my audience”, he said. It will be a life long journey for both of us by the time we’re done.

[Standing Ovation]