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A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George - Paperback | Diverse Reads

A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George

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From the daughter of the iconoclastic comedic performer, Kelly Carlin’s memoir A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George “is written in the DNA of a Carlin, honest, biting, savage, funny, sad, dark, and profound…Hold on; like George Carlin, this book gives you a hell of a ride” (New York Times bestselling author and multi-award-winning comedian Lewis Black).

Truly the voice of a generation, George Carlin gave the world some of the most hysterical and iconic comedy routines of the last fifty years. From the “Seven Dirty Words” and “A Place for My Stuff”, to “Religion is Bullshit” and “The American Dream”, he perfected the art of making audiences double over with laughter while simultaneously making people wake up to the realities (and insanities) of life in the twentieth century.

Few people glimpsed the inner life of this beloved comedian, but his only child, Kelly, was there to see it all. Born at the very beginning of his decades-long career in comedy, she slid around the “old Dodge Dart,” as he and wife Brenda drove around the country to “hell gigs.” She witnessed his transformation in the ’70s, as he fought back against—and talked back to—the establishment; she even talked him down from a really bad acid trip a time or two (“Kelly, the sun has exploded and we have eight, no-seven and a half minutes to live!”).

Kelly not only watched her father constantly reinvent himself and his comedy, but also had a front row seat to the roller coaster turmoil of her family’s inner life—alcoholism, cocaine addiction, life-threatening health scares, and a crushing debt to the IRS. But having been the only “adult” in her family prepared her little for the task of her own adulthood. All the while, Kelly sought to define her own voice as she separated from the shadow of her father’s genius.

With rich humor and deep insight, Kelly Carlin pulls back the curtain on what it was like to grow up as the daughter of one of the most recognizable comedians of our time, and become a woman in her own right. This vivid, hilarious, heartbreaking story is at once singular and universal—it is a contemplation of what it takes to move beyond the legacy of childhood, and forge a life of your own.

ISBN-13: 9781250105769

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Publication Date: 10-18-2016

Pages: 336

Product Dimensions: 5.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

KELLY CARLIN was born in Ohio in 1963. She received her Master's Degree from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She presently tours her critically acclaimed solo show, "A Carlin Home Companion," hosts two radio shows—The Kelly Carlin Show on SiriusXM and Waking from the American Dream on SModcast Network, and blogs for the Huffington Post. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Bob McCall and their Jack Russell Terrier, Stella.

Table of Contents

1 The Moon and Venus Rise Together 1

2 Westside Story 10

3 The American Dream 18

4 The Three Musketeers 30

5 She's Leaving Home 44

6 This is the End 58

7 Sober-Ish 72

8 Haagen-Dazs and Sinsemilla 84

9 Sex, Drugs, … 94

10 … And Rock and Roll 101

11 Prince Charming 107

12 I Know I'm In Here Somewhere 117

13 Whack! Thump! 129

14 "Mother and Child Reunion" 138

15 A Slice of Patty-Cake 150

16 Right Foot Forward, Left Foot Back 163

17 What It Looks Like When the Other Shoe Drops 175

18 "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" 188

19 True Nature 199

20 When a Triangle Becomes a Square 204

21 Unspoken Words 217

22 The Clown and the Guru 228

23 Plan B 242

24 Long and Winding Road 253

25 Out on a Limb 261

26 Sunday Will Definitely Never Be the Same 274

27 Episode Number 268 of Kelly's Surreal Life, Or the Sun and the Buddha (I Can't Decide) 284

28 He Was Here Just a Minute Ago 293

29 Ashes to Ashes 301

Epilogue 317

Postscript 319

Acknowledgments 321