According to UNICO National, the new reality show "relies on crude stereotypes and highlights cursing, bad behavior and violence in depicting renters at a New Jersey beach house." Sort of proves the old adage about stereotypes: They put little kernels of truth into an air popper to make delicious, bigoted popcorn. [THR]

•TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8" got a big farewell for its last episode ever. 4.3 million people watched the reality television equivalent of a tow truck finally dragging a mangled car out from the quarry into which it had started plummeting nearly three years ago. [NYT]

•GLAAD is SAAD that Adam Lambert wasn't allowed to perform on ABC's "Good Morning America because of his face-humping antics. "Some music performances, regardless of the sexual orientation of the performer, are tailored for a prime time audience but not for a morning show audience," read a statement. (Lambert was booked instead on CBS' "Early Show".) [NYT]

•The revolutionary new, interactive "Avatar" trailer is to regular trailers as a video game is to a movie, except imagine that video game consisted only of being able to click "hot spots" on a picture with your mouse, which plays little movie clips. [The Wrap]

•The TV Guide Channel is showing a documentary on ugly-woman-with-a-pretty-voice Susan Boyle on Dec. 13. Which makes that YouTube video of Susan Boyle singing the first viral video adapted into a made-for-TV documentary. [The Wrap]

•"You can prick your finger but you can't finger your prick...": George Carlin's classic comedy album "Class Clown" is one of 25 recordings being introduced into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Also: The Beach Boys' "California Girls". [LA Times]

I experienced my life in a very happy way, but, what I want to say to you is, I was alone as a child. My father was dead. My mother left him when I was 2 months old and he died when I was 8 years old. He drank too much and he was a bully and she had the courage to take two boys, one of them two months old and one of them 5 years old and to leave him in 1937 and get back into the business world and get a job and raise us through the end of the Depression and through the Second World War. She did a great job, but she was at work until 7 or 7:30 at night many nights.

...I needed to be—not the center of attention—but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Then it became funny the things I would say, and I became more of a wit than simply a mimic and a clown...

Q: Can you remember the first joke you ever told?

No. But I do remember the first time I ever made my mother laugh. And unfortunately, it’s lost on me what it was I said. But I noticed the moment, I knew something had happened, this was when I was very young. My mother laughed fairly frequently. But I knew the difference between her social laugh and her really spontaneous laugh when she was caught off guard—which is the key to laugher, being off guard. And I said something to her, and I saw that in her and it registered with me.

[Psychology Today]

(Getty Images photo taken today at a collection of flowers left in memory of Carlin at the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.)

Carlin was a social commentator, an aggravator, and an etymologist, but first and foremost, he was funny. The routine to which he'll be forever associated was "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," (full text here), which wasn't necessarily his best, but would wind up getting him arrested in Milwaukee in 1972 on obscenity charges, instantly elevating the bit to the pantheon of Sacred Dangerous Comic Texts. The routine's airing on New York radio would later be cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1978 ruling on FCC broadcast fines. No reactionary comic could ever have asked for more.

Gawker collects seven memorable monologues, including "Seven Words," rightly observing that there would be no Lewis Blacks or Bill Mahers—or Bill Hickses, for that matter—without Carlin. But for us at least, it was in his simplest observations about language—such as in this classic bit above contrasting the blithe terminology of baseball to football's inherent fascism (parks vs. stadiums, caps vs. helmets, ups vs. downs)—where his true genius was on display.

• How George Carlin Changed Comedy [time.com]
• George Carlin mourned as counterculture hero [AP]

The famous "7 Words You Can't Say on Television." Carlin was an ardent champion for filthy mouths everywhere.
"Religion is Bullshit" One of Carlin's favorite punching bags, the organized delusion of religion.
Carlin on abortion. "How come when it's us it's 'an abortion,' but when it's a chicken it's an omelet?"
Carlin on the icky "No Child Left Behind" legislation and the tyranny of America.
George on language, another of his favorite topics. Toliet paper became bathroom tissue. Car crashes became automobile accidents. Etc.
Rape can be funny!
From the same show: the Feminist Blowjob.
What did we miss?

In the 1980s and 1990s, Carlin's comedy became both sharper as social commentary and emotionally darker, sounding even, at times, bitter. The comedian was treated for alcohol addiction after a fight with an audience at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2004.

Below, Carlin's 1990 routine (NSFW) on how euphemisms undermine discourse in America. Post your own favorite routines in the comments.

[AP, Times]