When I posted some of my favorite clips of his last week, he was apparently fine.

He went to the hospital with chest pain on Sunday, and died of heart failure not long afterwards. He was 71 years old.

I consider him one of the best stand-up comedians of all time, up there with Bill Hicks, thought obviously with a much longer career. I’m particularly fond of his focus on words and wordplay, and his deconstruction of common linguistic absurdities. He was a great political commentator in his comedy also, something else I admired.

He was also rather principled and seemed to follow his heart in his work, his attitude perhaps exemplifed by this statement of his:

“I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”

He was one of a kind, made a tremendous contribution, and will be missed.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 23:50 23 Jun 2008 and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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