The list of comedians who died young is a long one, with names like Lenny Bruce, John Belushi, Mitch Hedberg, John Candy and Chris Farley. There's something about the comedy life that requires many of its practitioners to insulate themselves from the world with their drug of choice (or a mixed bag of them) and escape their inner demons.

With the notable exception of Bill Cosby, almost all of our comedy greats have at one time or another waded through the fire of addiction. Some, like George Carlin, who died Sunday of heart failure at age 71, came out the other side and continued blazing a trail through both popular culture and public consciousness.

I can still remember when, in my early teens, I found my stepmother's Carlin LP, titled "FM & AM." It was early Carlin, laced liberally with drug references and other content forbidden to my then-young ears. But what really caught me was his gift for treating the English language like a toy, to be molded and warped to fit his vision. The "Birth Control" routine, in which he invents commercial names for various pills, "One that doesn't work all the time, Baby Maybe!" at first paralyzed me with laughter and then made me start to see how the language you used to deliver your thoughts was just as important as the thoughts themselves.

I bought my first Carlin cassette, "Carlin on Campus," about the time Eddie Murphy was breaking ground and infuriating censors with his "Raw" routine. The contrast between them was amazing. Eddie was funny, but when he worked blue he let the profanity carry the humor. Carlin took profanity and made it his plaything just as he had with the rest of the language. While the "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" routine is the most oft-cited example of this, his "Incomplete List of Impolite Words" was the one that to this day leaves me laughing so hard I drool. With nothing but a prop scroll of enormous length and a gift for vocal inflection, he makes phrases like "beating the bishop" into naughty nuggets that hit you right in the gut and don't quit.

He could also work clean, though, and did so frequently almost as if he were proving to himself he could do so. His "Icebox Man" routine, long a favorite of Dr. Demento fans, is a brilliant example. He takes the task of weeding leftovers out of the fridge and turns it into comedy gold, spinning experiences to which everyone can relate into a comedic tapestry. Who hasn't found an empty plate in the fridge? "Did something eat something else?" Who hasn't found something completely unidentifiable by smell or sight? "It looks like ... meat cake!"

Every part of American society and human experience fell under his gimlet gaze at one time or another. In "Baseball and Football," he contrasted the pastoral nature of our national pastime with the blood-lust and brutality that made the NFL big: "At some point during a football game, you will be completely capable of taking the life of a fellow human being." Once again, the language was his toy. "Baseball is played in a park. The baseball park! Football is played in a stadium. War Memorial Stadium."

Later in his career, Carlin proved he could write funny, too, with "Brain Droppings," "Napalm & Silly Putty" and "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?" The greatest gems in these books were random thoughts he called "left-fielders," one- or two-sentence ponderings that were completely capable of taking your worldview and standing it on its head.

I owe a lot to George. Almost everything I know about being funny, about being cynical but not bitter, about not accepting popular wisdom at face value I learned from him. He never let the idiots get him down, and while he professed to not giving a fig about American society or the culture as a whole, you don't spend as much time as he did poking fun at something without feeling at least a bit of affection for your target.

Society today is more ludicrous and worthy of mockery than ever, and Carlin's shoes need to be filled soon. Jon Stewart and his band of merry pranksters on "The Daily Show" have a shot, but I can't think of a single standup comic, male or female, with the sheer intellectual power to take the job. I certainly don't have the tools. Robin Williams of 10 or 15 years ago might have had a shot, but he's busy becoming a serious actor now. Maybe somewhere, in some dive of a comedy joint, there's some young comic taking the stage tonight who will pick up the flag and carry it. If you find him, let me know.

But, for now, Wonderful WINO will remain off the air. As George's Hippy Dippy Weatherman would say, tonight's forecast: dark, with scattered light toward morning.

Let's just hope that morning's not too long in coming.

Got something to get off your chest? Anything weird going on in your world? UFOs over the garage? Drop me a line, anytime!