I’ve always loved George Carlin, starting before he was considered a satirist, back when he was just a comedian who did characters like the hippy-dippy weatherman, who’d make predictions on the Merv Griffin Show along the lines of “Tonight’s forecast—dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.” His material and his delivery always cracked me up.

But with his routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” Carlin transformed himself into a modern-day Lenny Bruce (Bruce was then one of my gods), and that love became adoration.

So back in the early ’70s, when I heard that he would be doing a show at Brooklyn College, I went with a friend, and we roared with laughter the entire time. When Carlin mentioned from the stage that he’d be appearing a few days later at the Bitter End in the Village, we decided right then that we had to be there.

We’d pretty much made fools of ourselves at that second show. Carlin had recently begun doing a bit in which he enthusiastically sang the theme from the Raisin Bran commercial (I can’t really explain why that was funny; you’d have to see it), and so when we went to the Bitter End, we gift-wrapped half-a-dozen boxes of Raisin Bran, and brought it to the show along with a card we’d made in the shape of a giant raisin inside of which we’d written dozens of very bad punning raisin jokes. After that show, Carlin allowed us back stage to so we could give him this very weird gift (hey, we were teenagers!), and then talked with us in his dressing room for what seemed like at least an hour.

I wish I could remember the details of the encounter, but memory fails me. I know we discussed his change from the shaved and suited comedian to the bearded and pony-tailed satirist, and what part drugs may have played in the transformation, but anything more than that is lost. I can only remember being awestruck, and feeling extremely lucky.

I asked Carlin if I could interview him. He said that he’d be appearing on the Johnny Carson Show a few days later, and though he couldn’t get us tickets, if we wanted to meet him in the lobby after the taping, he’d let me ask him some questions. For some reason, my friend couldn’t make it, and so this picture was taken in that lobby by my father, who came along.

And as for that lobby—how’s this for coincidence? It was the lobby to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the same building in which my current employer, the SCI FI Channel, is housed. So the more things change …

That’s a tape recorder in my hand not making the peace sign. I asked Carlin questions both there and as we walked through the streets of Manhattan until he finally had to call it a night. I’ll always remember Carlin’s kindness to what had to have been an annoying teenager.

I’m not exactly sure when all of this occurred. Based on my hair, and that denim jacket which had a studded peace symbol on the back and a “War is Not Healthy For Children and Other Living Things” patch on one shoulder, I think this happened in 1972, but for all I know it could have been a year earlier or a year later. I think I was either 16 or 17. I imagine that I could pinpoint the exact date with enough research by figuring out when the Brooklyn College-Bitter End-Johnny Carson trifecta occurred in such close proximity, but I’m not even sure such information still exists.

And if you’re wondering about the deterioration at the top and bottom of the photo, that’s because I’d misplaced the roll of film I’d used that day—for years! Every once in a while, I’d wonder what happened to the pictures I’d taken that night, but I never could find them. About a decade later, during a move, I finally discovered the roll. When I had it developed, only two images remained, this one, and a picture I’d taken of a friend’s parakeet. So I’m grateful that this image exists at all. (Now if only I could find the reel-to-reel tape of that interview.)

In any case, farewell, class clown!