The good die young, they say, so it’s not surprising that George Carlin lived into his 70s, celebrating 50 years as a stand-up last fall with a boxed DVD collection.

He was a bad guy, that pony-tailed professor of the perverse, a wicked wordsmith who refused to play by the rules. George Denis Patrick Carlin actually spoke up in his New York street voice ("Give me a minute heah!") when he saw something he found foolish.

That’s the role of a court jester -- or wise fool.

Yet for some reason, the death of a clown is always jarring, and the thought of Carlin dying of a heart attack in a Santa Monica hospital was no exception.

Undeniably, Carlin was some counterculture clown. He realized early on that what society said and did weren’t always the same. And he asked why. That questioning led to some of the best comedy routines in American history, from his infamous “Seven Words” which couldn’t be said on the air – and which earned him an arrest at the Milwaukee Summerfest in 1972, as well as a free speech footnote in from the Supreme Court in 1978 – to comparisons between the blitz-laden language of pro football to the gentle phrases of baseball: “safe,” “home,” etc.

Comics die, of course, but when they die young – as the brilliant, Carlin-inspired rebel Bill Hicks did in1994 at the age of 32 -- or the middle-aged dad, Dennis Wolfberg, did the same year at 48, there’s a sense that we have one less ally in coping with our daily struggles.

Of course, stand-ups and social commentators may not feel that way about what they do. For every Jerry Seinfeld who makes us laugh with his professionalism, there are others who take the stage because they can’t help themselves: They’ve been victims of society’s stupidity, or are too intelligent and brave to sit by quietly.

Denver’s own Don Becker, found dead in his Denver apartment earlier this year at age 53, seemed to walk that edge between humor and outrage. Becker suffered from psychotic bouts, which once led the  best-known Denver stand-up in 1986 -- at the time, more popular here than Roseanne Barr -- to his terrible self-maiming, losing an arm after laying them across train tracks near Union Station. And while this damaged him, he made jokes still, and many here remember his outsider wit to this day.

And so will many who saw Carlin, most recently booked in Denver a few months ago. His stuff was not the TV-friendly stuff of, say, Bill Cosby -- though he stature was: Comedy Central named him among the Top 10 Comics of All Time, between Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, the man who jolted him on his path. In 1997, Jon Stewart presented Carlin with the lifetime achievement award at the Aspen Comedy Festival.

Over the span of twenty-three albums, 14 HBO specials and countless performances, he left a legacy some call “genius’ – though that’s a word as loaded as Carlin’s bad seven once were. Instead, the trickster lived a long life, making sure that for much of it, he did the job good stand-ups and jesters always do: Letting us know that we aren’t necessarily crazy; it’s the world we live in that is. And that frees all of us.

Thanks, George. I'll bet you're teaching them some new words somewhere.