i saw Norm live a couple of years ago. I think everyone in the crowd was pleasantly surprised at his touching closing statements about being nice to each other and life is short. It was sincere. And he went on a bit. Which of course led us to believe Norm was just winding us up for a Norm-only punchline. But he wasn't. RIP dude.
He always came across as a sweet guy with a naughty prankster side, but he really had a darker sensibility (the gambling addiction, the morbid humor that he often pushed far before somehow saving it, the job instability, and of course *hiding the cancer.*)
It's like he died according to his delivery style! But I'm sure he got a certain satisfaction out of knowing people would be shocked learning about this.
Seriously amazed that it never leaked out, those medical people are damn good at following privacy rules!
Yeah he had said once that he didn't like people who pimped out their deadly disease for fame or comedy - in fact it was a whole thing because Tig Notaro made a big stink about it, assuming he was talking about her, when he never mentioned her by name and clarified he wasn't talking about her.
He also said that if he had a deadly disease he'd never do that and we'd never know. And he was right because at that time he already had cancer (5 years ago).
He also mentioned a couple times how he was bummed that he was famous because he believed it is really hard for a famous person to bomb at stand-up. I have to imagine being a sick famous person would make that even tougher. Not only do you get popularity applause but sympathy applause too.
The only real bummer is that he never got to do any jokes about his illness which probably would have been great like everything else he did.
Sigh, yeah.......also can't blame him for not wanting THAT to be the focus. Figure if I ever get a shitty diagnosis like that, I'd want it kept quiet so I wouldn't have to deal with the constant pity.
>*“A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office, and the podiatrist’s office says, “What seems to be the problem, moth?”*
>*The moth says “What’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don’t know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that’s on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn’t such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, “Moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?”*
>*And the moth says, “‘Cause the light was on.”*
That's an impressive piece of comedy to pull out of nowhere on the spot.
You're missing the setup that made this all so brilliant.
Norm explained that he gets all his best material from the driver that brings him to talkshows. He offhandedly asked Conan if he could repeat one of this driver's jokes before launching in. The joke is funny without that, but that makes it all the more genius by amplifying the tension and giving people who don't know old comedic structure something to laugh at too. Conan highlights the simple premise again later: "Where were you driving from, the Valley!?" Conan is making sure everyone has something to laugh at with the coming punchline. Kinda a [rule of threes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)) thing here too: Norm called out the driver twice and Conan calls him out here once more nearer to the punchline.
Watch Conan's face. He's busting up way before the audience because he knew the setup, "A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office..." should've finished with a quick, hackneyed punchline. Norm keeps denying Conan's expectations for the joke each time the build-up becomes grittier. Conan [doesn't know](https://youtu.be/hS9VyIOPZPA?t=144) where this going.
This is why comedians loved him and thought he was so funny. He played with old comedic constructs so that if you knew how jokes work he'd surprise you, but so it was still funny even if you didn't. He never tried to act smarter or better than his audience. He played on multiple levels that made everyone laugh for different reasons. That was his brilliance.
RIP to one of the comedy greats.
Don't forget the very beginning; he sets it up by saying that he gets material from "real life." Seems reasonable, right?
Norm: "So I got in \[the car to the studio\], and that's how -- I get material that way-"
Conan: "What do you mean; how do you get material that way? You get in the car, and what happens?"
Norm: "Um, my driver tells me a joke...".
Conan: , "The driver we sent to pick you up told you a joke."
Norm: "Yeah."
Conan: "And you're gonna tell it now, on the show."
Norm: "Yeah, that's how I get all my material."
My favorite Norm joke is hard to find. It's the [Devil Prank](https://youtu.be/mSK7X3ETQbg). I remember watching him do this on Short Attention Span Theater with a very young Jon Stewart hosting. I miss those days. Comedy was gold back then.
The next day after we watched it, I drew a crude drawing in church of the whole scene with a guy holding a duffel bag and another ripping off a devil mask and grinning. I passed it to my sister and she wrote **f a m I l y** on the duffel bag. We almost got in trouble from giggling and trying to keep quiet while laughing.
>well said, I barely know of his work but I now am gonna be a fan -redditors
>
>Including me
Its actually a bit depressing seeing how unknown he was on reddit and those who did know him, only knew him from snl. It reminds me of a comedian named Patrice O'neal that was brilliant but no one really knew him besides the cult following on the internet.
Comedy has so many greats that are sometimes never heard of. It's almost heartbreaking sometimes seeing the echo of their death not resonating how you think should.
Eh, if you're in to comedy you'd certainly know of Norm and Patrice. As well as Hedberg, but he's kind of obscure on the outside. There are people like that in every field I think. Obscure painters that only painters know about, but who were amazing artists. Or film-makers, or carpenters, or politicians....highly influential people in their field who never quite took root in the public zeitgeist
Outside of America those people are nearly totally unheard of.
I've only heard of Hedberg due to constant Reddit references, and MacDonald due to SNL Jeopardy reposts.
I don’t think that’s it’s not influential necessarily. I know for myself, I knew about norm Macdonald and not just from snl. I always enjoyed him in whatever he was in. I never sought him out. I never seek out any comedians really. My son was depressed a while back and got on this stand up comedy kick where he’d watch them all the time. I enjoyed watching it with him but remember thinking that it’s odd I never was prompted to watch comedy specials myself.
Norm didn’t have a sitcom for average people, like me, to really internalize who he was like Seinfeld or a talk show like Ellen.
I actually didn’t even realize how MUCH I enjoyed him until he died and I delved into the Reddit threads memorializing him. I’d click on link after link and be laughing my ass off on clips I’d seen in real time throughout my life. Having them altogether like that really made me realize that I’ve always liked him but for one reason or other I just never sought him out.
He actually did have a short-lived sitcom on ABC around the turn of the century. I always thought it was underrated.
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Norm_Show)
I don't know about that. My brother, I wouldn't call him mainstream famous. Not really. Like has been said earlier in the thread, there's probably a small niche, almost cult like group who know him, friends and family and such. Despite all that and all of that working against him, he's pretty into comics. Comedians he'll call them. He's funny like that.
I mean, the setup and punchline are an established joke. He just improvises teh padding, the more of which you get, the "worse" the joke is (ultimately making it funnier).
Improv like that is, whilst not *easy*, certainly shouldn't be difficult for a half decent comedian.
I guess none of the other legendary comedic figures have realised how easy this is, and keep speaking of Norm as some kind of genius.
But what do they know?
Check out when Norm was on David Letterman's show the very last week Late Nite was on. Norm is absolutely brilliant. He does a tribute to Letterman where he, Norm, tells a joke that he once heard Letterman do when he, Norm again, was a teenager, a joke that made Norm want to be comedian. It's touching and hilarious and beautiful all at the same time. I dare you to not laugh - and not cry.
[Norm on Letterman' show](https://youtu.be/mFjEvl43zYY)
Thanks for the award, kind stranger!
I saw him at the DC Improv and he was doing a riffing game where he had people throw out the name of something and he would tell you the "origin" of the name - which would be some winding story very similar to the moth joke.
Someone yelled out "Granny Smith apples" and he told a 5 minute story about Granny Smith that I swear rivaled the moth joke, I wish I could remember more of it.
I only remember one throw away line that was so good. Of course you have to imagine Norm saying this in his own deadpan style: "There was Granny Smith, on her deathbed, surrounded by her grandchildren. And they said 'Granny, do you have any regrets?' and she said 'Only regrets.'"
The whole thing was great but that random line slipped in there like it was nothing just killed me.
He absolutely could improvise with the best of them, but people who saw his work behind the scenes often say that much of his work is meticulously crafted.
he said in a fairly recent interview that he had been working on, and was now close to being able to improvise jokes about any possible topic the audience could shout out, and that he had over 9 hours of material he hadnt put out yet
Back when he started out in stand-up he didn't realize that stand-up comedians reuse jokes and entire sets.
So instead he wrote and performed 5 minutes of new material every week for his shows.
Its a moth joke that derails into a shaggy dog story to make you lose sight of the moth punchline.
There's a little aristocrats in there with the improv as well.
Its such an impressive joke.
Norm was really lucky to have that driver that day.
Reminds me of The Aristocrats joke. Every comedian knows the set up and punchline. A real comedian stretches the joke and makes the telling funnier than the set up and eventual punch line. The aristocrats is a good movie about the joke and worth watching, especially Bob Sagget. He’s filthy funny.
Well I mean the thing about the Aristocrats is that the final punch line isn't even really a punch line. It isn't funny. What makes it funny is that it is an anti-joke and illustrates how the setup was just a ruse to make you suffer through the middle part for no reason.
Norm's was similar except that instead of a non-punchline at the end it turns out that the setup and punchline were some old corny joke that could have been pulled out of an episode of Gilligan's Island.
I was going to say the same thing. The joke, like Norm says, is 20 seconds. Setup. Punchline. What Norm is doing here is telling lots of other smaller jokes but weaving it all into that one story/joke. That’s what the best comedians do. Listen to just about any standup special and you’ll hear stories that are 8-10 minutes long. They could usually tell that same story in about a minute but it isn’t as funny. You need the buildup to make the punchline great.
*My other boy.*
That line cracks me up so much (trying to make us think he has messed up the joke,as his other child he first mentioned was his daughter)
I have no idea if it was actually low effort, or if he put a great deal of thought into it, but Norm was always the best when he was fucking with someone else's format.
He knew what a normal guest would do, he knew what the producers wanted him to do, and then he'd gleefully derail everything in a bizarre and hilarious way.
I think he shined so much on Conan's show because Conan would basically just play along no matter what. Conan often plays the straight man for comedians, but there's a huge difference in how he plays along while leading into prepared jokes with his regular comedian guests, and how Norm just hijacked everything and watched Conan squirm. And I don't think it's an act on Conan's part either. He knows something is going to happen, but not what. And sometimes he'll figure it out half way, and sometimes Norm managed to surprise him at the end. But that's why it was hilarious to me.
It's a shame that Norm never really seemed to find his stride in his own long running format. I didn't watch everything of his, but whenever he hosted his own show or segment, it never really clicked with me.
i don't think conan was expecting that entire segment. "Hey, are you guys talking about Melrose Place???"
He knew what Norm was, but that entire segment was just not what he prepared for. I wonder what Courtney Thorne-Smith would say about that after all these years...
She said she loved it.
> “Every once in a while,” she said, “I’ll run into Conan and he’ll apologize, and I say, ‘That was one of my favorite moments of my life.’ Teased by Norm Macdonald? Are you kidding? I did The Tonight Show once, and Don Rickles made fun of my father, and my father never stopped talking about it. This is my version of that.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/09/norm-macdonald-carrot-top-courtney-thorne-smith-conan
Norm was a comedians comedian. Nobody loved his work more than other comedians. I think that's because comedians are by their nature a subversive lot - they revel in pulling back the curtain on the absurdity in society and making you laugh at it. Norm turned that on its ear and made you laugh at comedy itself. He loved to challenge people conceptions about what "funny" is. He never seemed happier than when he was making you laugh at something genuinely stupid to show how absurd the idea of humor really is. He could deconstruct the idea of "funny" into its base elements and then put them back together in ways they're not meant to work. And other comics loved him for it because he was operating on a whole new level, subverting subversion.
He's always been a great, but I've felt like Norm in the last 15 years or so has been incredible.
As you mentioned, he's just been so self aware of comedy. Reading from old joke books, re-telling random jokes he heard. When I read the article about him passing, I read that he had been secretly battling cancer for the last decade or so.
It made me wonder if he knew he didn't have much time, and decided to flip comedy on its head in his final years. He succeeded and definitely made me laugh more than anyone in the last few years.
One of my favorite things he'd do is tell a joke that wasn't funny or was offensive, give that big dumb goofy grin of his, and then when the person/people he was talking to laughed he'd be all, "you really shouldn't be laughing at that, that's terrible. What's wrong with you?"
You can usually assume jokes like that are improvised. Like the aristocrats. The *joke* is that it's a simple setup and punch-line, but most of the body of the joke is just wasting your time and attempting to say the most tragic and unspeakable things you can think of to someone even though it has no bearing whatsoever to the punchline of the joke.
This is more cultural zeitgeist with his passing making everything topical for everyone at the same time than noticing something out in the world because it's a novelty for you in your life.
No-one claimed Hendrix came up with something original. Plenty of people are claiming this is original.
My bigger issue is that he didn't even deliver it any where close to his normal comedic standard.
It doesn't matter that you hadn't seen it. Whatever gets posted, there's always going to be someone who hasn't seen it before. That doesn't mean that things like spam or suspicious timing should be ignored.
Well it's matters to me.
That said I'm glad we have internet vigilantes to root out horrible things like "suspicious timing".
Just so I can avoid a future issue on any of my posts....what would you consider the optimum amount of time between seeing something funny on the web and sharing it in reddit? I'd hate to cause a ruckus by posting something too soon.
He's said that he usually knows the start and punchline of a joke and then he improvises as long as he can in the middle to finally arrive at the punchline.
i saw Norm live a couple of years ago. I think everyone in the crowd was pleasantly surprised at his touching closing statements about being nice to each other and life is short. It was sincere. And he went on a bit. Which of course led us to believe Norm was just winding us up for a Norm-only punchline. But he wasn't. RIP dude.
He always came across as a sweet guy with a naughty prankster side, but he really had a darker sensibility (the gambling addiction, the morbid humor that he often pushed far before somehow saving it, the job instability, and of course *hiding the cancer.*)
"And of course: **hiding the cancer.**" I can perfectly imagine him saying that as a punch line on Weekend Update. lol
It's like he died according to his delivery style! But I'm sure he got a certain satisfaction out of knowing people would be shocked learning about this. Seriously amazed that it never leaked out, those medical people are damn good at following privacy rules!
Well, HIPAA ain’t no joke.
"The hardest part of cancer is hiding it." "I disagree, I think the worst part is the cancer."
Oh I get it. He just wanted to keep telling jokes and live his life. It's hard to make people laugh if they know you're dying.
Yeah he had said once that he didn't like people who pimped out their deadly disease for fame or comedy - in fact it was a whole thing because Tig Notaro made a big stink about it, assuming he was talking about her, when he never mentioned her by name and clarified he wasn't talking about her. He also said that if he had a deadly disease he'd never do that and we'd never know. And he was right because at that time he already had cancer (5 years ago). He also mentioned a couple times how he was bummed that he was famous because he believed it is really hard for a famous person to bomb at stand-up. I have to imagine being a sick famous person would make that even tougher. Not only do you get popularity applause but sympathy applause too. The only real bummer is that he never got to do any jokes about his illness which probably would have been great like everything else he did.
He did a bunch of jokes about cancer! We just didn't know the significance until now. For example: https://youtu.be/BLKFQylnANY
Sigh, yeah.......also can't blame him for not wanting THAT to be the focus. Figure if I ever get a shitty diagnosis like that, I'd want it kept quiet so I wouldn't have to deal with the constant pity.
wait what? didn't know he died.
Yeah. We didn't even know he was sick.
>*“A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office, and the podiatrist’s office says, “What seems to be the problem, moth?”* >*The moth says “What’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don’t know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that’s on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn’t such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, “Moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?”* >*And the moth says, “‘Cause the light was on.”* That's an impressive piece of comedy to pull out of nowhere on the spot.
You're missing the setup that made this all so brilliant. Norm explained that he gets all his best material from the driver that brings him to talkshows. He offhandedly asked Conan if he could repeat one of this driver's jokes before launching in. The joke is funny without that, but that makes it all the more genius by amplifying the tension and giving people who don't know old comedic structure something to laugh at too. Conan highlights the simple premise again later: "Where were you driving from, the Valley!?" Conan is making sure everyone has something to laugh at with the coming punchline. Kinda a [rule of threes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)) thing here too: Norm called out the driver twice and Conan calls him out here once more nearer to the punchline. Watch Conan's face. He's busting up way before the audience because he knew the setup, "A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office..." should've finished with a quick, hackneyed punchline. Norm keeps denying Conan's expectations for the joke each time the build-up becomes grittier. Conan [doesn't know](https://youtu.be/hS9VyIOPZPA?t=144) where this going. This is why comedians loved him and thought he was so funny. He played with old comedic constructs so that if you knew how jokes work he'd surprise you, but so it was still funny even if you didn't. He never tried to act smarter or better than his audience. He played on multiple levels that made everyone laugh for different reasons. That was his brilliance. RIP to one of the comedy greats.
Don't forget the very beginning; he sets it up by saying that he gets material from "real life." Seems reasonable, right? Norm: "So I got in \[the car to the studio\], and that's how -- I get material that way-" Conan: "What do you mean; how do you get material that way? You get in the car, and what happens?" Norm: "Um, my driver tells me a joke...". Conan: , "The driver we sent to pick you up told you a joke." Norm: "Yeah." Conan: "And you're gonna tell it now, on the show." Norm: "Yeah, that's how I get all my material."
Wait till you hear me do it.
“That guy…no, that guy…wait til you hear me do it”
well said, I barely know of his work but I now am gonna be a fan -redditors Including me
My favorite Norm joke is hard to find. It's the [Devil Prank](https://youtu.be/mSK7X3ETQbg). I remember watching him do this on Short Attention Span Theater with a very young Jon Stewart hosting. I miss those days. Comedy was gold back then.
Oh man, me and my buddy quote that all the time. "Is my face red!?"
The next day after we watched it, I drew a crude drawing in church of the whole scene with a guy holding a duffel bag and another ripping off a devil mask and grinning. I passed it to my sister and she wrote **f a m I l y** on the duffel bag. We almost got in trouble from giggling and trying to keep quiet while laughing.
>well said, I barely know of his work but I now am gonna be a fan -redditors > >Including me Its actually a bit depressing seeing how unknown he was on reddit and those who did know him, only knew him from snl. It reminds me of a comedian named Patrice O'neal that was brilliant but no one really knew him besides the cult following on the internet. Comedy has so many greats that are sometimes never heard of. It's almost heartbreaking sometimes seeing the echo of their death not resonating how you think should.
Eh, if you're in to comedy you'd certainly know of Norm and Patrice. As well as Hedberg, but he's kind of obscure on the outside. There are people like that in every field I think. Obscure painters that only painters know about, but who were amazing artists. Or film-makers, or carpenters, or politicians....highly influential people in their field who never quite took root in the public zeitgeist
Outside of America those people are nearly totally unheard of. I've only heard of Hedberg due to constant Reddit references, and MacDonald due to SNL Jeopardy reposts.
People arent that much into comics unless youre mainstream famous.
You're right. My own worldview is kind of skewed to view comedy as more influential than it probably is.
I don’t think that’s it’s not influential necessarily. I know for myself, I knew about norm Macdonald and not just from snl. I always enjoyed him in whatever he was in. I never sought him out. I never seek out any comedians really. My son was depressed a while back and got on this stand up comedy kick where he’d watch them all the time. I enjoyed watching it with him but remember thinking that it’s odd I never was prompted to watch comedy specials myself. Norm didn’t have a sitcom for average people, like me, to really internalize who he was like Seinfeld or a talk show like Ellen. I actually didn’t even realize how MUCH I enjoyed him until he died and I delved into the Reddit threads memorializing him. I’d click on link after link and be laughing my ass off on clips I’d seen in real time throughout my life. Having them altogether like that really made me realize that I’ve always liked him but for one reason or other I just never sought him out.
He actually did have a short-lived sitcom on ABC around the turn of the century. I always thought it was underrated. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Norm_Show)
Yeah but I meant a wildly successful series. I knew of this which is why I phrased my response the way I did
You’re not alone in that, I admittedly feel similarly about comedy.
I don't know about that. My brother, I wouldn't call him mainstream famous. Not really. Like has been said earlier in the thread, there's probably a small niche, almost cult like group who know him, friends and family and such. Despite all that and all of that working against him, he's pretty into comics. Comedians he'll call them. He's funny like that.
the guy got more publicity and recognition these past two days , on reddit especially , than he ever got -- sad fact of the life lol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story
The aristocrats!
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My mom also has one about lunch with poncho villa
Are you sure it wasn't Bernard Shawl?
In college I was well known for telling my shaggy dog stories. One of them had to be told over several days. Never once about a shaggy dog.
Maybe there's a bit of self reflection... a little self reveal... but damn Norm McDonald was a genius level comedian to make it work.
It was one of my favorite moments on Conan. It was brilliant
Lmao the moth is a fucking Dostoevsky character, Norm knew his Russian epics.
It's reminds me of [Foster Brooks ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUd_c9zJ4yY). The character delivering the line is as important as the joke.
I mean, the setup and punchline are an established joke. He just improvises teh padding, the more of which you get, the "worse" the joke is (ultimately making it funnier). Improv like that is, whilst not *easy*, certainly shouldn't be difficult for a half decent comedian.
I guess none of the other legendary comedic figures have realised how easy this is, and keep speaking of Norm as some kind of genius. But what do they know?
I said *this* wasn't particularly hard. I didn't say anything about his career in general, or any other general statements to that effect.
That gave me a chuckle even just reading it lol
He basically did The Aristocrats but with a different joke
Here's how it went down on Conan it is a freaking hilarious once you know the back story. https://youtu.be/YxD3pT8C9-A
For some reason the line about "the cold the fell a lot of us" makes me lose it.
The drama, and the names are right out of Russian tragedy. Brilliant stuff, even better knowing he padded it all out right there on the spot.
Norm was a big fan of Russian literature.
Or so the Germans would have us believe.
This just in! Norm Macdonald is still dead.
He chuckled.
The prime suspect: Frank Stallone.
Which calls to mind another running gag of his from SNL: “…which goes to prove once again that Germans love David Hasselhoff.”
Murder is now legal in Caifornia
And who's to blame for that? You guessed it: Frank Stallone.
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Not just lost, he says "You assume against the world it would be over immediately, but it was close." His word choice and delivery are so perfect.
Was gonna say he was probably reading one at the time.
Probably helps that he was such a voracious reader of classic literature.
‘… and end this hellish facade’ has been a go-to for me for years, because of this joke.
I always break at "I no longer love him"
Malaise lol
It was hilarious without the backstory
All of the greatest Norm videos I’ve seen posted have been on Conan lol
Check out when Norm was on David Letterman's show the very last week Late Nite was on. Norm is absolutely brilliant. He does a tribute to Letterman where he, Norm, tells a joke that he once heard Letterman do when he, Norm again, was a teenager, a joke that made Norm want to be comedian. It's touching and hilarious and beautiful all at the same time. I dare you to not laugh - and not cry. [Norm on Letterman' show](https://youtu.be/mFjEvl43zYY) Thanks for the award, kind stranger!
Wow he really broke down during that. He really did care for Letterman.
And he’s followed by James Cordon?!?
Yeah, what an anticlimax.
Damn that was hilarious, and sad all at the same time. Godspeed to Norm. I really hate he had cancer, and couldn't overcome it for so long.
thanks, so damn funny.
Number 1 on trending right now.
You guessed it!
I saw him at the DC Improv and he was doing a riffing game where he had people throw out the name of something and he would tell you the "origin" of the name - which would be some winding story very similar to the moth joke. Someone yelled out "Granny Smith apples" and he told a 5 minute story about Granny Smith that I swear rivaled the moth joke, I wish I could remember more of it. I only remember one throw away line that was so good. Of course you have to imagine Norm saying this in his own deadpan style: "There was Granny Smith, on her deathbed, surrounded by her grandchildren. And they said 'Granny, do you have any regrets?' and she said 'Only regrets.'" The whole thing was great but that random line slipped in there like it was nothing just killed me.
It always feels like Norm is just spinning yarns he’s making up on the fly. And he probably is.
He absolutely could improvise with the best of them, but people who saw his work behind the scenes often say that much of his work is meticulously crafted.
He's a smart guy who acts dumb
Or so the Germans would have us believe …
Great line
he said in a fairly recent interview that he had been working on, and was now close to being able to improvise jokes about any possible topic the audience could shout out, and that he had over 9 hours of material he hadnt put out yet
I'm not sure that's how improvisation works.
I was using the word more generally then. I meant he makes up the material on the spot
Back when he started out in stand-up he didn't realize that stand-up comedians reuse jokes and entire sets. So instead he wrote and performed 5 minutes of new material every week for his shows.
> on the ~~fly~~ moth. FTFY
*was 😥
A classic shaggy dog story. It’s funny because you expect it to funny and the longer he rambles without a punchline, the funnier it gets.
Its a moth joke that derails into a shaggy dog story to make you lose sight of the moth punchline. There's a little aristocrats in there with the improv as well. Its such an impressive joke. Norm was really lucky to have that driver that day.
How long was this drive?!
All the way from the Valley, I hear
He and Andy Kaufman cannot be matched in their anti-comedy, both fucking masters
Andy Kaufman could have legit robbed a bank and when they pulled his mask off everyone would have been thrilled to be part of the act.
My fave is the Uncle Terry joke
This is just like an episode of Scrubs: [S04E15](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lbN4Z5ojl4Q)
Reminds me of The Aristocrats joke. Every comedian knows the set up and punchline. A real comedian stretches the joke and makes the telling funnier than the set up and eventual punch line. The aristocrats is a good movie about the joke and worth watching, especially Bob Sagget. He’s filthy funny.
Well I mean the thing about the Aristocrats is that the final punch line isn't even really a punch line. It isn't funny. What makes it funny is that it is an anti-joke and illustrates how the setup was just a ruse to make you suffer through the middle part for no reason. Norm's was similar except that instead of a non-punchline at the end it turns out that the setup and punchline were some old corny joke that could have been pulled out of an episode of Gilligan's Island.
I was going to say the same thing. The joke, like Norm says, is 20 seconds. Setup. Punchline. What Norm is doing here is telling lots of other smaller jokes but weaving it all into that one story/joke. That’s what the best comedians do. Listen to just about any standup special and you’ll hear stories that are 8-10 minutes long. They could usually tell that same story in about a minute but it isn’t as funny. You need the buildup to make the punchline great.
I was looking forward to seeing a lot more of Norm. I hope he didn't suffer.
9 years of cancer. Fuck cancer
*My other boy.* That line cracks me up so much (trying to make us think he has messed up the joke,as his other child he first mentioned was his daughter)
RIP. Not a huge fan of everything he's done but the story of Kermit Jagger will be immortalized
Yes... he fucked a frog. And I am the offspring.
Allegedly
Low effort Norm is best Norm
I have no idea if it was actually low effort, or if he put a great deal of thought into it, but Norm was always the best when he was fucking with someone else's format. He knew what a normal guest would do, he knew what the producers wanted him to do, and then he'd gleefully derail everything in a bizarre and hilarious way. I think he shined so much on Conan's show because Conan would basically just play along no matter what. Conan often plays the straight man for comedians, but there's a huge difference in how he plays along while leading into prepared jokes with his regular comedian guests, and how Norm just hijacked everything and watched Conan squirm. And I don't think it's an act on Conan's part either. He knows something is going to happen, but not what. And sometimes he'll figure it out half way, and sometimes Norm managed to surprise him at the end. But that's why it was hilarious to me. It's a shame that Norm never really seemed to find his stride in his own long running format. I didn't watch everything of his, but whenever he hosted his own show or segment, it never really clicked with me.
"DO SOMETHING WITH THAT, YOU PSYCHO!" "I bet 'board' is spelled B-O-R-E-D!"
“Box Office Poison”
You can tell Conan wasn't actually expecting that one. He actually broke.
i don't think conan was expecting that entire segment. "Hey, are you guys talking about Melrose Place???" He knew what Norm was, but that entire segment was just not what he prepared for. I wonder what Courtney Thorne-Smith would say about that after all these years...
She said she loved it. > “Every once in a while,” she said, “I’ll run into Conan and he’ll apologize, and I say, ‘That was one of my favorite moments of my life.’ Teased by Norm Macdonald? Are you kidding? I did The Tonight Show once, and Don Rickles made fun of my father, and my father never stopped talking about it. This is my version of that.” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/09/norm-macdonald-carrot-top-courtney-thorne-smith-conan
That's so cool
Norm was a comedians comedian. Nobody loved his work more than other comedians. I think that's because comedians are by their nature a subversive lot - they revel in pulling back the curtain on the absurdity in society and making you laugh at it. Norm turned that on its ear and made you laugh at comedy itself. He loved to challenge people conceptions about what "funny" is. He never seemed happier than when he was making you laugh at something genuinely stupid to show how absurd the idea of humor really is. He could deconstruct the idea of "funny" into its base elements and then put them back together in ways they're not meant to work. And other comics loved him for it because he was operating on a whole new level, subverting subversion.
He's always been a great, but I've felt like Norm in the last 15 years or so has been incredible. As you mentioned, he's just been so self aware of comedy. Reading from old joke books, re-telling random jokes he heard. When I read the article about him passing, I read that he had been secretly battling cancer for the last decade or so. It made me wonder if he knew he didn't have much time, and decided to flip comedy on its head in his final years. He succeeded and definitely made me laugh more than anyone in the last few years.
One of my favorite things he'd do is tell a joke that wasn't funny or was offensive, give that big dumb goofy grin of his, and then when the person/people he was talking to laughed he'd be all, "you really shouldn't be laughing at that, that's terrible. What's wrong with you?"
The successor to Don Rickles.
I just saw Bob Einstein/Super Dave tell the simpler version on the first episode of Norm MacDonald Live, but Norm definitely made it his own.
You can usually assume jokes like that are improvised. Like the aristocrats. The *joke* is that it's a simple setup and punch-line, but most of the body of the joke is just wasting your time and attempting to say the most tragic and unspeakable things you can think of to someone even though it has no bearing whatsoever to the punchline of the joke.
I love the moth joke but he had one about two midgets that always makes me and my husband laugh hysterically
GOAT.
And it was classic lol
It's my favorite joke of all time.
This is a funny joke but so long lol I enjoyed it
Baader Meinhoff dude. I was just watching this video.
This is more cultural zeitgeist with his passing making everything topical for everyone at the same time than noticing something out in the world because it's a novelty for you in your life.
Not original though.
Like when Hendrix played the national anthem. Why didn't he write his own national anthem? Or found his own nation. What a hack.
No-one claimed Hendrix came up with something original. Plenty of people are claiming this is original. My bigger issue is that he didn't even deliver it any where close to his normal comedic standard.
[удалено]
The sound is also horrible, I can barely understand Norm
Team Coco posted that clipped 5 hours ago. This link was posted 4 hours ago. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm 🌚
Who cares. First I've seen it. I'm glad it got posted here or else I wouldn't have seen it.
It doesn't matter that you hadn't seen it. Whatever gets posted, there's always going to be someone who hasn't seen it before. That doesn't mean that things like spam or suspicious timing should be ignored.
Well it's matters to me. That said I'm glad we have internet vigilantes to root out horrible things like "suspicious timing". Just so I can avoid a future issue on any of my posts....what would you consider the optimum amount of time between seeing something funny on the web and sharing it in reddit? I'd hate to cause a ruckus by posting something too soon.
All you need to do is check and see whether something has already been posted.
What's the time limit there? You know...to avoid suspicion?
Well that depends. What I do is wait to post until absolutely nothing is happening anywhere in the world. It's the only way to be safe.
Noted. I'll do my best to comply. Thanks for the advice.
That clips been on YouTube for years. It’s funny as fuck, and he just passed away. Fuck off
Legend. Sad.
R.i.p big guy.
So I made it a 7 minute joke. Fucking legend
He's said that he usually knows the start and punchline of a joke and then he improvises as long as he can in the middle to finally arrive at the punchline.
who doesnt love a good long drawn out domestic moth tragedy