NORM FUCKING MACDONALD

so much i ripped off half my posting persona from him

very strange moving to canada and finding his brother is the washington correspondent for the cbc and has a significant family resemblance

http://i.cbc.ca/1.1857896.1459879184!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_1180/neil-macdonald.jpg

seems strange he never became the crux of an adult swim cartoon
well, i mean there's the mike tyson thing but he's not the crux i guess

his sitcoms weren't great but were better than a handful of sitcoms that have made it. totally the wrong format for him, though.

rewatched Dirty Work a couple weeks ago and it held up better than expected, with the exception of some truly 90s musical cues

love this, on being on Fallon same night as Trump:

Did you meet him?
Well, what happened was, after the show, he came out and was just standing there. So I said, "Mr. Trump, a picture?" And he said, "You betcha. Just give me a minute." Then he turns and walks down the hall, all the way to the other end, and gets on the elevator. "Just give me a minute," and then he leaves the building. It was hilarious, like a Buster Keaton movie or something.

in light of the new Sully movie I rewatched his appearance on Conan where he gets the early rights to the movie and holy hell is that funny

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/norm-macdonald-talks-chekhov

“So, anyways, the guy dies, and then Chekhov continues the story. They put him in a kind of duffelbag, a sack, and throw him overboard. He sinks in the ocean, his dead body. And one fish grazes against him, rips the sack, and his body tumbles out, and a bunch of minnows come and eat little bits of him. And a big fish comes and takes away his legs, and that’s the end.” (Some of these details are not in the original.)

nice

“That bird almost hit me in the face, like Fabio on the roller coaster,” he said.

And I like bleakness, because I grew up in a bleak area,” he said. (In Quebec, then Ontario.)

huh. Quebec was once ONtario?!

his show is on amazon prime now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-jfLIssw0E

Excited about this, was there any explanation why it just disappeared after two episodes last year?

apparently it's the obvious answer of funding:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NormMacdonald/comments/6moz6n/lets_hear_it_for_daniel_kellison_master_negotiator/dk4tr5n/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqECl-5BiA4

i found this to be a very unique and interesting interview. he goes really in-depth into spirituality and philosophy. cool stuff, some of it ends up in his work. there was a bit towards the end of his Netflix special where he talks about his love for his dog that i found very profound.

What is wrong with Norm, he seems very very slow lately.

the true damage caused by Louis CK and podcast creating this world where we take nightclub comedians seriously as big philosophers cannot be calculated. if that wasn't Norm you'd be lil lol my Uncle Steve on Facebook get a load of this

yeah, Louis CK was the first comedian ppl thought might have something interesting to say.

There was a question on Reddit yesterday (maybe deleted, I can't find it), which said that comedians are often philosophers. They said three names, but I only remember that two of them were Bill Hicks and George Carlin. I don't even think Hicks is a comedian, but ymmv - but these are the guys whose fault it is.

Lenny Bruce? Not stand-up, but some of Chaplin's film stuff? Comedy as a kind of "truth telling" is old as dirt.

Good comedy is useful hence.....

Pryor

roy 'chubby' brown

Also court jesters, Shakespearean clowns, all that jazz - I think ums is talking about them being taken seriously as big philosophers outside of the context of their comic roles tho

What is wrong with Norm, he seems very very slow lately.

― rip van wanko, Wednesday, August 30, 2017 3:03 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he does seem strangely slow. very prematurely aged in that he's only in his late 50s, but comes off about 70 and not too sprightly. he doesn't have any drink or drug problems which might explain this iirc - his main vice seems to be his addiction to gambling.

he's always been slow and cranky old man-ish that's his thing

Are you sure urc because I always presumed this guy was on everything going, and plenty of it

the time of nightclub comedians taken seriously as big philosophers is definitely more a pre-podcasting than post-podcasting phenomenon, i would say. norm's youtube thing seems less to do with podcasting comedians trying to self-promote in an age of netflix specials off rogan appearances and without the power of morning radio and more about recreating golden age broadcasting and talking to his old buddies.

he's always been slow and cranky old man-ish that's his thing

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, August 30, 2017 9:24 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he literally reminds me of senile septuagenarian relatives of mine though is the thing!

i know there are ten million articles about amy schumer being our finest philosopher and praising aziz ansari and steven crowder's debate as the 2017 buckley vidal.

like

In his 2008 stand-up special "Chewed Up," Louis CK explains the intricacies of white privilege. In his latest hour-long stand-up special, Aziz Ansari criticizes creepy dudes on the street. On "The Daily Show," Trevor Noah investigates whether all police officers are racist.

It's a radical approach to humor: Rather than find a larger (typically absurd) sense of meaning in a minor observation — What's the deal with flip flops? — today's comedians begin with a complex topic and see what humor they can draw out.

...

The ideas aren't necessarily novel — formal philosophers have been wrestling with feminist and racial thought for decades. The innovation lies in the way those ideas get packaged and distributed.

that's questionable though

Are you sure urc because I always presumed this guy was on everything going, and plenty of it

― passé aggresif (darraghmac), Wednesday, August 30, 2017 9:24 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe he is, he will claim in interviews that he's not a big drinker and doesn't do drugs or whatever but he tends to bullshit in interviews

the true damage caused by Louis CK and podcast creating this world where we take nightclub comedians seriously as big philosophers cannot be calculated

nah this absolutely predates podcast culture - Mort Sahl, Pryor, Bruce etc as noted

Norm does sound more and more like Larry Flynt.

i too have noticed that he appears to have aged during these past decades

something's definitely happened to his face - he really looks like he got a bad facelift, which in turn makes him look a bit older than he really is

what is the deal with flip-flops tho

I officially retract my statement as historically inaccurate, though maintain that it sucked before and the Internet made it worse

what can't you say that about though

websites

word on the street is he's got an insatiable appetite for the flavor of xanax

the one where he goaded a peanut-eating Mike Tyson into saying the n-word was... something

word on the street is he's got an insatiable appetite for the flavor of xanax

― del griffith, Wednesday, August 30, 2017 12:50 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see, this i could believe. ol' norm, geeked up off them bars

ty bizarro for making the post I was thinking of, I was on the road a long time this afternoon and unable to post

i mean there's a marked difference in just the past couple of years. Compare an episode of Norm MacDonald Live from a couple of years ago (Adam Sandler for example, 2014) against the new one with Jerry Seinfeld.

I keep seeing the xanax rumor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuldL1m6FAs

in a different mode here, maybe recorded last year?

What is wrong with Norm, he seems very very slow lately.

― rip van wanko, Wednesday, August 30, 2017 6:03 AM (one month ago) Bookmark

Apparently all he needed was a few sips of Jim Carrey's hyper intense coffee blend.

great interview, Carrey's comic spirit remains the same but he's more mild mannered

[–]golightlys
What has been the biggest obstacle you’ve had to overcome in your career?

[–]ImNormMacdonald
Due to multiple herniated discs, my pain level on a normal day is through the roof.

[–]MikePGS
Is that from carrying SNL all those years?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B32QrmfA9pt/?igshid=mylq6eak8jzt

"There's no room that says scoundrel on it"

The solemn delivery absolutely kills me.

the Bob Saget roast clip is blowing up again and as much as I love it, it's kind of weird to see it divorced from context - I actually watched it as it aired and Norm's set was 3x funnier when it followed an hours worth of comedians trying to out-Andrew Dice Clay each other

Neil opening for FNM was so good

"Ladies and gentlemen, Faaaaaaaaaaaaaa-

-mous comedian, Neil Hamburger"

:D so good

my favorite was when he was opening for Tenacious D and he went “And now, I’m proud to introduce…….TENNNNNN more jokes!l” to a chorus of boos

great piece by Kaleb Horon in RS

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/norm-macdonald-tribute-appreciation-1226839/

latest episode of Conan's podcast is a tribute

lmao this clip just popped up on my feed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emUhplJxmD0

something I find interesting about Norm is that through all his shows, podcasts, talk show appearances, interviews etc. he was pretty much "on" as a comedian nonstop, barely stopped for a minute to say anything serious, and you could assume all his stories were at least partially made up. but on Twitter, at least the last few years, he was almost exclusively philosophical & matter of fact. for a lot of entertainers it's exactly the opposite.

Lovs Norm, but its so weird to see a comedian caring about things like this.

Thinking about when Norm MacDonald would not stop attacking Bret Easton Ellis for attacking Alice Munro, God bless him pic.twitter.com/iDQwfp4i1A

— Rory McCarthy (@roryisconfused) July 5, 2023

patriotic Canadian right there

norm was otm

You know what's weird? Finding out Alice Munro died from a Norm Macdonald thread.

Norm McDonald died!?

wait the thread killed her?

she is the queen of the shaggy dog story with melancholy/longing/internal voices, so I see how Norm would be on her side <3

Okay, but tweet #2 and #3 there are actually really funny

#4 gets my vote

The kicker was that Norm made those tweets on his own birthday

that list skips my favorite one:

http://i.imgur.com/RBJa157.jpeg

Those tweets were so satisfying because the Guy Who Calls Things Overrated is a type that deserves ridicule

weirdest bit is complimenting alice munro by comparing her to lee iacocca

norm what

That’s the best one imo

it's certainly the most "norm mcdonald" out of all of them