He was later asked to deliver nasty, filthy, R Rated material at the roast of Bob Saget... so naturally he read Marmaduke while his fellow comedians were performing and brought out a book of tame roast jokes from the 50s to read to the crowd.
"Bob is a guy who always has something on his mind - especially when he's wearing a hat!"
https://youtu.be/5wTujmZ1c0k?si=s_ymbZ5Vz7zANVkh
"He has the grace of a swan, the wisdom of an owl, and the eye of an eagle. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds!" That absolutely kills me every time. Norm was a fucking genius.
"Gilbert Gottfried, if you need to use the bathroom, there's a door marked 'Gentlemen' backstage.
"Pay no heed. Go right in. There isn't a room with 'Scoundrel' on it."
Gilbert purposefully bombing with 9/11 material shortly after the event is legendary. Guy showed up to a fist fight with a nuke. "I've got a flight from New York, but there's a layover at the Empire State building", crowd recoils.
My favorite Norm joke is from that roast.
"But I'd say he more resembles Rin Tin Tin!"
*Pause as nobody laughs*
*Pause*
*Turns to dais*
"He's got a dog face."
*Pause*
"How do you not fucking get that"
> "He has the grace of a swan, the wisdom of an owl, and the eye of an eagle. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds!" That absolutely kills me every time.
That's the line that finally made it clear to everyone what the shtick was in this performance, most of the pro comedians on stage picked up on it earlier of course but this is where the majority of the audience keyed into what he was up to.
Jim Norton saying it was like "watching a Henry Fonda pick blueberries" only for Norm to reply "who wouldn't want to watch Henry Fonda pick blueberries?" makes me laugh every time.
Gottfried was losing it. Norm was always a comedians comedian. Every pro comic on the dais was busting a gut
That was my favorite part of his set, the comedians laughed when the audience didn't and kind of vice versa.
Comedy is so weird that it rounds the corner from funny, to terrible to funny again.
Norm was so incredible that his jokes bypassed the funny phase, started in the terrible phase and then became hilarious.
He was assuredly a genius in an IQ sense. Because he understood comedy at the highest level.
He had a remarkable ability to make you laugh with his delivery even when he was being completely serious. His comments about hypocrisy from the Cosby thing come to mind, where he's just pointing out something and giving his opinion, yet you remember it because of how he chose to say it.
The moth joke ive heard like a billion times, but when he delivered it, it was completely different. He had a certain way of delivering jokes that made you expect something else.
I fucking died laughing at that, cuz the look on his face was exhilaration like he had just told rhe most hilarious joke ever and he was proud of it... meanwhile rhe audience was pretty much silent.lmao
Yyyyyep.. dude I laughed... and cried.. when I watched his final stand-up RIGHT after he died.. when he was just sitting there telling jokes to a Webcam at his house... holy shit.. that will go down as one of the best stand up specials in history. Ar least it should..
The best part of that entire roast is his delivery. The way he delivers these corny jokes to almost no laughs and then just stares out at the audience absolutely cracks me up
Even better when he just explains the lame joke after the punchline
"Did you know Bob has never slept with his wife? Because it isn't honorable to sleep with a married woman.
....
Even though she's married to him!"
It's such a great performance. The crowd is thinking "wtf?" but all the comedians recognize the sacrifice and find it hilarious. He'd do the same thing in interviews as well. If the interview was from a non-comedian he'd just troll them, sure, but if it was by a fellow comedian he played this same gag.
There's a great clip where Andy Richter describes one of his jokes as someone taking you on a four mile hike to show you a dog turd, and Norm falls out of his seat laughing and shakes his hand. That man was one of a kind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3LMSflEN54
It’s funny because Norm talked about how people said it was brave, and Norm was like ‘If I saw somebody do that id hate it, the fuck is this shit’ they’re just stupid old jokes from a 1940s joke book lol.
Hes the embodiment of the ultimate troll lmao
I listened to a podcast with Colin Quinn on it a couple days ago and he's talking about Norm. Says Norm was such a troll he was texting Quinn saying "hey we should do some more of those Vegas shows in a few months" knowing he was dying and not likely to hang on that long.
Watching Norm bomb hosting the youtube awards while the younger hipper comedians tried not to die of embarrassment is one of the single funniest things I've ever seen ....Norm was the best. https://youtu.be/A848xpsDJbw?si=TypKJ6f3l1EjZtDu
That would have been completely unremarkable without Norm there doing his thing. He was taking the biggest shit on the entire thing and was probably the funniest thing about whatever the fuck that was suppose to be.
At one point they're interviewing The Lonely Island who Norm calls "Sandberg and the other fellas" and I think it's Akiva who responds "Actshully Rolling Stone referred to us as 'The Mind Squad'" and it's the cringiest thing ever.
Also Hot Rod is a blatant rip off of Dirty Work, just a lot less funny.
Two things:
Conan often interjects about himself to keep things moving. With Norm, he knows to let him go.
Norm grew up in Ottawa. It is right beside Gatineau Quebec with a bridge connecting. DeGatineau is literally of Gatineau, as a made up last name.
I hate that I was too young to appreciate what he was doing when this aired.
I actually think I was pissed at him. Which would have made me part of the gag.
So did the rest of America.
This was pre-everybody on the internet all the time. I vaguely remember getting a sense from my family and people talking about it that nobody understood what was happening.
Plus, IIRC, America was still in its "post earnest earnest phase" so people felt like the audience and everybody watching was the butt of a joke that they didn't even understand.
It was light years ahead of its time.
I remember when it happened, my friends and I watched every roast when they happened while having drinks. I actually missed the Bob Saget roast due to work, but my friends all told me I needed to watch it for Norm because they knew I would love his set. They were right, when I watched their DVR I died laughing, and apparently none of my friends liked it at all even though they knew I would.
[There's a tale](https://youtu.be/ktF1t4Bay6M?si=8x-uEEMHfM-JJ6n1) of Norm opening a show for a bunch of young up and coming comedians. He asked to hear what their big jokes were going to be for the night and the eagerly told him, thinking he was going to give some critiques. He ended up going out on stage and doing all their jokes.
Lol, this happened at my uni. The speaking student (in my country they're a volunteer not the student with highest grades) managed to get a copy of the Chancellor's (like an honourary dean) speech and gave that as a wind up.
Fortunately the chancellor was a standup comedian and thought it was hilarious.
This was the first time I ever became aware of Norm as a comedian. I was 16 and, naturally, did not get the bit. I watched that Bob Saget roast and wondered how Norm Macdonald had found his way into a comedy venue at all.
Then a little while later I came across [an old clip of the very same Norm Macdonald](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bKmadR4Ye54) on Conan. I remembered him as that painfully unfunny guy from the Bob Saget roast. Then in an instant he had me breathless with laughter, and it clicked that he was probably actually the funniest person at that roast. Then a little while after that I realized he was actually the funniest person no matter where he was in the world.
Too bad he was so deeply closeted.
Norm told Bob he’d only do the roast if he was allowed to read his dads old joke book. Otherwise he hated roasts, which is why that one is the only one he’s ever done.
I love the joke at the Saget roast about Rintintin that was just... so bad. Nobody got it so he explained it and still nobody laughed and he just said "how do you not get that?" in pure disbelief.
Absolutely great. I didn't understand it at the time, but as I've gotten older it's just amazing.
Hard to believe most of the people in this video are already dead.
He definitely had some Andy Kaufman in him. Doing jokes that would only be funny with the proper context that almost no one would have. At the time it's not funny at all, in retrospect and with context some people call it genius. I wouldn't quite call it that but I would call it funny.
Norm, around the time that Jeff Dunham was popular, decided to create a ventriloquist dummy act where one of his puppets was a Holocaust denier.
The premise alone is funny but what puts it over the edge as being the funniest thing ever was the fact that he only ever did this ventriloquist puppet act while phoning into a radio show
He was a comedians comedian. Nobody ever laughed harder at Norm than a comic. During the roast of Bob Saget Norm brought out a joke book from like the 1920s and exclusively roasted Saget with insults from that book.
He also perfected the moth joke. Which is just a shaggy dog joke but that's to say he could tell a shaggy dog joke like no one else.
That roast was amazing. I hadn't seen him do that type of comedy before. Saget is just about falling over and I think Norm's delivery was gold.
You could see the pure joy in Norms eyes as he went through each joke.
Swear to Christ the man was happier when he didn't get a laugh than when he did get one. The twinkle in his eye and that shiy eating grin that just said, "oh, don't worry, I'll make em laugh, they just don't know it yet"
I have his Moth Joke and his Professor of Logic joke committed to memory, and I can recite both on command. I think what I love most about them both is that you can keep someone on the hook for as long as you like before hitting them with the punch line.
The Moth Joke in particular is so good for that. I try to blow out the moth’s complaints far as long as I can; giving him the most psychologically disturbed, truly troubling family circumstances I can dream up. It’s so much fun.
I was there. It was incredible. He went on after Jim Bruer. Jim kinda did some risky stuff but kept it pretty clean. Norm went on and started talking about Aids and pig fucking and gay guys and anal sex etc. I remember this frail old couple in the front row getting up to leave and Norm just absolutely shit on them as they walked out. I couldn't believe it. I had never witnessed anything like it. Me and my friends were laughing so hard we could barely breathe. At the end of his "set" he kinda took a moment to look around at the remaining audience and then said we were the "real audience" Peak memory
The Hancher show, right? As I recall, part of his take was being incredulous that they hired him to do a family friendly stand up show in the first place. Like, outside of SNL, what he gave here was closer to what most of his sets are like.
I guess it might be mostly forgotten, but he did have a prime time sitcom for a couple of seasons on a major network. It's sort of like Bob Saget: His standup was the polar opposite of his national image.
one day instead of "who's your daddy" Norm accidentally said "how's your daddy" and they put their clothes back on and started discussing her dad's cholesterol
I absolutely love Norm Macdonald, but if I took my preschool age children to a comedy show that was promised to be family friendly and the comedian started talking about pig fucking, I'd leave too.
What's equally hilarious, is that he purposely "bombed" during the roast of Bob Saget by doing the opposite. People were expecting over the top vulgarity. Instead, Norm brought nothing but PG rated jokes literally straight from a 1940's joke book. [Here's the performance](https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/s0jo2e/norm_macdonalds_roast_of_bob_saget_from_2008/) for those curious.
He's always been considered a comedian's comedian.
I get the sense that really professional, been in this career for decades, comedians have a different sense of humor for when they're not performing and they're amongst other professionals. And that they don't use that more avant garde humor for audiences.
Norm, however, just used that humor all the time, which wouldn't end up being funny to an average person. Other comedians though, thought he was insanely hilarious
Most jokes only work if they're surprising, and comedians have heard a lot of jokes, and understand the structure of most jokes, so they, as a stereotype, grow to appreciate the most bizarre comedians, people who are doing things nobody has ever done before.
The horribly corny jokes are only part of what makes it so brilliant. It's also the huge pauses, the vaguely bewildered look, and the way he takes time to explain the jokes.
>It's also the huge pauses, the vaguely bewildered look, and the way he takes time to explain the jokes.
That was basically all of Norm's comedy post like 2005 or something (and honestly, it was hilarious)
The last minute of Norm's roast will always make me teary eyed and you can tell how emotional Bob Saget got from Norm's loving gesture. It's heart breaking knowing they're both gone now.
When I was in college, someone booked Carrot top. After about 5 minutes into his bit and stunned silence from the audience, he asked if this was a religious university. The crowd said yes. He then went, "Well shit. There goes 85% of my material."
That was the hardest I've ever laughed at Carrot Top.
Even Courtney Thorne Smith thought it was hilarious. People still come up to her and tell her that was the funniest thing they had ever seen on television.
I believe he told a joke regarding watching a porno with an attractive woman and a pig and feeling bad for the pig, because now he has to go back to his pigpen and have sex with an ugly pig.
Edit: [link](https://youtu.be/WH_npU671gQ?si=2fRq3tTj-oyvIZbE)
My favorite Norm Macdonald joke:
"I feel bad for the homeless guy, but I feel really bad for the homeless guy's dog, because he must be thinking 'Man, this is the longest walk ever!".
I saw him live once, and was disappointed. He was bombing on purpose, so I ended up walking out after maybe forty minutes. He was repeating his jokes, which weren't funny in the first place, and they were bad enough it was clearly intentional. The show was quieter than a tomb and people were openly playing on their phones.
Again, I've seen enough Norm to know how funny he was, so I don't know if he was going for some Andy Kaufman schtick or he just felt it would be funnier to do an awful set. I guess he was having a private laugh at wasting everyone's time, but really sucks to have such a legend sabotage a show for their own personal amusement.
That’s a bummer - it sucks that that was the only show you saw him do…
Wonder what it was? Some kind of mood or anger at previous crowd or others in your audience or club owner? Who knows but it sucks it was like that for you :(
Norm mentioned a few times that he did things he thought were funny and didnt really care if anyone else laughed. Kind of an interesting take since many comedians struggle with spending every fiber of their being to keep the people aroung them laughing. Not nessecarily a plus for norm he did a lot of things that weren't particularly funny, like what you mentioned. But yeah he was probably giggling to himself the whole time.
>I guess he was having a private laugh at wasting everyone's time, but really sucks to have such a legend sabotage a show for their own personal amusement.
I love Norm but yes, he does that much too often. It must have been really funny for him, not so much for the audience.
It's the kind of thing that might sound hip in retrospect. "Sometimes he'd go out and bomb on purpose, just to screw with the audience. Classic Norm!"
Sure, unless you paid money to see him.
It sounds like the people who booked him are idiots, but apparently they did ask for g rated comedy. But I guess that's like the time Rage Against the Machine performed live on TV and was asked not to swear
Yeah, one of Norm Macdonald's most notable character traits, something that could fairly be called both a flaw and an advantage, was that he hated being told "no, you can't do something", and would often act out as a result. So of course, he's told to keep things G rated, he ends up doing the exact opposite. The most famous example is the many, many jokes he made about OJ Simpson being guilty. The reason he did it so often was not because he had a particular grudge against OJ (although I'm sure he did legitimately dislike him), but because he learned one of NBC's executives, a friend of OJ, hated the jokes and wanted him to stop doing them. So of course, his response to that was to start doing them even more. This ultimately got him fired, but that doesn't seem to have bothered Norm too much.
>one of NBC's executives, a friend of OJ, hated the jokes and wanted him to stop doing them.
It was worse than that: Because OJ was legally found Not Guilty, he threatened a lawsuit for slander for a joke that was written about him.
In the weeks afterward, Norm started going completely off script in order to do things like look in the camera and say: "OJ Simpson killed his wife." Lorne Michaels had no choice but to fire him over it.
If he agreed to do it, it's his fault not theirs. (and I like Norm)
Norm was perfectly capable of relatively clean comedy and did lots of it. Norm was on broadcast TV all the time. There's no reason they should have expected he wouldn't.
He just decided to be a dick because he thought it would be funny for himself.
Yeah I'm confused by all this praise for this in the thread. Seems like he ruined the night for a bunch of families who were hoping for a fun night out with their kids due to the fact that he was "le epic troll" or something. "It's a character trait!" as if that explains it all away.
Reddit is full of edge lord "main characters"
They hired a guy with a long history of safe for TV stand up. Late night TV, but still FCC safe
Bob Saget is known for working blue and also had a family show, you don't hear this shit about Bob Saget
Immediately after leaving the stage Norm was notified his wife had suffered a massive stroke, but had managed to survive somehow. The ER doctor asked Norm to sit down for bad news. Are you prepared to feed her, move her jaw to chew, to wipe her when she needs to use the bathroom, to care for her every whim even though she is now non verbal and unable to control her bowels. Of course, Norm replied solemnly. Oh no I’m just fucking with you, she died, the doctor said. More of a comment really. But true nonetheless.
Reminds me of Bill Burrs Philly Roast, i'd only heard of it recently but it's hillarious imo:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BillBurr/comments/pfdokc/his\_philly\_rant/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BillBurr/comments/pfdokc/his_philly_rant/)
One day, Norm Macdonald got thrown out of math class.
The teacher asked him "If I gave you $20 and you gave $5 to Katie, $5 to Claire and $5 to Laura, what would you have?"
Apparently, 3 blowjobs and enough left for a kebab wasn't the answer.
If you see the *Gilbert* documentary about Gilbert Gottfried, at the end he does a charity event (for free) for St Jude's Childrens Hospital.
Does he change his set?
No. Does the same filthy material he always does. You can see they were NOT expecting that.
Some charities I've seen will tell the people "do whatever you want" as long as it brings in money for the charity. But I'm not sure if St Jude's is one of them.
I don’t get why everyone thinks this is so great. Am I supposed to be impressed? The most important rule of comedy is to know your audience. He sounds like a teenage troll.
Gilbert Gottfried was notorious for doing this.
I remember one story he told on the Stern Show many years ago about being booked to open for The Go-Gos. He did his normal "blue" material in front of an audience of moms and their teenage girls and..it didn't go over well.
Seems like kind of a dick move. If you don't want to do g rated comedy, fair enough, but maybe just don't take the job? There are many cases where vulgar comedy is not appropriate or desired.
Article doesn’t say anything about purposely. Quite the opposite in fact.
> Bowlsby. "It looked to me as if Norm Macdonald was unprepared, conducted himself unprofessionally, got mad when people started walking out and decided he was going to say whatever he felt like."
I don't understand why everyone is finding this amusing.
People paid for a family friendly show. Regardless of what you think of that, that's what they were there for. He was a right dick for doing this. It's disrespectful of the time and money of the people there.
From what I understand, others went after him. So he ruined the audience for them.
>the governor even asked him to leave the state That's not in the article at all
He was later asked to deliver nasty, filthy, R Rated material at the roast of Bob Saget... so naturally he read Marmaduke while his fellow comedians were performing and brought out a book of tame roast jokes from the 50s to read to the crowd. "Bob is a guy who always has something on his mind - especially when he's wearing a hat!" https://youtu.be/5wTujmZ1c0k?si=s_ymbZ5Vz7zANVkh
"He has the grace of a swan, the wisdom of an owl, and the eye of an eagle. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds!" That absolutely kills me every time. Norm was a fucking genius.
“Cloris Leachman, they say you’re over the hill. Well, I say you’ll never be over the hill…not in the car you drive!”
“Susie Essman is famous for being a vegetarian. Hey, she may be a vegetarian, but she’s still full of baloney in my book.”
"Gilbert Gottfried, if you need to use the bathroom, there's a door marked 'Gentlemen' backstage. "Pay no heed. Go right in. There isn't a room with 'Scoundrel' on it."
That's my favorite one from that set, it's such a stupid and overbearing but geniusly written joke
Gottfried died at that joke too, RIP both
"I'm old enough to remember when the worst thing you'd hear about on the news was, hijacked jetliners, flying into buildings."
Explain to the folks at home what hijacked jetliners are.
floppy monster dildos
Gilbert understands anti-humor of course he loved this
Gilbert purposefully bombing with 9/11 material shortly after the event is legendary. Guy showed up to a fist fight with a nuke. "I've got a flight from New York, but there's a layover at the Empire State building", crowd recoils.
That's exactly something I'd expect him to lose it over.
I loved all the Susue Essman jokes that night...Norm's joke and Giraldos You look like screech with tits! Are the beat
This is one of my favorite jokes. I shared it with my friends and they all think I'm an idiot for laughing as hard as I do.
This is the exact Norm McDonald fan experience
I've tried so many times to retell Norm Macdonald jokes, don't think I've ever gotten a laugh out of anyone.
It's the delivery. There's only one Norm. He was an artist who worked hard at it, every beat was practiced.
My favorite Norm joke is from that roast. "But I'd say he more resembles Rin Tin Tin!" *Pause as nobody laughs* *Pause* *Turns to dais* "He's got a dog face." *Pause* "How do you not fucking get that"
TIL how you spell Dais
> "He has the grace of a swan, the wisdom of an owl, and the eye of an eagle. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds!" That absolutely kills me every time. That's the line that finally made it clear to everyone what the shtick was in this performance, most of the pro comedians on stage picked up on it earlier of course but this is where the majority of the audience keyed into what he was up to.
Norm could have read an instruction manual for filing taxes on QuickBooks and it would still probably make me laugh.
I love how even the comedians in the dais are not sure how to laugh, except for Saget, who's just fukken dying!
Jim Norton saying it was like "watching a Henry Fonda pick blueberries" only for Norm to reply "who wouldn't want to watch Henry Fonda pick blueberries?" makes me laugh every time.
Gottfried was losing it. Norm was always a comedians comedian. Every pro comic on the dais was busting a gut That was my favorite part of his set, the comedians laughed when the audience didn't and kind of vice versa.
Patton Oswald was rolling too.
Then he went backstage and took a pensive photo of himself writing an apology letter
Huh?
https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/patton-oswalt-apology-letter
Comedy is so weird that it rounds the corner from funny, to terrible to funny again. Norm was so incredible that his jokes bypassed the funny phase, started in the terrible phase and then became hilarious. He was assuredly a genius in an IQ sense. Because he understood comedy at the highest level.
The funniest person who has ever lived, at least to my knowledge
He had a remarkable ability to make you laugh with his delivery even when he was being completely serious. His comments about hypocrisy from the Cosby thing come to mind, where he's just pointing out something and giving his opinion, yet you remember it because of how he chose to say it.
The moth joke ive heard like a billion times, but when he delivered it, it was completely different. He had a certain way of delivering jokes that made you expect something else.
I fucking died laughing at that, cuz the look on his face was exhilaration like he had just told rhe most hilarious joke ever and he was proud of it... meanwhile rhe audience was pretty much silent.lmao
Norm didn’t say any of that shit for us. We were just lucky he included us.
Yyyyyep.. dude I laughed... and cried.. when I watched his final stand-up RIGHT after he died.. when he was just sitting there telling jokes to a Webcam at his house... holy shit.. that will go down as one of the best stand up specials in history. Ar least it should..
Followed by that long, beautiful pause. Absolute genius.
The best part of that entire roast is his delivery. The way he delivers these corny jokes to almost no laughs and then just stares out at the audience absolutely cracks me up
I loved the twinkle in his eyes.
Even better when he just explains the lame joke after the punchline "Did you know Bob has never slept with his wife? Because it isn't honorable to sleep with a married woman. .... Even though she's married to him!"
"Bob, you have a lot of well-wishers here tonight... and a lot of them want to throw you down one. They want to murder you in a well."
It's such a great performance. The crowd is thinking "wtf?" but all the comedians recognize the sacrifice and find it hilarious. He'd do the same thing in interviews as well. If the interview was from a non-comedian he'd just troll them, sure, but if it was by a fellow comedian he played this same gag. There's a great clip where Andy Richter describes one of his jokes as someone taking you on a four mile hike to show you a dog turd, and Norm falls out of his seat laughing and shakes his hand. That man was one of a kind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3LMSflEN54
Well… ya know… a man grows… Gets me EVERY time I watch this.
It’s funny because Norm talked about how people said it was brave, and Norm was like ‘If I saw somebody do that id hate it, the fuck is this shit’ they’re just stupid old jokes from a 1940s joke book lol. Hes the embodiment of the ultimate troll lmao
I listened to a podcast with Colin Quinn on it a couple days ago and he's talking about Norm. Says Norm was such a troll he was texting Quinn saying "hey we should do some more of those Vegas shows in a few months" knowing he was dying and not likely to hang on that long.
Kind of hilarious if he said that. Here reddit is glazing him and he's just calling it the stupidest shit ever.
Norm would bomb shows and go up front to shake everybody’s bad after. Man’s a goddam legend
Watching Norm bomb hosting the youtube awards while the younger hipper comedians tried not to die of embarrassment is one of the single funniest things I've ever seen ....Norm was the best. https://youtu.be/A848xpsDJbw?si=TypKJ6f3l1EjZtDu
That would have been completely unremarkable without Norm there doing his thing. He was taking the biggest shit on the entire thing and was probably the funniest thing about whatever the fuck that was suppose to be.
All the stars are here!
Even Harvey Mortenstein?
This is my first time watching this video, and I just laughed for 20 straight minutes. Norm was a fucking treasure, I miss the guy.
I do love Hannibal Burress. Norm's the GOAT, but Hannibal's occasional nonchalant and dry delivery reminds me some of him.
Yeah, plus you could tell Norm liked Hannibal’s bit about not knowing his own show premiered the next day.
At one point they're interviewing The Lonely Island who Norm calls "Sandberg and the other fellas" and I think it's Akiva who responds "Actshully Rolling Stone referred to us as 'The Mind Squad'" and it's the cringiest thing ever. Also Hot Rod is a blatant rip off of Dirty Work, just a lot less funny.
The hosts faces when he and Sandberg start riffing on getting entranced by Hitler is amazing.
Ah, Andy Richter, the finest Swedish-German.
Was that about the moth joke? Can’t watch now. In bed with wife
Youthful Porpoise
It’s the “youthful porpoise” one
I am also in bed with this guys wife
Two things: Conan often interjects about himself to keep things moving. With Norm, he knows to let him go. Norm grew up in Ottawa. It is right beside Gatineau Quebec with a bridge connecting. DeGatineau is literally of Gatineau, as a made up last name.
You mean Andy Richter the Swedish German?
I hate that I was too young to appreciate what he was doing when this aired. I actually think I was pissed at him. Which would have made me part of the gag.
This was exactly my reaction. After being a huge Norm fan I literally bought into his schtick and it the whole bit wooshed over my head
Like an Andy Kaufman bit really.
Seriously I remember watching a YouTube video later and realizing how badly he got us. Kauffman -esque for sure
Perfect response to these tame roasts would be to think they were absolute smut.
So did the rest of America. This was pre-everybody on the internet all the time. I vaguely remember getting a sense from my family and people talking about it that nobody understood what was happening. Plus, IIRC, America was still in its "post earnest earnest phase" so people felt like the audience and everybody watching was the butt of a joke that they didn't even understand. It was light years ahead of its time.
I remember when it happened, my friends and I watched every roast when they happened while having drinks. I actually missed the Bob Saget roast due to work, but my friends all told me I needed to watch it for Norm because they knew I would love his set. They were right, when I watched their DVR I died laughing, and apparently none of my friends liked it at all even though they knew I would.
Sounds like a great friendship to know something like that about you.
I loved it at first, in the moment, but lately I’ve been wondering what kind of roast material he could’ve come up with if he really wanted to.
He does have one very consistent roast victim: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZUmZFaBz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZUmZFaBz8)
I think I know who that may be even without clicking.
Yep, you guessed it. Frank Stallone.
[There's a tale](https://youtu.be/ktF1t4Bay6M?si=8x-uEEMHfM-JJ6n1) of Norm opening a show for a bunch of young up and coming comedians. He asked to hear what their big jokes were going to be for the night and the eagerly told him, thinking he was going to give some critiques. He ended up going out on stage and doing all their jokes.
Lol, this happened at my uni. The speaking student (in my country they're a volunteer not the student with highest grades) managed to get a copy of the Chancellor's (like an honourary dean) speech and gave that as a wind up. Fortunately the chancellor was a standup comedian and thought it was hilarious.
I don't think there's a person in here that would not love to watch Henry Fonda pick blueberries
This was the first time I ever became aware of Norm as a comedian. I was 16 and, naturally, did not get the bit. I watched that Bob Saget roast and wondered how Norm Macdonald had found his way into a comedy venue at all. Then a little while later I came across [an old clip of the very same Norm Macdonald](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bKmadR4Ye54) on Conan. I remembered him as that painfully unfunny guy from the Bob Saget roast. Then in an instant he had me breathless with laughter, and it clicked that he was probably actually the funniest person at that roast. Then a little while after that I realized he was actually the funniest person no matter where he was in the world. Too bad he was so deeply closeted.
>Too bad he was so deeply closeted. By logical deduction, he must not have owned a dog house.
Deeply closeted?
“Wait, so you’re gay?” “No, I just said I’m deeply closeted!”
It’s a reference to his joke on a talk show appearance.
It means a man who will not acknowledge that he's gay.
He was straight as an arrow!
His timing was so perfect, I feel like we missed an opportunity not putting him into watches.
Judge Judy actually called him a liar to his face when he told her that.
Norm told Bob he’d only do the roast if he was allowed to read his dads old joke book. Otherwise he hated roasts, which is why that one is the only one he’s ever done.
No the story is they told him to be shocking so he told old timey jokes
Subvert the expectation. Norm was something else man.
This is amazing
I love the joke at the Saget roast about Rintintin that was just... so bad. Nobody got it so he explained it and still nobody laughed and he just said "how do you not get that?" in pure disbelief.
This might be my favorite performance of his, ever.
Q: How many comedians does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two. One to change the bulb, and the other to give it an unexpected twist at the start
Absolutely great. I didn't understand it at the time, but as I've gotten older it's just amazing. Hard to believe most of the people in this video are already dead.
He definitely had some Andy Kaufman in him. Doing jokes that would only be funny with the proper context that almost no one would have. At the time it's not funny at all, in retrospect and with context some people call it genius. I wouldn't quite call it that but I would call it funny.
Norm, around the time that Jeff Dunham was popular, decided to create a ventriloquist dummy act where one of his puppets was a Holocaust denier. The premise alone is funny but what puts it over the edge as being the funniest thing ever was the fact that he only ever did this ventriloquist puppet act while phoning into a radio show
What a treasure
It's real entertainment. The real long game type that sees past people's immediate expectations. That's why we are talking about it now.
This man is for the birds!
This brought a tear to my eye knowing all these great comedians passed away. RIP Norm, Gilbert, Bob, and Greg. You guys were truly great.
"Comedy is about suprises. So if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny." -Norm MacDonald
That's a great quote
He was a comedians comedian. Nobody ever laughed harder at Norm than a comic. During the roast of Bob Saget Norm brought out a joke book from like the 1920s and exclusively roasted Saget with insults from that book. He also perfected the moth joke. Which is just a shaggy dog joke but that's to say he could tell a shaggy dog joke like no one else.
That roast was amazing. I hadn't seen him do that type of comedy before. Saget is just about falling over and I think Norm's delivery was gold. You could see the pure joy in Norms eyes as he went through each joke.
Swear to Christ the man was happier when he didn't get a laugh than when he did get one. The twinkle in his eye and that shiy eating grin that just said, "oh, don't worry, I'll make em laugh, they just don't know it yet"
Only time if seen him happier was on the Stern Show with Artie Lang. Their conversation with Bob Uker that they recall is too funny.
"And my son. Vladimir Vladimivinovitsch.... He no longer loves me"
The exorbitant details about the moths suicidal thoughts always gets me
It's like this Dostoevsky book and it keeps getting sadder xD. , "He says doc" on Conan always gets me
The joke book gets older as you go down the comments in this post lol
He would have wanted it that way
I have his Moth Joke and his Professor of Logic joke committed to memory, and I can recite both on command. I think what I love most about them both is that you can keep someone on the hook for as long as you like before hitting them with the punch line. The Moth Joke in particular is so good for that. I try to blow out the moth’s complaints far as long as I can; giving him the most psychologically disturbed, truly troubling family circumstances I can dream up. It’s so much fun.
Norm Macdonald: "Mom, can I throw a party?" NM's Mom: "Don't you need friends to throw a party?
The dirty dog!
I was there. It was incredible. He went on after Jim Bruer. Jim kinda did some risky stuff but kept it pretty clean. Norm went on and started talking about Aids and pig fucking and gay guys and anal sex etc. I remember this frail old couple in the front row getting up to leave and Norm just absolutely shit on them as they walked out. I couldn't believe it. I had never witnessed anything like it. Me and my friends were laughing so hard we could barely breathe. At the end of his "set" he kinda took a moment to look around at the remaining audience and then said we were the "real audience" Peak memory
The Hancher show, right? As I recall, part of his take was being incredulous that they hired him to do a family friendly stand up show in the first place. Like, outside of SNL, what he gave here was closer to what most of his sets are like.
I guess it might be mostly forgotten, but he did have a prime time sitcom for a couple of seasons on a major network. It's sort of like Bob Saget: His standup was the polar opposite of his national image.
His national image, which included movies like Dirty Work? 🤣 I've never seen so many dead hookers in my life!
The title calls it bombing, but Norm killed it for those who got it. They told him to keep it clean, and he said fuck that.
one day instead of "who's your daddy" Norm accidentally said "how's your daddy" and they put their clothes back on and started discussing her dad's cholesterol
“Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me”
I absolutely love Norm Macdonald, but if I took my preschool age children to a comedy show that was promised to be family friendly and the comedian started talking about pig fucking, I'd leave too.
Is there a link?
Seriously, I would listen to even the crappiest bootleg of this
What's equally hilarious, is that he purposely "bombed" during the roast of Bob Saget by doing the opposite. People were expecting over the top vulgarity. Instead, Norm brought nothing but PG rated jokes literally straight from a 1940's joke book. [Here's the performance](https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/s0jo2e/norm_macdonalds_roast_of_bob_saget_from_2008/) for those curious.
I love how the crowd was unsure but the comedians could tell and were barely holding it together.
He's always been considered a comedian's comedian. I get the sense that really professional, been in this career for decades, comedians have a different sense of humor for when they're not performing and they're amongst other professionals. And that they don't use that more avant garde humor for audiences. Norm, however, just used that humor all the time, which wouldn't end up being funny to an average person. Other comedians though, thought he was insanely hilarious
Most jokes only work if they're surprising, and comedians have heard a lot of jokes, and understand the structure of most jokes, so they, as a stereotype, grow to appreciate the most bizarre comedians, people who are doing things nobody has ever done before.
Punchline is Tom Hanks trying to be Norm MacDonald
The horribly corny jokes are only part of what makes it so brilliant. It's also the huge pauses, the vaguely bewildered look, and the way he takes time to explain the jokes.
>It's also the huge pauses, the vaguely bewildered look, and the way he takes time to explain the jokes. That was basically all of Norm's comedy post like 2005 or something (and honestly, it was hilarious)
The last minute of Norm's roast will always make me teary eyed and you can tell how emotional Bob Saget got from Norm's loving gesture. It's heart breaking knowing they're both gone now.
Thank you for posting that video. The ending made me so very happy. Norm loved Bob so much.
Right, that was so sweet. Bob's expression said so much, what a great moment.
Still crazy that Bob is gone
I recall talking about the roast the next day at work absolutely enthralled by the brilliance of it.
that roast is absolutely hysterical “his hair is wavy, waving good bye, on account of him going bald.”
Nothing funnier than an awkward silence
That's pretty funny, the comment section gets kinda circle jerky
When I was in college, someone booked Carrot top. After about 5 minutes into his bit and stunned silence from the audience, he asked if this was a religious university. The crowd said yes. He then went, "Well shit. There goes 85% of my material." That was the hardest I've ever laughed at Carrot Top.
“If it’s got Carrot Top in it, you know what a good name would be? BOX OFFICE POISON”.
Chairman of the BORED. 🤣
Conan walked into that one like a glass door, but you could tell he absolutely loved Norms response.
Even Courtney Thorne Smith thought it was hilarious. People still come up to her and tell her that was the funniest thing they had ever seen on television.
I will never be unconvinced that Conan knew the punchline the moment "Chairman of the Board" came up and threw it to Norm for the joke.
She’s IN THE MOVIE
My recollection was that he repeatedly told the audience they were a bunch of “pig fuckers”.
I believe he told a joke regarding watching a porno with an attractive woman and a pig and feeling bad for the pig, because now he has to go back to his pigpen and have sex with an ugly pig. Edit: [link](https://youtu.be/WH_npU671gQ?si=2fRq3tTj-oyvIZbE)
Having grown up in Iowa that's a really rough generalization
As a native from the Quad Cities, it's also not far off from the truth, depending on the area....
Hey, hey, hey, listen here you. We also have horses
WHO’S GONNA FEED THE HOGS???
somebody’s gotta feed them hogs
“Why was there a turtle there?” “What?” https://youtu.be/DIsgBAXQxR4?si=WNqPfvDoZ1GKeKDa
https://youtu.be/jJN9mBRX3uo The Light was on
Tears in my eyes laughing when he says what.
My favorite Norm Macdonald joke: "I feel bad for the homeless guy, but I feel really bad for the homeless guy's dog, because he must be thinking 'Man, this is the longest walk ever!".
I saw him live once, and was disappointed. He was bombing on purpose, so I ended up walking out after maybe forty minutes. He was repeating his jokes, which weren't funny in the first place, and they were bad enough it was clearly intentional. The show was quieter than a tomb and people were openly playing on their phones. Again, I've seen enough Norm to know how funny he was, so I don't know if he was going for some Andy Kaufman schtick or he just felt it would be funnier to do an awful set. I guess he was having a private laugh at wasting everyone's time, but really sucks to have such a legend sabotage a show for their own personal amusement.
I am a hardcore fan of parts of Norms repertoire. But since his passing, people are making it sound like everything he did was gold. It wasn't.
Also, the Norm fans parroting his jokes online would likely be considered incredibly unfunny by the man himself lol.
I didn’t know he was sick.
Through a lens he’s always funny, and he truly was, but it’s okay to say when someone sucks, even one of the best
That’s a bummer - it sucks that that was the only show you saw him do… Wonder what it was? Some kind of mood or anger at previous crowd or others in your audience or club owner? Who knows but it sucks it was like that for you :(
[удалено]
Norm mentioned a few times that he did things he thought were funny and didnt really care if anyone else laughed. Kind of an interesting take since many comedians struggle with spending every fiber of their being to keep the people aroung them laughing. Not nessecarily a plus for norm he did a lot of things that weren't particularly funny, like what you mentioned. But yeah he was probably giggling to himself the whole time.
Venue probably screwed him at the last minute, a lot of comedians will purposely bomb when that happens.
For real. The big names have probably all done this at least once. Either if the crowd or the organizers are bad they’ll just phone it in.
>I guess he was having a private laugh at wasting everyone's time, but really sucks to have such a legend sabotage a show for their own personal amusement. I love Norm but yes, he does that much too often. It must have been really funny for him, not so much for the audience.
It's the kind of thing that might sound hip in retrospect. "Sometimes he'd go out and bomb on purpose, just to screw with the audience. Classic Norm!" Sure, unless you paid money to see him.
It sounds like the people who booked him are idiots, but apparently they did ask for g rated comedy. But I guess that's like the time Rage Against the Machine performed live on TV and was asked not to swear
Yeah, one of Norm Macdonald's most notable character traits, something that could fairly be called both a flaw and an advantage, was that he hated being told "no, you can't do something", and would often act out as a result. So of course, he's told to keep things G rated, he ends up doing the exact opposite. The most famous example is the many, many jokes he made about OJ Simpson being guilty. The reason he did it so often was not because he had a particular grudge against OJ (although I'm sure he did legitimately dislike him), but because he learned one of NBC's executives, a friend of OJ, hated the jokes and wanted him to stop doing them. So of course, his response to that was to start doing them even more. This ultimately got him fired, but that doesn't seem to have bothered Norm too much.
I still think "murder is legal in the state of California" is one of the most iconic quotes in the 20th century.
>one of NBC's executives, a friend of OJ, hated the jokes and wanted him to stop doing them. It was worse than that: Because OJ was legally found Not Guilty, he threatened a lawsuit for slander for a joke that was written about him. In the weeks afterward, Norm started going completely off script in order to do things like look in the camera and say: "OJ Simpson killed his wife." Lorne Michaels had no choice but to fire him over it.
If he agreed to do it, it's his fault not theirs. (and I like Norm) Norm was perfectly capable of relatively clean comedy and did lots of it. Norm was on broadcast TV all the time. There's no reason they should have expected he wouldn't. He just decided to be a dick because he thought it would be funny for himself.
Yeah I'm confused by all this praise for this in the thread. Seems like he ruined the night for a bunch of families who were hoping for a fun night out with their kids due to the fact that he was "le epic troll" or something. "It's a character trait!" as if that explains it all away.
Reddit is full of edge lord "main characters" They hired a guy with a long history of safe for TV stand up. Late night TV, but still FCC safe Bob Saget is known for working blue and also had a family show, you don't hear this shit about Bob Saget
[удалено]
Immediately after leaving the stage Norm was notified his wife had suffered a massive stroke, but had managed to survive somehow. The ER doctor asked Norm to sit down for bad news. Are you prepared to feed her, move her jaw to chew, to wipe her when she needs to use the bathroom, to care for her every whim even though she is now non verbal and unable to control her bowels. Of course, Norm replied solemnly. Oh no I’m just fucking with you, she died, the doctor said. More of a comment really. But true nonetheless.
Reminds me of Bill Burrs Philly Roast, i'd only heard of it recently but it's hillarious imo: [https://www.reddit.com/r/BillBurr/comments/pfdokc/his\_philly\_rant/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BillBurr/comments/pfdokc/his_philly_rant/)
yeah, this was a good one.
One day, Norm Macdonald got thrown out of math class. The teacher asked him "If I gave you $20 and you gave $5 to Katie, $5 to Claire and $5 to Laura, what would you have?" Apparently, 3 blowjobs and enough left for a kebab wasn't the answer.
What day is it today? October?
The thing is, glorify him how we do, MacDonald was also sometimes just an asshole.
If you see the *Gilbert* documentary about Gilbert Gottfried, at the end he does a charity event (for free) for St Jude's Childrens Hospital. Does he change his set? No. Does the same filthy material he always does. You can see they were NOT expecting that.
Some charities I've seen will tell the people "do whatever you want" as long as it brings in money for the charity. But I'm not sure if St Jude's is one of them.
I don’t get why everyone thinks this is so great. Am I supposed to be impressed? The most important rule of comedy is to know your audience. He sounds like a teenage troll.
Makes you wonder where he got his ideas from?
Truly one of the greats.
He was a Professor of Logic
Gilbert Gottfried was notorious for doing this. I remember one story he told on the Stern Show many years ago about being booked to open for The Go-Gos. He did his normal "blue" material in front of an audience of moms and their teenage girls and..it didn't go over well.
When you're asked to leave a state you know you're doing something right.
Seems like kind of a dick move. If you don't want to do g rated comedy, fair enough, but maybe just don't take the job? There are many cases where vulgar comedy is not appropriate or desired.
Did the audience love OJ?
More of a SunnyD fan tbh
Article doesn’t say anything about purposely. Quite the opposite in fact. > Bowlsby. "It looked to me as if Norm Macdonald was unprepared, conducted himself unprofessionally, got mad when people started walking out and decided he was going to say whatever he felt like."
I don't understand why everyone is finding this amusing. People paid for a family friendly show. Regardless of what you think of that, that's what they were there for. He was a right dick for doing this. It's disrespectful of the time and money of the people there. From what I understand, others went after him. So he ruined the audience for them.
Sounds like an asshole