I woke up this morning to find that comedic Norm Macdonald has died.

Again – this is tough to convey in writing (but I’ll try). As a funny person (or so I’m told) I am always on the lookout for new and original insights to share with people around me. The goal is to say things that no one has said (you hope) and get a laugh from people (you hope). While the insights are as fresh and new as possible – you can’t help being influenced by people who impress you and that you admire.

That list of people consists of names like:

Jackie Gleason
Jerry Lewis
Don Rickles
Robin Williams
Jacky Mason
Mitch Hedberg
Albert Brooks
Steve Wright

… so so many more that I’d love to list (but to get to the point)

Norm Macdonald is/was a huge influence.

A lot of times ‘straight’ people (not about people’s preferences in the romance department – but rather a designation for people who don’t color outside of the lines) who listen to Norm Macdonald jokes don’t find them funny. On paper they aren’t traditionally funny. They are weird and quirky and require a little latitude to stimulate disparate synapses in the users brain to find them funny.

Another aspect to Norm Macdonald’s comedy that defies conventional logic is his timing. Again, on paper, his timing was a train-wreck – his delivery was all pauses and verbal hedges… but when punctuated with a visual cue like a goofy look or an eyebrow gesture or a shrug of the shoulders – hilarious!

One of the things that made Norm a fearless comic was his willingness, perhaps eagerness to bomb or at least TRY to bomb. He’d tell jokes that were not funny. They weren’t meant to be funny – they were verbal padding to his next joke or the next joke after that. Just in the same way a pitcher in baseball will throw several seemingly misguided pitches to a waiting batter, Norm will set-up a performance one pitch at a time until he can finally get you to bite on something slippery (hehehehehe) and then he’s got you.

Watching routine after routine after routine of his I was able to learn that jokes are not just random words arranged for comedic effect: they are in families. Through his work he demonstrated the craft of technical joke writing at its finest. Perhaps the best illustration of this was his quest for the ‘so-called’ perfect joke; a joke where the wind-up and the punchline are virtually identical.

”Julia Roberts told reporters this week that her marriage to Lyle Lovett has been over for some time… The key moment she said came when she realized that SHE was Julian Roberts and that she was married to Lyle Lovett.”

Of course any 5 year-old can be MORE economical than that and just say a word or phrase that is funny in a particular setting. And get laughs… but that’s not a joke and it’s not joke writing. It isn’t striving to perfect a craft.


Another thing I’d like to point out about Norm (as though I knew him!) was his final performance on David Letterman. For his final appearance on the soon to be closed Letterman show he came out and did a a new set. Then to close it out told his favorite LETTERMAN joke (from when DL was a traveling stand-up comic). The most important part about his set wasn’t his material or Dave’s material – it was the fact that he got choked-up telling the final bit. That image has stuck with me.


…I’m not going to tell THAT joke – but instead one of his ‘complex’ jokes.

(I nicked this from The Sun… thanks guys!)

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From an appearance on Conan O’Brien (another comedic genius!)
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During his interview with O’Brien, Macdonald tells a joke about a moth who sees a podiatrist.

“What’s the problem?” the podiatrist asks.

“What’s the problem? Where do I begin? 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,” the moth says.

The insect adds: “A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexandria, 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.”

The moth continues: “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 ends 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?”

To which the moth replies: “Cause the light was on.”

*****
Norm – you are already missed.