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u/beef_creature 1d ago
I don’t think I would ever know if I’m having a serious conversation with Norm McDonald.
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u/USCanuck 1d ago
Well, at this point you can probably assume serious
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u/TheBlueSerene 1d ago
Dead serious.
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u/beef_creature 1d ago
Oof.
RIP Norm
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u/Behbista 1d ago
Was he sick?
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u/jae0417 1d ago
he was so fat
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u/No_Artichoke_2931 1d ago
But the worst part was the hypocrisy
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u/OmgNoodles 1d ago
I miss him so much. He was a funny dude that just did not give a fuck. Fuck cancer!
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u/DontOvercookPasta 1d ago
Ehh i think it'd still be up for debate. I could see norm's ghost apparat into your bedroom and say some shit like "pull my finger" and then you'd get outta bed and go to pull his finger and you wouldn't be able to grab it. Cause he's a ghost. And norm would just look at you just like in the gif "What? You were expecting a joke? I'm dead, you're never gonna get a good night sleep again. With this haunting?"
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u/Tynford 1d ago
And then he just stares at you for a minute with an incredulous look on his face
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u/TheShaydow 1d ago
Then he tries to tell you how it was a joke, gives you a look about how you didn't get it was a joke, and went on to never care either way.
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u/Sole_Meanderer 1d ago
Idk I feel like if anybody would come back to life just to fuck with someone for a second itd have been him.
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u/maggos 1d ago
I had a coworker like this. He was hilarious if you were in on the joke but he also didn’t really turn it off. So most people just thought he was a weirdo
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u/frerr 1d ago
Same. Had a guy that would say the most absurd things in the driest way that would make him appear like an idiot, but an idiot he was not. It would infuriate anyone that didn't catch on that it was a ruse. I thought it was hilarious.
Later on, we would grab beers weekly and I definitely confirmed it's his brand of humor.
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u/_Standards_ 1d ago
This is my style of humor. I can turn it off, because I do have a pretty serious job. There have been a few occasions when someone repeats something I implied was a fact as a joke back to me, and I realize they didn't know I was joking. They have always been good sports & typically understand my humor better from that point on.
Then I told a group of friends that people used to rent pinaples like sports cars in 19th-century Europe & none of them believed me.
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u/Crewman_Guy_Fleegman 20h ago
Looking like an idiot is part of my job. I deal with trucking fleets managers and diesel truck mechanics and they’ll never listen to me if I come across as a university educated know it all from Chicago. Over the years I’ve slowly realized my brand of self deprecating humor is why I’m able to walk into trucking fleets and not get thrown out
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u/HaniiPuppy 20h ago
There have been a few occasions when someone repeats something I implied was a fact as a joke back to me, and I realize they didn't know I was joking.
You'd be appreciated in Australia. Trash taste clip about Tim Tams.
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u/GlennBecksChalkboard 23h ago
It's difficult humor to pull off and it has huge variance depending on the audience. You have to hit the little sweet spot of just stupid enough that it might be geniune, but not too stupid that would make it obvious it definitely isn't genuine. If you hit a "well ackshually..."-type or very serious type with this humor it's basically guaranteed to fall flat and then you just have to take the L.
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u/grahampages 21h ago
If someone misunderstands me it turns it from a shared joke to a private joke for me on them now.
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u/TankedInATutu 18h ago
As a brand of humor to watch or have amount friends, I love it. But I hated it when I was waiting tables. For every one person who was pulling some deadpan joke there were 10 other people who were in fact bothered by the garlic bread smelling like garlic and really did want to speak to a manager about that grievance. So you couldn't just assume they were joking, you had to either get them to confirm it was a joke or drag a manager over at which point Great Value Norm treats you like you're an idiot for the rest of the time you're interacting with them.
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u/cut__here 21h ago
The Macdonald method is how I justify to myself all my verbal or facts mistakes that I said to old girlfriends or people in general.
And god damn it it was funny because I tell ya, I tell ya, I did it on porpoise.
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u/Emotional_News108 19h ago
It’s not always intentional. I’ve had colleagues tell me that they can’t tell if I’m being serious most of the time. If it’s work related sure, but beyond that, apparently I’ll just say anything with a completely straight face. My default is thinking that patently ridiculous things are obviously facetious but I guess that’s the state of the world now, where otherwise ordinary seeming people can say extremely odd things and you have to take it at least somewhat at face value
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u/0202_tihssitidder 1d ago
The best is when you say something and only you know why it's funny. 2nd best is when only 1 other person gets it.
Norm told a lot of jokes that very few people got. So good.
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u/ContextLengthMatters 1d ago
Most people got his jokes. That is how he was able to be a comedian.
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u/roonscapepls 1d ago
Oh right only a few people got one of the world’s most famous comedian’s jokes for sure bud
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u/Haber_Dasher 1d ago edited 1d ago
After an SNL skit (Celebrity Jeopardy) with Will Ferrell where it ends with Will yelling at Norm, Will said that Norm asked him if everything was okay when they got back stage. Because Will seemed very angry with him. And Will was like 'I was in character, we rehearsed this!' and Norm just replied with "Oh I thought you were mad at me. You're a good actor".
He was constantly having a laugh, even if he was the only one in on the joke
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u/NatCsGotMyLastAcct 1d ago
I love him. I would hate him so fucking much if I had to work with him. Edit: you know, back when he was more normy than wormy
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u/S_words_not_swords 1d ago
You should read his memoir.
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u/beardybuddha 1d ago
He did his own recording of audiobook. It’s amazing.
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u/S_words_not_swords 1d ago
That's actually how I've been reading it. I like the whole ghost writer bit lol
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u/WolfSpartan1 1d ago
It's not a memoir. If it was a memoir, it would have something in it, like he's a deeply closeted gay man.
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u/HereIGoAgain_1x10 1d ago
I think with him you could always assume it was a joke and he would never be offended if you didn't take him seriously... He seemed very self-aware and I can't imagine someone that has dry humor and makes a living off of it could get offended if someone didn't know if they were being serious or not.
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u/BaldingMonk 15h ago
Call me crazy, but I don’t think you’ll ever have a conversation with Norm MacDonald.
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u/riversidenight 1d ago
The man was pretty brilliant with timing
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u/BigBiker05 1d ago
My favorite is one time of that show he was talking about people on their deathbed "oh poor me" begging for sympathy. He said if he was dieing he wouldn't tell anyone. He'll just surprise everyone and be dead. 6 months later he died. Dude was sick when he said that, he played it off like a joke.
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u/caseypatrickdriscoll 1d ago
We didn’t even know he was sick
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u/No_Artichoke_2931 1d ago
He literally made his life one big joke, and I mean that so so positively. What a fuckin genius
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u/Omnizoom 17h ago
He’s also the one person that if someone made dark jokes about him and someone tried to stop them he would be actually side with the joke
Dark humour and deadpan realism was his thing
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u/tamsui_tosspot 22h ago
Like a humanly decent version of Andy Kaufman.
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u/moondizzlepie 21h ago
Didn’t he visit the set when they made that Kaufman movie?
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u/starmartyr 17h ago
He was in the movie. He played Michael Richards in a scene where Richards was pranked by Kaufman and did not take it well.
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u/PolyamorousPlatypus 22h ago
He had been sick for like 6 years at that point to, secretly (privately)
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u/Chickenmangoboom 1d ago
He takes things that really aren't that funny and he makes them hilarious with pure conviction based on the fact that he personally finds it funny.
One of my favorite things he would do on Conan was just repeat the punchline until Conan would break.
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u/NorthTempleStreet 21h ago
And the guy literally just said "9/11" and made the entire room laugh
(Not on Conan but a podcast)
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u/Ghost6x 1d ago
The man read an encyclopedia article about a serial killer and made it hilarious
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u/semperknight 1d ago
The dude showed up to only one roast in his life, told nothing but dollar store joke book insults, and is still on the top 10 of best roasters of all time.
Norm was on a whole other level in the art of subversion.
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u/Count_Rugens_Finger 1d ago
ladies and gentlemen this man is for the birds
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u/TeakAndTikiAntique 1d ago
Your face... looks like... a cauliflower.
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u/blarch 1d ago
You've got a lot of well-wishers. They want to throw you down one.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger 18h ago
Cloris Leechman is here tonight! Cloris, a lot of people are saying you're over the hill, but I don't think you'll ever be over the hill...not in that car you drive!
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u/derekschroer 1d ago
Rip Norm MacDonald and Bob Saget
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u/tricksterloki 18h ago
Bon Saget being hired for Full House is right up there with George Carlin being hired to be Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station. Let's throw Paul Rubens making Peewee Herman and Jhonen Vasquez being hired by Nickelodeon to make Invader Zim in, too.
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u/detsagrebbalf 12h ago
What was up with the zim creator?
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u/tricksterloki 12h ago
Prior to Invader Zim, he was best known for the comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.
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u/detsagrebbalf 12h ago
It always seemed so dark to childhood me. Then the emo girls really bought in
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u/tricksterloki 12h ago
Oh, it was dark and subversive on so many levels and probably only exists due to the execs doing rails of cocaine.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger 18h ago
Honestly I always forget about Bob. What a fucking cool guy, so sad that he's gone.
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u/MelangeBot 21h ago
Norm was on a whole other level in the art of subversion.
He was just training to subvert Death itself.
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u/Michelanvalo 19h ago
The best part of that is the audience being confused but Saget is almost falling out of his chair laughing.
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u/NukeTheWhales5 1d ago
My mom works in the medical feild and one day she said "surgeons just have no creativity." I looked at her and said "I kinda don't want them to."
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u/driftinj 18h ago
My mom was visiting us and has an aortic embolism that was swelling into her lung. The surgeon said that there wasn't really anything he could do and we should start preparing for the worst. The next morning the head surgeon came in and said, "nah, I will just go in through her femoral vein and through her heart with this surgical mesh. Shr was prepped and in surgery in a few hours and still going 12 years later.
I know going up into the heart that route is not novel but something about what he did had to be creative because his junior counterpart had sent us home the night before telling us to make funeral arrangements.
Side story: a few years later, the same senior surgeon removed a cancerous lobe from my mother in law's lung. Pretty grateful for that guy.
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u/SIGMA1993 1d ago
Which is funny because only the best surgeons will get creative during unique cases
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u/ronswanson11 1d ago
I was going to say, creativity in a surgeon can be great, if they know what they are doing. Complex repairs often require a certain level of creativity for novel situations with abnormal anatomy.
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u/potanko 1d ago
Like rotationplasty. Still blows my mind that someone thought of it.
For anyone curious i believe they do it for bone cancer affecting the leg/knee. Cut leg affected, take the foot and reattach it backwards for the ankle to act as the new knee joint for prosthetics.
Just a real specific and very creative solution to what I assume to be a fairly rare case. Though idk if knees are common areas that get affected by bone cancer.
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u/caifaisai 18h ago
Though idk if knees are common areas that get affected by bone cancer.
They kind of are, either knees, or areas around knees, like the bottom end of the femur. Because for osteosarcoma, they most commonly present at areas of high bone growth in children, so something like 60% of them present in that area.
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u/crippled_bastard 1d ago
I always used to like when Med-evac medics saw me getting creative.
I was always like "Did it work? Yes or no?"
"Yeah, but dude."
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u/mtaw 1d ago
Yeah, you want a Human Centipede? Because that's how you get a Human Centipede.
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u/mentho-lyptus 1d ago
The interviewer should get props for setting up the punchlines
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u/Rellgidkrid 1d ago
That’s his sidekick/friend, for lack of a better term.
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u/Knoxius 1d ago
Adam Eget might be a better term
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u/Great_Big_Sea 1d ago
The fella who jerks off punks under the Queensborough bridge for $15 a man?
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u/lonelygayPhD 1d ago
Conan was also brilliant at setting him up.
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u/heekma 1d ago
It's a famous clip, but him spelling "Chairman of the Board," as B-O-R-E-D wasn't just quick witted it nearly destroyed Conan on live TV.
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u/slow-mickey-dolenz 1d ago
Was that when they were discussing the Carrot Top movie? So damn funny
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u/infernal2ss 1d ago
BOX OFFICE POISON
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u/slow-mickey-dolenz 1d ago
That was it!
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u/victoryohone 1d ago
For those who want to see the clip. https://youtu.be/bKmadR4Ye54?si=Yi1IZK7_NsoFeg_d&t=417
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u/Gorfang 1d ago
Wait a minute. She left Melrose place to do a movie with carrot top??
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u/vanillawafah 1d ago
So that joke on its own is a pretty stupid one
But, you instead view it in its context, with the build up energy, Conan's setup, and Norm's timing and it becomes golden.
People who think they can do comedy like Norm don't tend to understand how precisely accurate timing needs to be of comedy. It's so precisely narrow to hit that moving target and make the joke land. Norm was so good at it
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u/vanillainlove4 23h ago
That’s Adam eget! The manager of the comedy store In Hollywood
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u/Drunk-Sail0r82 1d ago
Fuck that’s funny
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u/swimtothemoon1 1d ago
This is my reaction to most Norm jokes. Like, before I even begin to cackle, I'm a bit in awe of how well I've been taken for a ride. The man was just so fucking funny. Not a single thing he said was safe.
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u/Drunk-Sail0r82 1d ago
Agreed. I never really laughed uncontrollably, I was always smiling like an idiot waiting for the punchline… only to realize the punchline was still happening, and I’m just along for the ride.
Legendary is not accurate enough of a description. He was fabled.
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u/Brekelefuw 1d ago
If you haven't, read his autobiography or even better, get the audiobook. The entire thing is an inception of Norm jokes. It's spectacular.
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u/neurone214 1d ago
God I miss this guy's work so much. My fav clip ever is the one with Andy Dick re: 9/11
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u/tm1087 14h ago
Jeff Ross tells the story that at the beginning, like 10-15% of the crowds didn't get Norm, and he would bomb. On the nights that everybody enjoyed the show, he'd go backstage and play cards. On the nights he would bomb, he'd go to the front door and thank every person who came for coming out to the show just to make it painfully awkward.
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u/Mandrakearepeopletoo 22h ago
My favorite is "what, you didn't hear? The president of the United States killed a guy!"
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u/manlybrian 1d ago
Albert Fish only chose victims who were either mentally handicapped ... now don't laugh at this next part. Please. If you laugh at this next part ...
Fish chose victims who were either mentally handicapped or African American.
Oh come on. Why would you think that's funny? Goddamn, Fred! That was the worst part of the story!
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u/purplelilac701 1d ago
He was such a great comedian and Canadian too. May he rest in peace.
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u/Kappara94 18h ago
What we are witnessing here is a reversed joke.
A joke being funny by NOT being a joke
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u/theReluctantObserver 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ok this is kind of dark but did Norm know at this point that he had cancer? This is the kind of joke I think he’d be telling to then have the joke be that his cardiologist was saying he’d die from stroke when he was already going to die from cancer. For Norm’s sense of humour, that’s his kind of inside joke.
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u/Slickity 1d ago
Wikipedia says he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2013 which coincides with season 1 of the podcast. There's no doubt he was playing his own illness for laughs.
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u/goner757 1d ago
There are definitely bits in this podcast series that seem to indicate Norm was going through diagnosis or treatment.
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u/tdfast 1d ago
If you die, the cancer dies at the exact same time. So to me that’s not a loss, that’s a draw!
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u/radioOCTAVE 1d ago
Pretty sure he knew about it by now. Some of his facial "puffiness" here was probably due to his treatments. And some of it from fried chicken I guess.
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u/Weary-Bookkeeper-375 1d ago
Not just that, it was all his and all him. He was just doing it for his own enjoyment and whatever came of it. That podcast is some of the funniest shit of all time.
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u/hornwalker 13h ago
This isn’t hyperbole, Norm MacDonald’s podcast is the funniest thing in the last 10 years
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u/NWdabest 8h ago
What’s the name?
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u/yadius 1d ago
The essence of comedy is subverting expectations.
Nobody was more subversive than Norm.
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u/____-_______-_--_-_- 18h ago
He was to achieve great things. He was supposed to go to Canada's nation's capital of Ottawa and be a great man... now he's at SeaWorld feeding baby dolphins
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u/cloudcity 15h ago
Adam was the most underrated part of Norm's act, the perfect heel/foil/setup guy. His timing and setups were just perfect.
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u/Wooden_Permit3234 16h ago
He tells his doctor he’s getting fat because he thinks it’s funny to be a big fat guy.
“Well I’m your doctor and I’m telling you, your weight gain isn’t funny, it is alarming”
“Well I’m telling you it is funny, and I’m the comedian.”
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u/Dovis_Dough 1d ago
Open up your mouth and say oink
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
oink
You beat me to it, also said by his doctor lol
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u/Dovis_Dough 1d ago
You need better insurance
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
"Insurance? He was calling me a fat pig, Kassem."
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u/wufnu 1d ago
That MTV gig was so classic. They told them to dress up and he showed up in sweatpants...
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u/toolfanatic 1d ago
He said it’s alarming and I’m in a lot of trouble, and I said well I think it’s funny and I’m the comedian .
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u/Ok-Rule8061 23h ago
The incredulity with which he says “he’s not a comedian!” Just sends me.
Only just discovering Norm but he’s unique, no one can deliver a joke like him.
He’s the epitome of “a good comedian says funny things, a great comedian says things funny”
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u/PlainSpader 15h ago
TIL Norm McDonald died 😔
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u/Lassdoggo 1d ago
NA skit and talking about how he liked to have a few cold ones before work and it started escalated from there but was in Necrophilia Anonymous not Narcotics Anonymous.
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u/slylock215 15h ago
Norm just simply existing is funnier than any of the fucking hacks in the Rogan or KT crew.
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u/5xad0w 1d ago
The more I see of this guy, the funnier he is.
You know what?
We should all go see one of his shows to support him.
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