RIP Norm Macdonald

[Bruno]

Norm had a meta thing he'd often try of taking something corny or unfunny and pretending it was funny in a deliberately point-missing way. He struck me as more funny in person off the cuff than as a writer.

[WOM]

Well, no, not at all. The long, shaggy-dog type jokes Ian refers to are what he used to get invited on to shows like Conan O'Brien to do. That was the talk-show schtick. His real deal was standup, so watch at least a half hour of one of them before drawing a final verdict. Again, it might not be your thing, but he was no Canadian Ronnie Corbett.

[ad hoc]

He was the Canadian Ronnie Corbett

[My Name Is Ian]

I'm pretty terrible with names and saw the eulogies from people whose views on comedy I trust, so I wandered off to YouTube and... I didn't find him funny at all. If anything, I found his jokes laboured and obvious. Quite a lot of it was just elongated versions of the sort of joke that you'd just roll your eyes at, if someone shared it in a pub. Just didn't get it.

[Bruno]

Yeah, if your business model is to be rewarded and revered the most for acting more like a dick, it could blur the distinction for you. In his latest special, released nowhere because he's canceled, available for direct purchase, Louis CK actually addresses or tries to address the behavior that blew up his career. The crowd eats it up, but he doesn't manage to sound contrite or concerned about who he hurt. Which wouldn't be funny. The special is funny otherwise, and I've read some calling it one of the best ever, but I guess time will sort that out.

[Satchmo Distel]

That's a great post, Bruno. Female comedians are not playing out their toxic masculinity on stage, whereas that's a central component of almost any man's act. The key is how they relate to that toxicity; most seem to use irony to create distance from the toxic 'character' they are playing but that's a mask that often slips: the misogynist, racist transphobe that he's ironically portraying is the real him. I can like Norm in his moments of self-awareness when you know from his eyes that he knows he's being a dick and he makes himself the butt of the joke but I'd always be asking if he actually cares how dick behavior in his act affects others. and more importantly, if he's that person offstage, in which case he's likely to be, at best, borderline criminal in his behavior towards women and other minorities.

[Bruno]

In comedy it's harder to separate the art from the artists.

It's a job description that practically requires you to be an asshole. I shut off the part of me that wouldn't want to know or be friends with the person. Their personal lives are often a shambles. The ones who don't seem like assholes are never the funniest, although, speaking of cis male tastes, I only saw one female comedian mentioned on this thread, so how about a plug for Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Cecily Strong, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kaitlin Olson (Always Sunny), et al, who might be generally more tolerable in real life while still being hilarious?

I think SNL is overrated, more bad writing than not, but you have to factor its being live. Being funny live when it's not your act is a special talent, and the best SNL moments to me are gifted performers being funny incidentally to the script, goofy personas and whatnot.

[Hot Pepsi]

Edit: About Russell Peters
His website shows he's currently on tour in the UAE.

I suspect he's getting paid what Patton Oswalt called a sacreligious amount of money for that gig.

He's also in the upcoming Clifford the Big Red Dog film.

[Satchmo Distel]

Pasted from another forum: his sexual assault technique:

And I’d do it to get girls! I’d be in a bar and for some reason when you’re drunk, girls will put up with it if you try to grope them or whatever. (In a high-pitched voice “What are you doing? Haha!” If you’re sober, they’re like, “Hey! Just what do you think you‘re doing?” So I’d just garble my words. I have used being a drunk to my advantage many times.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...nsored-819420/

Then there's this Facebook post that the victim has Tweeted (content warning: triggering):

https://twitter.com/Mollyissilly/sta...524288/photo/1

[Satchmo Distel]

I've just watched a compilation of his stuff and didn't laugh once. His OJ routines were variations on one fairly obvious point (that he did it but we are not allowed to say it out loud)*; his other work was often a US version of the 'ironic' comedy we had in the UK where the comic tells racist/sexist/transphobic jokes but claims to be doing so as parody, even though the laughs say otherwise.

*And how do you avoid the obvious misogyny of getting weekly laughs out of the trial that resulted from the brutal stabbing of a woman? I mean, you can and obviously should tackle an obvious injustice (a woman's murderer walks) but at least try to do it in a way that doesn't sound like you're minimizing the horrific nature of her death. Bill Hicks would have found a way to do it because he had empathy, I believe.

[WOM]

I was thinking about this discussion last night, and Russell Peters popped into my head. He's Indian/Canadian and manages to do a TON of race stuff, but he does it from the inside rather than the outside, so it lands beautifully. He'll do stuff about your Fillipino grandmother that has the Flips rolling in the aisles, because he does it from a shared racial experience POV. He seems to have gone quiet, but he was one of the highest grossing standups for a few years.

[Hot Pepsi]

I sometimes binge a bunch of those Just For Laughs half-hour comedy things from Montreal. I'm often amazed at how bad the comedy is, and this is at a top-tier comedy festival that presumably has some pretty discerning bookers.

Yeah. Even at something exclusive like that, the hit rate is probably no better than 50%. YMMV

Of course, a lot of it fails simply because it's not very original and we're old enough to have heard the same joke premises many times before. Younger people might get more out of it.


Another name I forgot to add was Marc Maron. I'd somehow forgotten that he's still doing stand-up. His last special was great. It was just before the pandemic, so it feels like a thousand years ago.

I recognize that most of my favorites are straight white middle aged men, but then I'm a straight white middle aged man and comedy tends to be very personal.
And, like most industries, it still tends to be hostile to women and LGBTQ people and BIPOC people tend to be shunted off into "their own" scene and not get on TV as much, so I just don't know as many of those comics because they're less visible.

[WOM]

I sometimes binge a bunch of those Just For Laughs half-hour comedy things from Montreal. I'm often amazed at how bad the comedy is, and this is at a top-tier comedy festival that presumably has some pretty discerning bookers.

[Hot Pepsi]

Podcasts, Twitter, Netflix algorithm.

Indeed. I've listened to hours and hours of podcasts about how they do what they do, but I have never been to a comedy club or paid money to see a stand-up in my life. Even when I lived in DC or Boston. For me to willingly leave my home and pay to sit - or worse, stand - in a crowd, I have to really want to go.*

I did pay to go see Gary Gulman in Pittsburgh in February 2020, but the morning I was supposed to go, I didn't feel well and was having some dizziness issues, but I didn't know that's what it was. I thought it was the flu. Driving to Pittsburgh and sitting in a crowd felt risky. Too bad. I'm sure it was great. I relate to him very well and he's a really nice guy.

Most stand-up isn't that funny, really. And some of it is actually really awful - just assholes saying dumb shit that the drunks will agree with. That's not comedy at all.

Maybe 10-15% is really worthwhile and it usually takes comics five to ten years to be any good and those five to ten years involve a lot of travel, bombing, terrible venues, terrible crowds, terrible bookers, terrible fellow comics, etc. And then, even if they get good, it's a lot of travel and hassles.

Pete Holmes show on HBO, Crashing, covers that very well. His book is good too. I'm a huge fan of his podcasts. Steve Martin's book is great too although obviously about a totally different era.

There are also some shows that are only semicomedy, but really good. Like Hannah Gadsby's shows. Mike Birbiglia, Neal Brennan and Chris Gethard have done some fantastic things that have comedy but also have so much personal non-funny stuff that it doesn't really count as a stand-up set per se. More of a one person show, but that makes it sound more pretentious and crap than it is.

Some critics have said that's the future of comedy. I hope not, because it's really hard to do that well. A crap version of somebody trying to do Hannah Gadsby would be way worse than a hack just telling jokes about airports or whatever.


* It's getting harder and harder to convince me to willingly be in a crowd indoors for obvious reasons.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

It makes me think maybe comedians like Boyle should be asked about that.

Er, I think specifically one comedian, named Frankie Boyle, should be asked about that. Suggested question "Isn't it about time you apologised for being an absolute cunt?"

[Patrick Thistle]

Given that the joke caused offence among trans people at the time I think it would be fair to raise it and ask the person who told the joke if they regretted it (now) and whether their thinking had changed (since then). Of course, the opportunity has gone to do that with Norm.

I heard an interview with Rebecca Adlington last week about mental health and she specifically said that when Frankie Boyle made fun of her appearance it seemed to give other people permission to weigh in and be rude about how she looked on social media. It makes me think maybe comedians like Boyle should be asked about that.

However, I kind of agree with what Norm said in the Slate interview about comedians apologising and how it doesn't feel genuine.

[Incandenza]

Where do people 'discover' up and coming comedians these days?

Podcasts, Twitter, Netflix algorithm.

[WOM]

Where do people 'discover' up and coming comedians these days?

[Incandenza]

My favorite current comedians are Patton Oswalt, Gary Gulman, Eddie Izzard, Pete Holmes, Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney, James Acaster, Dylan Moran, Jim Gaffigan, Jaboukie Young-White, Aisling Bea, Taylor Tomlinson, Neal Brennan, Ron Funches, Ronny Chieng, Hasan Minaj, Nate Bargatze, Ali Wong, Trevor Noah, and a few others.

Some there I haven't heard of, so thanks. I recently discovered Bargatze, I really like him. A white Southern guy who hasn't made that his sole identity and doesn't make it a political thing. He could have taken his persona in a really different direction, but I'm glad he didn't. I like the bewildered, not really that smart guy persona he has.

I got tickets for Mrs. Inca and I to see Ronny Chieng at a theater here in LA for her birthday.

[WOM]

I think "in jest" and "of its time" are quite different pieces of context, which need looking at separately.

Can you expand on this a bit?

(My contention would be that the 'joke' was made during a comedy show in 1996. I don't know how you parse the two.)

[WOM]

I don't know why "would it have appalled me then?" is any kind of yardstick to measure anything on.

I'm acknowledging that I didn't have the same awareness in 1996 that I have in 2021. That's not an admission of guilt or an excuse, it's just a recognition of my own situation. Do I consider myself 'woke' or 'enlightened' now? Not by a long shot, but surely a hell of a lot more so than I was in 1996. But by that same token, I'd think that that applies to almost anyone, and I don't know why Norm Macdonald wouldn't be included.

[DCI Harry Batt]

("in jest" doesn't seem to me to be necessarily the same as "as part of their act", mind. But "I was trying to make you laugh" doesn't seem to me to be particularly relevant)

[DCI Harry Batt]

I think "in jest" and "of its time" are quite different pieces of context, which need looking at separately. I think they're both mostly fairly worthless as context, tbh, and they do both seem to be used to defend the same things. But that doesn't mean they are the same thing, and they need addressing separately.

I don't know why "would it have appalled me then?" is any kind of yardstick to measure anything on. If it wouldn't, that's on you to deal with. It doesn't speak to what a dead comedian should be doing.

[WOM]

That joke was awful back then, I should add. In case that's in doubt. But would it have appalled me in 1996, when I didn't have any grasp of what transgender was or know anyone who is transgender; no. But that's the blissful ignorance that straight white cis males get away with.

[WOM]

But I think he has in that interview that was linked. Which isn't the same as apologizing for past jokes, but I don't think that's a comedian's job.

Someone made the point upthread about Seinfeld visiting an Israeli commando base / murder theme park a few years ago. I'd be up for him accounting for that, but not for anything he said in his act in 1996.

Rightly or wrongly, I just don't *get* this idea of removing the time/era and context (jest/comedy) and asking a comedian to atone as if it were said yesterday in earnest.