Not to mention,he could deliver bad jokes perhaps better than anyone.
But as audiences over the years came to learn, a nebulous journey with Norm always ended in laughter.
One kid said, “Wait, what if it landed on its edge?”
Norm Macdonald.Gary Miller/Getty Images
And the teacher said, “A coin could never land on its edge.”
And I said, “What if you were standing in mud?”
I got a huge laugh.
Norm Madonald on ‘Saturday Night Live’.Al Levine/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
It was grade 2.
I remember it very, very vividly.
It informed my comedy probably more than anything.
He said, “I’m gonna go in.
I’ll do my scariest s on this guy.”
And the club owner starts laughing… And it made me realize: Think of a different reaction to what you should have.
Think of a different way to say this than people would expect.
In fact, think of theoppositeway.
It’s [about] abortion.
I’m not really either one.
I just mean people should be careful, should practice safe sex.
I guess you could call me pro-phylactic."
I thought I was really breaking ceilings with that joke.
It’s so jarring and unanswerable.
There’s absolutely nothing you’re free to say to that, except “No.”
The weirdest place I’ve ever done standup
I’ll have a go at make this short.
I had only been doing standup for a few months.
It was me and another guy, and they said, “We got a gig for you.
It pays $25 each.”
It was New Year’s Eve, which was the very prestigious time to get a gig.
And we were going to play in the McLaughlin Room at the Chateau Laurier.
So me and the other comic get there.
There is no McLaughlin Room.
Turns out it’s just a hotel room, booked under a guy named McLaughlin, you know?
So now, we’re completely freaked out.
We were all confident before.
So me and the guy go to the room.
Okay, I’m gonna tell you another one.
It’s not as bad, but it might be funnier.
I was doing a corporate gig, and corporate gigs are terrible.
And they often have an idea for you to do.
It was a pesticide company, so this guy had sent me hundreds of pamphlets on pesticides.
The new guy is a wunderkind.
No one’s met him!
We’ll pretend that’s you!"
So I’m like, “Great.”
So he says, “Let’s go in.”
So he goes, “Do you want anything to eat?”
I go, “That would be nice.”
The place goes insane.
And then it’s me.
I’m Andy Johnson.
I do my answering machine jokes and so forth.Zeroresponse.
It goes on for six, seven minutes.
Finally, I hear a guy yell, “Enough with the jokes!”
[Laughs] Which is perfectly reasonable for him to say.
And I go, “Ohhh.”
This isn’t Andy, the guy you all wanted to see!
He’s a comedian!"
And then he runs away.
And then they hate my guts, you know?
They just boo me all the way through.
Okay, that’s that story.
I’ll tell you the other story, in case it’s better.
So we go to the McLaughlin Room.
No one’s in the room.
A guy comes in.
It’s his room.
So he’d go here, and then there, and then here, and then there.
And one of the stops was this stop.
As a matter of fact, it was the last stop.
They had the place set up this suite with food and so forth.
So we go, “Okay.”
So he goes, “They’ll be here in like five minutes.Hide!”
So we’re like, “What?”
He says, “Hide!”
Then he leaves, and then we’re all alone in this fing hotel room.
He’s behind the curtains.He’s going be the emcee.
And then I’m going to go on last.
So I lock myself in the bathroom and turn the light off.
Now I’m in complete darkness, and I hear people entering the room.
I hear small talk, I hear food.
And then I hear people trying to get into the fing bathroom, and I’m just cowering.
Then I hear my friend, and I guess he just leaped out from behind the curtains.
He gives me the introduction.
I’ll never forget it because it’s an introduction that only makes sense at a comedy club.
So I run in the middle of them, and they’re all surrounding me.
I’m like, “What about those answering machines?”
A girl puts a cock nose on my face.
Now I have a cock nose.
And then I look over, and my friend has left.
He’s run away.
So that one’s the worst.
That was my New Year’s Eve.
The Weekend Update joke I’m proudest of
I like this joke because it was perfect.
And he was a yippie.
He was famous as a yippie.
So the joke was, “Yippee!
Jerry Rubin is dead.
I’m sorry, that should read: Yippie Jerry Reuben is dead.”
The O.J.
’s case that much when he jumped up and said, “Hey, hey!
That’s my lucky stabbing hat!”
The idea of a lucky stabbing hat makes me laugh.
The talk show host who could save any situation
Johnny Carson.
It’s just not possible, you know?
So he could be not funny and make it funny.
He had two ways to be funny: to be funny, or to not be funny.
He had it covered completely, in every way.
That’s what I love about Dave.
Many times, if you watch Dave, he’ll have a joke.
He’s ready to say the joke.
The guest interrupts him and continues on, Letterman stops and doesn’t go back to the joke.
And he also doesn’t return to that joke, because I’ve seen people do that.
“Yeah, earlier when you said that” he never did that.
And I’ve seen him swallow jokes so many times that it’s very, very impressive.
David Letterman understood that to subvert something, you first had to master it.
He knew everything about talk shows.
He had obviously studied them assiduously.
Twenty percent destroying the other 80 percent.
The best advice David Letterman ever gave me
He told me not to prepare.
I’ve known Dave for a long time.
And the things that you think of instantly, when the person’s explaining it."
So that was his thing, was, “Don’t prepare.
Just interview Elon Musk blind and see what happens.”
It was funny, because I had overprepared for an interview, and he noticed that.
He said, “Did you prepare a lot for that interview?”
I went, “Oh yeah.”
He goes, “Don’t do that.”
“Why do I have to?”
“Just do it!”
But I guess the one word would be “hat.”
