Saturday Night Live

the moth joke works because of the delivery

I think the point is whoever invited him to be on The View in the first place clearly didn't understand his style of comedy but instead just knew him as an SNL alum that appeared in an Adam Sandler movie. I didn't really find it funny either but it's kind of like the roast and everything else he does, he never just plays along

the brilliance of the moth joke is that it starts off incredibly hacky and becomes such an engrossing story that by the time the punchline comes in you almost forget it's supposed to be a joke. and of course the punchline is exactly what you expect it to be but still you don't really see it coming. yes a lot of it is just trolling the audience but it's also masterfully done. I'm not sure how many other comedians could pull that off.

Okay but if you hate the format and/or existence of The View so much that you're amused by seeing it trolled / skewered, what the fuck are you doing watching The View?

The prime audience for that bit is Norm himself, and if anyone else likes it that’s a bonus. The audience laughter indicated that many people who like the format and existence of The View enough to attend a taping did also like it.

(This could be because aiui part of the format of the show depends on tension between the hosts, not universal agreement? Or possibly just because Norm was a very funny human. Or because they simply got a mischievous thrill from seeing the format they enjoy punctured briefly.)

I may be wrong but I really don't think the Clintons/View thing is him doing a bit or trolling. I think he genuinely hated the c's and genuinely liked bush. He is practically vibrating from how nervous he is imo

I dunno, he exudes the exact same demeanor in the famous Conan/Carrottop clip. It's like he knows he's in trouble but he can't resist doing more, if only for his own amusement.

Just listened to Conan's podcast, the moth joke was just this old dumb 10 second joke he had heard from Colin Quinn at some point.

Anyway Conan said that Norm thought he was only on for one segment and then Conan says "We'll be back with more Norm Macdonald"...Norm is like I've got nothing and Conan says we'll just figure it out

So Norm freestyled that whole Chekov thing for 7 minutes because that's how much time he had to fill

it's... like... a comment about jokes? Or a comment about the absurdity of late-night shows?…

I find these awkard extended quasi-PoMo bits kinda cringey

Ymmv as far as thinking the moth joke is funny but it feels worth it to point out that the ‘shaggy dog story’ isn’t some ultra meta post-everything gen X anticomedy thing but rather a form of humor that has existed for hundreds & hundreds of years

the ‘shaggy dog story’ isn’t some ultra meta post-everything gen X anticomedy thing but rather a form of humor that has existed for hundreds & hundreds of years

Pretty sure Macdonald was on record as hating Andy Kaufman-type "anti-comedy" shit.

I think the target for the moth joke(and most of his Conan appearances) was Conan himself, who knew what Norm was doing immediately and trying painfully not to break up early.

dunno, he exudes the exact same demeanor in the famous Conan/Carrottop clip. It's like he knows he's in trouble but he can't resist doing more, if only for his own amusement.

I’m pretty sure he strongly disliked the Clintons, and doubt he thought either of them literally personally murdered Foster, but neither of those affect whether he was trolling. The second he gets the “shut it down” reaction, his imp kicks in and his focus becomes ju-jitsuing the hosts into keeping it going themselves.

Norm clearly despised the left, and there are plenty of clips of him praising Trump. I frequently didn't find his schtick very funny (the View, the Bob Saget roast, and the moth thing get old fast), but some of his stuff just slays me (the 'battle axe' segment on Conan, the Kojak impression with Seinfeld). He was a complicated guy: very intelligent and well read, which makes the puerile 'bro humor' side to him all the more puzzling.

Aside from that, his impression of Mitch Hedberg at around 3:40 here is a delight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVyA6h-K_Lc

(So is the Dangerfield stuff with Seinfeld at 8:20.)

yeah there's no need to dress it up, norm had shitty, reactionary politics and was homophobic and mean at times

at times

We found one, an actually funny conservative!

Though Canadian, so perhaps ... slightly insulated?

It does get colder there.

Based on podcast interviews and Stern show appearances in recent years. Most of these guys who peaked in the early 90s grump about the comedy police and all that bullshit, but Spade sounds aware of where he went wrong in the past, acknowledges why it sucked, and doesn't do it anymore without being shitty about it.

He's no hero, but he's more mature than a lot of these ball bags.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Monday, September 20, 2021 12:54 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

he was good as a guest host on “bachelor in paradise” this season too

I wasn't amused in the slightest by Norm's appearance on The View. Like, I guess you are supposed to be amused that he's trolling and/or skewering the format and/or existence of the show?

Okay but if you hate the format and/or existence of The View so much that you're amused by seeing it trolled / skewered, what the fuck are you doing watching The View?

I've also seen his moth joke on Conan praised a lot. It's a decent joke. I guess you're supposed to be amused in a "omg so meta" way that he's extending a 45-second joke into a 5-minute bit, and it's... like... a comment about jokes? Or a comment about the absurdity of late-night shows?

Okay but I am not quite seeing how the audience for (form of entertainment) and the audience for (instances of deconstructing and/or mocking the existence of said form of entertainment) are the same audience.

I find these awkard extended quasi-PoMo bits kinda cringey, personally, but evidently it is a taste. De gustibus and all that

― Richard Marxist (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, September 21, 2021 5:37 PM (yesterday)

good post!

.

for me to poop on

I've also seen his moth joke on Conan praised a lot. It's a decent joke. I guess you're supposed to be amused in a "omg so meta" way that he's extending a 45-second joke into a 5-minute bit, and it's... like... a comment about jokes? Or a comment about the absurdity of late-night shows?

I don't know, I don't think there's too much meta/pomo stuff going on here. I think it's just all about the delivery.. the obvious glee in telling a shaggy dog story and how excited he is to add new details.

Yeah, listen to his story of getting blackout drunk as a kid that he tells on Letterman (posted I think on the Norm thread). It's all in the telling.

Was listening to Conan’s podcast ep about Norm and apparently Norm was given like a second segment on the show unexpectedly and he didn’t have any material prepared which is how the moth joke happened. He was literally just trying to fill 7 minutes.

Also apparently Norm got the joke from Colon Quinn, though I imagine the uh, form, was all Norm.

I've also seen his moth joke on Conan praised a lot. It's a decent joke. I guess you're supposed to be amused in a "omg so meta" way that he's extending a 45-second joke into a 5-minute bit, and it's... like... a comment about jokes?

I think you're overthinking this. It's a great joke. Almost perfect. Qua joke.

it actually is kind of clever because it starts "a moth flies into a podiatrist's office", so you think that's gonna be the punchline, but it's even more of a groaner than that

it's not a groaner at all

It has more to it than most poems in the New Yorker

People are really putting so much weird baggage on the Moth joke. It's an old-school joke that would be funny in its 45-second version, but its Norm's delivery and word choice that make it special. Though Norm denies it was his intention, there *is* some "meta/pomo/whatever" aspect to telling a rambling, seven-minute joke on a talk show, even if Norm finds that idea distasteful. That's all.

THAT IS CORRECT

All you moth heads should check out Gilbert's 'Dirty Jokes' CD. Lots of well-worn old classics, but he's just so great at telling them, it's uproarious.

A MAN WALKED INTO A BANK AND WALKED UP TO THE TELLER. HE SAID, "I WANT TO OPEN A FUCKING BANK ACCOUNT"

Norm clearly despised the left, and there are plenty of clips of him praising Trump.

I've seen him both praise and criticize Trump but iirc it was generally for non-political reasons. His political views were, by his own admission, really underdeveloped. But he definitely seemed to lean that way on account of his faith, which, correct me if I'm wrong, may have been something he developed after being diagnosed with cancer?

he did have some good observations on why so much of the anti-Trump comedy (particularly on SNL) falls flat, it's not really funny to mock or impersonate someone you don't have a shred of affection for. like at least when they were doing Clinton you could tell that most of them kinda liked him on some level. and I think he's 100% right there. I do remember after the election several late night hosts said something like "yeah this is good for our show but it's not worth it" while Norm (correctly) predicted that Trump was comedy death

yeah, every Trump joke boils down to "Fuck this guy, amirite?"

Spade made the rounds before his show debuted (is his show still a thing?) claiming that it would be a Trump-free zone, because the jokes were too obvious.

His Comedy Central show was a victim of the pandemic cuts, but I think it was doing ok before that (you never know with Comedy Central, though). Not sure what his gig is now.

The answer may surprise you

What's his net worth?

* Beck Bennett and Lauren Holt aren't returning
* Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman moved to full cast
* 3 new featured White players

getting tired of them using kenan as a reaction gif

might be interesting. Sarah Sherman aka “Sarah Squirm” does stuff for Means TV and seems pretty cool and funny. And that guy from Tennessee James something? is far and away the best Trump impersonator to do it IMO, and the bits are very funny, too—not just lazy Trumpisms. but I have no idea how funny he is outside of that.

he's really good, i'm excited about both of them and have zero idea how they got through the audition process

lol yeah honestly was shocked that either of them even got an audition. they don’t really feel SNL-ish

Beck Bennett leaving is a bummer

Sarah Squirm has gotten some local attention here in Chicago for her act, but it's far from what I would've thought of as SNL-friendly:

The comedy of Sarah Sherman, alias Sarah Squirm, is a reclamation of the grotesque. Body functions play a key role in her act, which includes reenactments of bodily fluids—simulations concocted with ordinary groceries—emerging from various orifices. Her ambition is to make her audience cringe—but in a fun way.

Her obsession with goo and gore stems from a desire to celebrate her body in all its gross and oozing glory. Growing up on Long Island, specifically in Great Neck, she saw her well-to-do classmates receive nose jobs and breast enhancements during their teenage years. Meanwhile, she was horrified when, at the age of 13, her pubic hairs began sprouting. She waxed them away in self-defense.

“My whole life I was taught that women are either sexualized or vulgarized,” she says. “I’m talking about my own body politics, so I’m owning that shame, guilt, pain, and embarrassment by performing the act of torture on myself. If you’re telling me my pubes are disgusting, well, I’m going to make a video of my pubes growing and then strangling me.”

Sherman’s act is a combination of one-liners and longer multimedia pieces incorporating PowerPoint slides and video. She often debuts new segments at Helltrap Nightmare, the monthly showcase she hosts at the Hideout. It’s a circus of vulgarity. Bloody cardboard tampons the size of golden retrievers hang on the upstage curtain. The acts stray far from the traditional setup-punch line stand-up routine. At last October’s Halloween show, for example, comic Nicky Martin strapped a Roomba across his midsection with duct tape, then read graphic erotic fiction about making sweet love to said Roomba.

And that guy from Tennessee James something? is far and away the best Trump impersonator to do it IMO, and the bits are very funny, too—not just lazy Trumpisms. but I have no idea how funny he is outside of that.

― caddy lac brougham? (will), Wednesday, September 29, 2021 1:18 AM (three hours ago)

yeah i checked this guy out on a friend's recommendation a while back and was amazed at how good he was. the only trump impression i've laughed really hard at.

Shocked and very disappointed by Beck Bennett leaving.

xpost

I forgot about that guy -- he's amazing at the Trump patter:

OMG DON CLAIMS HE "BEAT" POKEMON, HAS NOT CAUGHT 'EM ALL... TRUMP: "GAME ENDS WHEN YOU BEAT ELITE FOUR" pic.twitter.com/xSHxHCtlkG

— James Austin Johnson (@shrimpJAJ) November 4, 2020

Never liked Bennett much. Can’t really pinpoint why, and I actually thought the recurring “baby body” character was ok, but apart from that he mostly struck me as aggressively average.

I saw Sarah Squirm open for Judah Friedlander a few years ago, and she was pretty funny, but I can’t see how she’d fit into SNL’s rigid structures (meant as a compliment).

* 3 new featured White players

Aristotle Athari is Iranian American.

The Trump impressions, apparently those are all largely improvised, too, which I think is the key.

yeah the prospect of Sarah Squirm being a regular SNL castmember is kind of mindblowing. on the other hand i worked with her on a thing once and as unhinged as her onstage persona is, offstage shes super pro & knows her way around a writers room, i can totally see her thriving there. SNL scooping up her & james austin johnson sort of make sense with SNL seeming to focus more & more on being a content generator for potentially viral clips & memes. for the first time in idk how long i'm curious about the new season of snl.

I think Sarah is just a “featured player” which, when I used to watch the show, meant they had like two minutes of airtime a whole season.

Squirm is hella batshit so i will watch the five youtubes that she features in