046 Love and OJ Jokes transcript (Norm Macdonald)

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[00:00:00] Amit: Welcome to Famous and Gravy, a podcast about quality of life as we see it one dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

[00:00:11] Michael: This person died in 2021, age 61. His brother, Neil, once told a reporter that he had had a flirtation with the newspaper business as a young man, but that he had deliberately botched an interview for a job as a copy boy because he wasn't that serious about the profession.

[00:00:31] Friend: Clark Kent's been dead for a long time, hasn't he? I don't know.

[00:00:34] Michael: By 1984, he was skilled enough to spend four months opening for the comedian Sam Kinison.

[00:00:42] Friend: Um, what's his name from Full House? Is it Bob Sagat?

[00:00:47] Michael: Not Bob Sagat. His sense of humor sometimes got him in hot water in 2018. He drew criticism for remarks that seemed to defend the comedian Louis CK and Roseanne Barr, who was under fire for a racist Twitter post.

[00:01:02] Friend: Seinfeld aint dead, so I know that. It't not Dave Chapelle. Let's see here. Okay, go ahead.

[00:01:08] Michael: A 2018 article about him said , "The dedicated fan will identify two patterns in his television work. It is invariably funny and it is invariably canceled."

[00:01:21] Friend: Tim Conway, I remember, had a license plate that said 13 weeks on it, because this show's getting canceled, but I don't think it's him . No, you got me.

[00:01:28] Michael: He became familiar to millions as the Weekend update Anchor on Saturday Night Live from 1994 to 1998.

[00:01:37] Friend: Oh, Norm McDonald, I think it's Norm McDonald. Is that Norm McDonald?

[00:01:40] Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Norm McDonald.

[00:01:46] Archival: So I wouldn't take it seriously. If this guy fired you, you may still have a job. You never know. I'd wait for some paperwork. No, I, I phoned him, you know. Huh? Oh, you had to phone, you had to phone him to pick up your messages from Not, so he goes, uh, oh, yeah. I'm, uh, uh, I'm firing you there from the show. And then I, I said, uh, Oh, that's not good . And then I said, why is that now? And he goes, uh oh, you're not funny.

I said, oh Lord, that's even worse news. You know

[00:02:18] Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

[00:02:21] Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor.

[00:02:23] Michael: And on this show we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and review their quality of life. We go through a series of categories to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer. A big question, would I won that life today, norm McDonald died 2021, age 61,

category one, grading the first line of their obituary. Norm McDonald, the acerbic, sometimes controversial comedian, familiar to millions as the weekend update anchored on Saturday Night Live from 1994 to 1998, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles, he was 61. Okay. Okay. What do you mean by okay, what do you, what do you thinking?

[00:03:12] Amit: Um, good summation. I think, I mean, my initial reaction is typically like that wasn't enough. They missed something. Yeah. But there's not too much to miss about Norm McDonald and I kind of came to learn that over getting ready for this episode. Like I fantasized that he had this long career outside of a Saturday Night Live, but he really didn't.

And so the singularity of Saturday Night Live in the obituary, I think is.

[00:03:37] Michael: I disagree. You disagree? I definitely disagree. I felt like this was not beginning to honor the impact as comedians, comedian thing, the relationships, the, uh, significance, the like regard they had for 'em, that acerbic sometimes controversial, and I wanna talk about those things in a second.

And then they mentioned weekend update anchor from 94 to 98. I think that is right, that it's actually very hard to say. What is norm known for? That is, I think his single most, you know, notable, famous, recognizable accomplishment. But I also feel like there is impact and significance behind the man that this obituary totally missed.

[00:04:20] Amit: Okay, so we're gonna get back to acerbic and controversial. So what do you think is an appropriate phrasing that could be inserted

[00:04:26] Michael: somewhere? I could have seen a line in here that said something like, well regarded by his peers, or was regarded by talk show hosts like Letterman and Conan as one of the best guests.

[00:04:38] Amit: Um, yeah. A favorite among late night

[00:04:40] Michael: talk show host. Totally. I mean, I think that he's not necessarily a comedian's comedian, but I think he was also a friend to comics. I mean, in a kind of Gary Shandling sort of way. I mean, he was somebody who I think was really like known and familiar and respected within the community in a way that, that I think is next level.

We regard you as. , top of the heap. The best of the best, the funniest of the funny. I think that could have very easily been in here. And so I, it feels like a, to me, a big oversight. Yeah. I'm gonna give him a little

[00:05:10] Amit: slack cuz it's hard. He had this career milestone, which ended in about 98, yet he stayed fresh in our minds for the next 23 years, but we're not really certain how.

[00:05:22] Michael: But doesn't that prove my point? The fact that he was fresh in our minds for the last 20 years that he was a, a known celebrity, a known figure since he finished his run on SNL in 98. Yes. I mean, I, that's,

[00:05:34] Amit: that seems to you're It does, it does validate the point, but it's really hard to be succinct about that.

Maybe what you said of a favorite among talk show host

[00:05:41] Michael: is the way to do that. Let me give some credit here because I think the word acerbic is great. Yes. So how would you

[00:05:47] Amit: define it? Um, piercing the

[00:05:50] Michael: dictionary definition I see is sharp and forthright. Both of 'em have real physicality

[00:05:55] Amit: to it. Yeah. It's piercing and out.

I would also say sour.

[00:05:58] Michael: Can a lemon taste a sorbic? Yeah. Yeah. If you're

[00:06:00] Amit: biting directly into it.

[00:06:01] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I suppose. Well, I think Norm McDonald's comedy has a little bit of lemon juice on it. Yeah. Sometimes controversial. Let's talk about that for a second.

[00:06:09] Amit: In the quiz, you pointed the 2018 defense of Of Rose.

[00:06:13] Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's other instances. I mean, his firing of snl, which we'll get to. Yes. I mean, he was acerbic and a little bit controversial there. Is it a compliment? Sometimes controversial cuz I, I think like as written by the New York Times, sometimes controversial. Sounds like not everybody liked this guy, kind of an asshole.

Or, I actually thought this was a little

[00:06:35] Amit: slanted. I read it as a bit of a compliment, you know, kind of the way that you could talk about a writer being sometimes controversial as if they're challenging the norm.

[00:06:44] Michael: Yeah, maybe

[00:06:44] Amit: that's fair. You didn't even pick up on that. What did you say? As if they were challenging the norm.

Ah, . My god. It was though it wasn't an Aer joke. Not,

[00:06:52] Michael: I'm not smart enough to keep up with that. Okay. Jesus. What a dumb joke. Yeah, it's time to do jokes. You know, my clothes Larry, make me look slimmer. But, uh, they did not fool that flight of stairs that collapsed under my astonishing new girth. , who, who writes these?

Ah, some guy. This is the place to say, but also well regarded among the comedy community or something. I think that phrase really could have belonged and really is necessary. Everything else. I'm pretty okay with you. Yeah, and I

[00:07:22] Amit: think, let me add something to this. Sometimes controversial. I think part of that comes from, he was called sexist often.

Yeah. In the nature

[00:07:29] Michael: of his jokes, and I didn't see this enough, but I think that there's also some homophobia in places. You know, he, he uses the word absolutely gay as a punchline a lot. Now. He came up in a time when a lot of comedians did that, and before the world sort of evolved to a better place on that.

I don't interpret it from him as being hateful necessarily, but it's still at the end of a punchline. So it's hurtful, you know, whether he's conscious of that or not. Well, okay, I've got my score. Okay, I'm going seven. It's still a pretty good. Obituary for all my criticism of like I wanted more in terms of reputation.

Mm-hmm. , it's only a few words missing. Everything else is right. Yeah. So I'm getting a seven outta 10.

[00:08:10] Amit: What are you giving at? I'm gonna get a nine. Oh, I don't think it was the duty of the first slide to bring up. This is

[00:08:14] Michael: as good as David Billy. Yes. David Billy.

[00:08:17] Amit: This is as good as John Madden. I, I think they summarized it well enough for what most people know him as, and I don't think we are most people Yeah.

In this regard. And the fact that his headlining career essentially ended after the late nineties and he was basically kind of under the radar since then. I think they did their job as a first line of the

[00:08:37] Michael: obituary. You're giving high scores lately, you've become an easy A, but that's fine. You said nine?

Yeah. I'll tone down the medication.

[00:08:45] Amit: Okay. I think it's basically . Hey, I'm being too forgiving. You're right. Exactly

[00:08:48] Michael: What is with this positive on it. There's no place for that on this show. Nobody likes it. Nobody

[00:08:52] Amit: wants that. All these lonely

[00:08:54] Michael: days. Channel that into the conversation. Okay. Uh, let's move on.

Category two, five things I love about you here. Amit and I work together to come up with five things we'd love about this person, five reasons we want to be talking about them in the first place. I think you should go

[00:09:10] Amit: first here. Okay. I'm gonna borrow a word from Dave Chappelle that he used to describe Norm McDonald's delivery and that was soothing.

Oh. What I wrote down initially as I wrote laughing, I wrote smiled, you know, cuz he laughs as he tells the joke, which I think is a, is a fantastic quality. Yeah. And he's always smiling as he delivers any joke, whether it's on update or in a standup. He's beaming. I mean, his smile is beaming. He's beaming or, but the combination of those two is it's soothing.

Yeah. You know, you have a guy that like, he knows that what he's saying is funny. He's enjoying it. You're put at ease. And that's what I think is the best summation of his intonation as he delivers. Yeah. So I say,

[00:09:50] Michael: okay, that's good. Sure. I'll play some Scrabble. So I go down and he pulls out this scrolled Scrabble game there and we start to play, you know, and I like Scrabble, you know, so I get the first turn.

So I make rabbit, you know, pretty good. It's a good word. And then, and then, uh, I do it, I do it pretty quick. I take like a couple minutes. And then old Harold Delaney, he takes like a half hour to like get his word. And the whole time he is not talking, he's not telling me whole stories. Cause I like hearing old stories, you know, I'm just sitting there.

He comes up with his word. It's a.

[00:10:23] Amit: That's his word. Yeah.

[00:10:25] Michael: Hat. So he puts it and he, he takes the word hat. That's great. Almond. That's really great. All right. Let's talk about that. In terms of desirability, you know, I mean, you have conversations with people where you want to be humorous and soothing. Are those two things in conflict with one another?

No,

[00:10:41] Amit: but I think for a comedic style to be that dry Yeah. And be that exuberant. Yeah. That's a really difficult thing. Those are contrasting methods. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think it's really desirable in its uniqueness to be deadpan and dry and acerbic, but also be of lifting and soothing. That's well put.

[00:11:01] Michael: I really like the word soothing.

Good job, man. David

[00:11:04] Amit: Chappelle. Give it to Dave Chappelle. All

[00:11:06] Michael: right. Uh, thing number two. Mm. , I wrote Love Language was quality time. So are you familiar with the five Love Languages book? I am. That book comes up a lot for me. Alison and I listened to it on a road trip to Florida one time, and you know, it's just useful framing.

And so the five love languages, as I remember them, are touch acts of service gifts, words of affirmation. And the one people always forget is quality time. It's just making time for somebody. It's no agenda. It's just I'm going to sit and hang out. And I see this in a few different places. With Norm McDonald, there was a story I came across after he died that Andy Richter, Conan's Sidekick told about how my sister texted me the day after he died and she said, do you remember I was at the show?

I was maybe 18 years. And I was in your office, you weren't there, you were rehearsing or meeting or something. And Norm MacDonnell walked in and I introduced myself and he sat down and talked to me for an hour and asked me questions about myself and, and made me laugh a lot. And she said, nobody in your business has done that before or since.

And I would also say that I experienced this in the research for this episode in terms of the YouTube rabbit holes. I could have kept researching this for days and days and days. Just like compilation of after compilation of norms, late night appearances, his SNL skits, his podcast shows like he is just a quality hang.

And I don't know if that was his love language. It sure seems like it.

[00:12:40] Amit: I mean, I think he lived to hang out You, I like your framing of this as a love language. Yeah. Um. But it's also like, I, I think it's what he loved. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a way just to be giving. Right.

It's like this is how the man is wired. Yeah. And, and what he loves is also an act of love. Yeah,

[00:13:00] Michael: that's right. That's my thing. Number two. So why don't you take three,

[00:13:03] Amit: I was gonna save this one for later, but it's two perfectly teed up with yours as a love language, and I think it's his emotional expression of love.

And I'll give you a few examples. The man straight out said, I love you a lot. I listened to Bob Taggart's podcast, uh, Artie Lang's podcast that they all did after Norm passed. And they all said that he used to send these text messages that just said, I love you. A couple of other examples I'll give, he was the last guest on Letterman, and he's emotional about it, and he's emotional and he pauses and like wells up.

I

[00:13:36] Michael: remember Dave differently because the first time I saw him, I was 13 years old. I was living in, uh,

I know that, uh, Mr. Letterman is, uh, not for the Moish. He has no truck for the sentimental, but if something is true, it is not sentimental. And I say, in truth, I love you. Oh God. And Letterman was like, that is my guy. I mean, this gets back from me to the first line of the obituary, that Letterman moment, like the way Letterman and Conan felt about Norm.

I feel like that was not captured in that obituary. Anyway, continue.

[00:14:17] Amit: So in that very last special, which we're gonna talk about, oh, the Netflix special. Yeah. So he, he has this whole thing in it that he just talks about how much he loves his mother. Yeah. Uh, and that was beautiful. And also the closing words of the special is I love you guys.

You know, everyone after he dies or after any of these people die, you've got all these tributes that are like, you know, so and so. I, I, I loved you. I miss him. Yeah. It seems like Norm McDonald was one of the rare few that consistently throughout his adult life, he just said, I love you.

[00:14:49] Michael: Man, there's a lot of love coming out.

That's great. Open

[00:14:52] Amit: with love as an emotion.

[00:14:53] Michael: Open with love as an emotion. You know, I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about how important that is for fathers. Like men still have this like macho thing and like we still have this role of like, mom takes care of the emotional, like I'll go comfort the kids and dad is here for discipline and it's a really good thing when a dude, a guy can be like, I'm ready to be emotional here.

And I, which I think kind of what you're talking about, it's a good thing our father is for so much of this. That's actually a great segue to my number four cuz there's something that Norm has. That my dad has that I love. And that is an ability to make himself laugh. I can be in a room with my dad, and this has happened a lot where the room is silent and then he'll just burst out laughing spontaneously.

And you'll, he used to drive me crazy growing up, like, dad, what's so pH ma? You wouldn't get it because he's just had thoughts in his head that would end in laughter. Right. And I feel like norm's got that. I feel like he's really, most of his comedy seems to be for himself. Like, this amuses me. I hope the audience laughs Maybe I hope that there's money at the end of this, but like, basically I'm here for me.

Yes. To make myself and, and I can do it. And I think that you see that in his fearlessness. I think there's another place where you see it in, especially in some of his comedy, there'll be a like self affirmative, like quick nod That is the punchline. Like a, huh. When I was young, there was a fella, uh, went by the name of, uh,

And he, uh, he was, uh, while I was scrambling to get outta high school, had already,

[00:16:33] Amit: I think he just changed his

[00:16:34] Michael: last name,

Well, you know, a man grows. He, he, uh,

[00:16:45] Amit: I love you. I really do. You know that, right?

[00:16:47] Michael: So ability to make himself laugh is

[00:16:49] Amit: by number four. Yeah. I mean, again, we can call that an act of self-love if we, I think just take two to four. Oh, shit.

[00:16:55] Michael: That's good. Okay. Uh, why

[00:16:56] Amit: don't you take number five. I'm gonna go the Posse that seemed to largely be built around the Saturday Live cast.

Yeah. Of the mid nineties. Yeah. Who up until the end, it seems like most of them stayed really, really tight. David Spade, Adam

[00:17:08] Michael: Sandler. Yeah. Farley, of

[00:17:10] Amit: course. Rob Schneider.

[00:17:11] Michael: Yeah. Certainly a course. Dennis Miller. You have to put in that category. Dennis Miller said Norm did a better job at, we got an update than anybody, but that's pointing to himself.

Yeah.

[00:17:20] Amit: And Chris Rock also a part of that too. Yeah, I think that is so obviously desirable. I envy it. I want it so badly. I think I have some pretty hilarious friends. I don't get to see them very often. Mm-hmm. , because we're all just so geographically dispersed. We don't get to collaborate on stuff with the exception of you.

But I just, I look at the way that those. 5, 6, 7, however, of many people we count, interact in the way that they talk about each other, having worked together for the better part of 30 years. Z. Yeah. And it's just

[00:17:49] Michael: awesome. I mean, one of the, the things I love, I've heard David Spade in a few different places talk about getting random ass texts from Norm.

Have you ever texted with Norm? It's, no, I haven't.

[00:17:59] Amit: No. Dave, it's

[00:18:01] Michael: Norm . Do you like money ? Yes. Norm. I like money. Why would you like to have more money than all your wildest dreams, ? Yes, I would. And then three hours later be over in the Blackhawks game. My first quarter, man, that game was six days ago. . Yeah, I had true respect of peers as a number

[00:18:26] Amit: five.

Yeah. But I wanna layer on the tight knitness of

[00:18:29] Michael: that particular group. Okay. That actually segues pretty good into the next category for me. Okay, so let's recap thing number one. You said soothing comic soothing comics. Thing number two, I said love language, quality time thing number three, you said love

[00:18:45] Amit: as emotional expression.

[00:18:46] Michael: Four. Uh, I said ability to make himself laugh. And then five

[00:18:50] Amit: Tight Kni Posse. Tight ended Posy tight Kni. Funny posse. Okay, let's move on. Category three, Malkovich

[00:18:56] Michael: Malkovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malkovich, in which people can take a little portal, it's like a water slide, little tube into John Malkovich mind, and they can have a front row seat to his experiences.

So this actually builds on your thing. Number five, tightly connected Posse. Norm is fired from Saturday Night Live in 1998, and I think he's one of the very few cast members, if not the only one who's ever been fired. And the story that's sort of out there, and I've seen some pushback against this, but the one I think is most likely is that at the time Norm was making all kinds of jokes about OJ Simpson, some of which are fucking hilarious.

They're great. Well, it is finally, official murder is legal in the state of California,

A down and out. OJ Simpson pressed that all of his money making ideas have failed, has decided to go back to doing what he does. Killing people.

There was an executive at N NBC who was friends with oj, a guy named, I think Don Olimer. Yes. And the story is that he pressured Lauren to fire. Norm McDonald in 1998.

[00:20:17] Amit: Okay. Well, I need to say though that the official line that Norm has given at the end is that it was basically insubordination. So it wasn't the OJ jokes, it was Lorne.

Michael would say like, tone down the Michael Jackson jokes. Do what you want. The Jackson attorney's going after you. Yeah. And Norm was like, yeah, that'd be hilarious. Yeah. and so,

[00:20:34] Michael: so, right. I mean, so there is

[00:20:36] Amit: some questioning. There's that narrative. Yes. What I'm pointing to the difference is, is there was a pattern Yes.

Of insubordination, which is though him and Lauren were very close. Yeah. They got along very well. And then the third thing is that there was just a ratings dive happening at the time, right in in the late nineties. Yeah. All that's

[00:20:51] Michael: fair. What's interesting to me is that, and this is my Malkovich moment, he's invited back to Host, so it's a year and a half after he is gone, and have you heard his opening monologue

How did I go in a year and a half from being not funny enough to be even allowed in the building? To being so funny that I'm now hosting the show . How did I suddenly get so damn funny

than it occurred to me? I haven't gotten funnier. The show has gotten really bad . It's great. It's a really good opening Mono. Part of the reason I wanted this to be my Malkovich moment is that Norm never really finds a show. He never becomes really a talk show host. I mean, he does some things on Netflix and YouTube and podcasts later on.

There's a few attempts at a sitcom. They never really take off. The movies don't really take off. Dirty work is a cult classic, but it's not like he was landing all kinds of roles. I think in so many ways, being let in to Saturday Night Live as this institution that says you are funny, you have bent lit and your application has been accepted, and then to be fired from that and then to be invited back.

I think it begins a story in his head. Where exactly do I belong? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Where am I supposed to be?

[00:22:27] Amit: He's like the commencement speaker a year after he's graduated. Right. , like, it's really, really strange. Or

[00:22:34] Michael: a year after he was kicked outta school. A

[00:22:36] Amit: year after he dropped out, essentially.

[00:22:37] Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Like what is my relationship with this thing that ultimately winds up being the first line of my obituary. I guess I'm just curious about his relationship with that sort of fame making anointing institution. That that is Saturday Night

[00:22:52] Amit: Live. Good one. I hadn't thought about it that way at all, but I, I can totally get the confusion, the identity, the membership.

Yeah. Good one,

[00:23:01] Michael: Michael. Thank you. Okay. All right. You're Malish, so we're gonna barely flash

[00:23:04] Amit: forward. Okay. Uh, do you know where you were on November 19th, 2000? Somewhere in Montana. I was somewhere on the East coast, like in New Jersey or something. Anyway, if you remember, like we're only a week, 10 days pass a non conclusive election.

Oh, right, of course. Right? Of course. And so who wants to be a millionaire? One of the top shows at the time, does Celebrity Week, and whether this was planned or not, or whether this is to pacify a Confused Nation. Yeah. But on that night, on November 19th, norm McDonald was on Celebrity Millionaire. So Norm makes.

all the way to $500,000 in the history of this show. This like groundbreaking show. There's only been one millionaire winner prior and Norm goes on a hot streak making it all the way to $500,000. Yeah. Throughout the ascension up there, Regis is just giving him like bad advice, you know, saying like, oh, are you sure about that?

And the norm is like tempted and he uses his phone a friend, or he uses Norm's, initial answer is correct and Regis kind of gives him a, oh God, like this, are you sure you want to go with that? Right? Yeah. This children misdirection, this children's charity that you're playing for is gonna lose out on this money.

And so Norm, yeah. Sort of second guesses and then he takes the 50 50. Yeah. Only to reveal that his initial instincts were right. So this is one thing I like about it from the Malcolm pitch perspective, is he is actually getting to show to the world that they all know he's witty and they all know he's sharp.

He's smart, but he's actually smart. Smart, yeah. The man retains information. This is a high school dropout who reads a lot, and he was into the classic. So he's getting to show this. Yeah. And he gets to the $500,000 question. You've been sitting there going, I don't know, beep,

[00:24:47] Michael: beep. All of a sudden. Bang, bang, bang.

[00:24:49] Amit: You're going for a half million dollars

[00:24:51] Michael: now. You ready? Big guy? I'm ready. Let's do it for half a million dollars. What Broadway musical features material written by Samuel

[00:24:59] Amit: Beckett and John

[00:25:01] Michael: Lennon. Hair Godspell Cabaret o Calcutta. Well, I'm thinking maybe old Calcutta because it takes place in India. Sort of a dark subject, but maybe has something to do with Beckett, say Old calcu.

No,

he just got it.

[00:25:32] Amit: This is the million dollar question. So Norm has already won $500,000 for his charity. Right. During the Cold War, the US government built a bunker to. House Congress. Under what? Golf resort. A. The Breakers. B, the Greenbrier C, Pinehurst. D, the Broadmoor. And Norma's a golfer. Norma's a golfer. So he knew his courses and early on in their conversation something had happened to where Norman insinuated that it's not the obvious one.

And so he says repeatedly, uh, I think it's to Greenbrier. And Regis kind of goes back and he's like, $500,000 just so it, it's,

[00:26:09] Michael: it's clear he has the option of leaving with the money and not

[00:26:12] Amit: answering the question. Yes. I forget. People that are not our age are not that familiar with the rules. A millionaire.

So yes, you have the option. You have $500,000 in the bank.

[00:26:20] Michael: You can wage it for answering this question. You can wager

[00:26:23] Amit: it, or you can just walk away and keep it. It is exactly gambling. And by the way, you'll get to that, we'll get to Norma as a gambling, but Regis is poking at norm's, gambling habits during this.

Yeah. So ultimately, norm, tell me what you wanted. What

[00:26:37] Michael: I, I, I think, what's it them Greenbriar. What are you making that page for? Forget it. I'm scared to death. Okay. Gimme that. Forget it. I'll just give it half a million. All right. What do you think? Take a guess. I have no idea. I said, my guess is, I guess I was wrong.

It must be one of those. Did you say Greenbrier? I said. Yeah, you would've won a million. But

[00:26:59] Amit: the look on norm's face at that moment, you could expect anger. You could expand rage. Yeah. No look of pure joy and ecstasy, as if it didn't really matter that he won the money. He was right. Yeah. And that's all he cared about.

Oh, that's funny. And it was, Priceless. And I have a couple of theories of why this is such an incredible moment in what led to that expression. And that's why I wanna be behind those eyes is these theories. One norm is, yes, we're gonna talk about this. He's a gambler. Yeah. I think he just likes to win. And this was winning anyway.

Even though this children's charity did not get $500,000, it didn't matter. Yeah. He still was right. And he still won. And two, like have no sense of loss apparently in that . I, I think, I mean, that's, that's. Miraculous.

[00:27:51] Michael: I think this gets back to his relationship with money. I cannot wait to talk about this, but yeah.

[00:27:56] Amit: Yes. And secondly, I think he's kind of proud that he can go on for the rest of his life and he doesn't have to say, I was the first celebrity to be on Millionaire. He can just say Regis was wrong and I could have been the first celebrity to win a millionaire. Which I think knowing Norm McDonald and everything we know about him, that was probably more important.

I think that's right. And I kind of want to be behind there in that brain to see if those theories are correct.

[00:28:20] Michael: Great. Malcolm. Let's pause for a word from our sponsor,

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[00:28:41] Michael: yeah. You know, there's a solution for this. Throw it away. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That book is valuable to somebody else, but I'm not just talking about donating it.

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[00:29:01] Amit: for like a savings bond or

[00:29:03] Michael: some sort of, I'm talking cold, hard cash. Enough for you to pick up the next lunch tab. I'm sure. Really . Well, maybe.

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Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages, also, how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? Okay. Sort of interesting here. One marriage from 1988 to 1999. Norm was age 25. They were divorced when he was 36. One son Dylan, born in 1992. She was a family therapist, apparently Connie.

But boy, it is almost impossible to find out anything about her extremely private or about his son. And you know, one of the things I've come to with this category is if it's not like readily obvious, I don't feel right hunting around too much to find out more. You know, cuz the blogs and the sort of tabloids get kind of like, I don't know, suspicious.

There's not a lot known. There's not even even

[00:30:34] Amit: pictures. There's not even

[00:30:35] Michael: pictures. Can't even Google images. There's not even pictures. Did you see this thing that he dated El McPherson? Yes. Okay. That is in 98, 99,

[00:30:42] Amit: 97, and 98. And indeed, the mayor, technically they were separated, but not divorced

[00:30:46] Michael: clearly, but that's it.

It's a super secret family life overall. I do think it's worth mentioning that. I didn't realize this. His brother, Neil McDonald, is a serious journalist in Canada. Yeah, yeah. The war correspondent turned like pundit. I mean really, really well-respected,

[00:31:01] Amit: serious man. As is his sister-in-law, Neil's wife.

That's right.

[00:31:05] Michael: Anyway, that's all we have for love and marriage. I think that, that he was, I don't think romantically involved or doesn't seem to be with his producer. There's a woman he met at SNL who was basically involved in a lot of his productions for the rest of his

[00:31:18] Amit: career. Yeah. They were inseparable as friends.

Right. It doesn't seem like there was any romantic, it looks platonic, but it seemed like it was as close to a marriage without the romance.

[00:31:26] Michael: Yeah. I mean, as, as best we're guessing. I don't know. What'd you take away? Cuz you must have had the same experience in researching this that E did. Yeah, I think

[00:31:34] Amit: he tried, marriage didn't work.

It didn't seem like he ever attempted it again. He was never public. Yeah. About any relationship. Again, he makes a lot of jokes about attraction and dating and sex and so I don't think those are completely fabricated. I think he did have an active dating life, it would seem, but did a pretty damn good job to protect

[00:31:54] Michael: it.

Yeah. The way he talks about his son, I got the, I sense of involved father, like he's, he's attentive. I mean, this is not a guy who's just absentee. Like I'm, I'm gonna go off to the cocktail

[00:32:05] Amit: parties. Correct. And when he is doing like that part of his life where he is doing standup tours, you know, with Spade and Sandler Yeah.

And all that. His mother moves from Canada next door to him and the kid is living with Norm's mother, the kid's grandmother. So yeah, by all means a responsible father. And as we

[00:32:20] Michael: tell, I mean, again, this is mostly a question mark. I'm honestly not sure there's any. Conclusions to be drawn? I did. I guess I did think like.

Is this guy sort of difficult to pair up with? It's funny because we were talking and the five things I love about you about it, like there's a lot of love in this man's life you would have thought that would've found a partner. It's a little bit curious that there's one short failed marriage and that's it.

Yeah.

[00:32:46] Amit: You know, love is, can be concentrated anywhere is the other thing. If you go back to our Gary Shandling episode, you said something very specific about it needs to be possible to be fulfilled without marriage being your thing. Yeah. And it seems like maybe that applied to Norm as well. There was no talks of pursuit of another marriage.

We didn't know about any other relationships, but three of our five things were about love. Yeah. They were about connected love about giving to other people and none of them having anything to do romantically or sexually. Right. And maybe that's just how this man experienced love. Yeah. He didn't need that other romantic kind.

As much as best we can tell.

[00:33:29] Michael: Well, let's move on. Category five, net worth. I saw 2.5

[00:33:33] Amit: million. Yeah, 2.5 million seems to be the consensus at death. Okay. Pretty good. Considering

[00:33:39] Michael: what the rollercoaster that it went on. I mean, is this the place to talk about gambling addiction? Yeah, I think so, because three times I've lost everything that I've ever had.

How do you do that? Well, you know, you kind of, at the end of it, you know, uh, it's happening because it does get it. It's exhausting to be obsessed with something, right? So, um, you are, I guess, um, trying to finish it off, right, finally. Right? Because if you're, if you have 450,000 in the bank and then you lose 400,000, you're fuck it.

I don't want to fucking have 50,000 Right? to remind me that I don't want money to remind me that I have more money, . So that's how you do it. So that's how you do it. He also talks about, I don't know if you saw this too, that online gambling really took him out, that he would play multiple games at once.

So I, this is, I don't know any gambling addicts, do you? No, I don't think so. I think that word addict is really important to unpack here a little while, gambling was the first thing that made it into the dsm, the diagnostic and statistic manual, the Bible for, you know, mental health experts. And it was like the first one that was pointed to as, it doesn't need to be a foreign chemical substance introduced into the body.

Like gambling addiction is considered a disease. Mm-hmm. , right? I mean, I think Norm backed away from it, but I'm not sure he ever got treatment for it. I saw him once or twice talk about getting into arguments with therapists about it, and they're like, you're doing this at the expense of other things to devote your attention to in your life.

You're like, well, what the hell else is life about? The question is, is how much does it hurt others? I mean, there's, there's a, certainly it can hurt you. You can, it can be a form of self-harm to drain. The bank account, which he did. You know? So who did this hurt, I guess is one of my questions here. And because we know so little about the family, I do wonder like, did this hurt his ability to support his son through college?

Did it play into his marriage? I don't know. We

[00:35:34] Amit: don't know. Totally speculative, but we know that those two existed. We know that he was married, Andy had a son during a lot of these gambling runs. Yeah, I mean, he would talk about after the SNL shoots after party. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would go to, he'd drive to Atlantic City.

Yeah. And, and just go on a rampage of gambling. He didn't drink right. But he'd go on a Dr. A

[00:35:52] Michael: gambling rampage. And the story he tells is that he was like in a casino and he sort of, you know, randomly decided to put some money on a craps table. And I, I put money down and then the, uh, I only had a hundred dollars.

I just put it down and then I won. And the guy said, you wanna press it? And then I didn't wanna look stupid. I go, what do you think? So the guy pressed it. He pressed every bet. And anyways, all of a sudden they were just handing me huge amounts of money. And then I remember at the end I go, man, I must have won $15,000.

And the guy goes, you want a hell of a lot more than that? Fella . He came home with all these chips and put 'em in his refrigerator. In his refrigerator. Right. Didn't know what the fuck did. He was like, what do I do with all

[00:36:29] Amit: these chips? Yeah. But we've gotten off track about this irresponsibility question.

I think if it's

[00:36:34] Michael: taking you away, if it's got the obsessive and compulsive, if you're not able to participate in relationships and people who depend on you and your friends, then it's harmful.

[00:36:43] Amit: Yes. I wanna reduce it to one single point. Okay. If you are the child of a parent, for them to see you as an addict of anything, I think at least that is a harmed life.

[00:36:54] Michael: The fact that 2.5 million at death actually tells me, you know, it was actually maybe better than expected, given this way better than I expected. What's interesting about the gambling addiction is it, it does seem like he doesn't care that much about money.

[00:37:07] Amit: Yeah. He lived in like, I think his last apartment was something like a hundred thousand dollars.

Yeah. It was a condo assumption, right? It's not where you would expect somebody of this

[00:37:15] Michael: stature to be living. Right. . I don't know what's to make of this.

[00:37:20] Amit: I, I think it's almost irrelevant, you know, it just the number here. Yeah. Because of

[00:37:24] Michael: the gambling addiction. No, I think

[00:37:26] Amit: because of the guy. I think there's one, there is a little bit of a celebration be had that he at least had enough of a career bounce back to end up with some reward and some money at the end, which I'm presuming this is gonna go to his son and secure more of his son's future.

Yeah. So that's good. But the man hit zero three times. He had these failed sitcoms. He had these movies that all did terribly. Right. It's quite remarkable that he, he was able to find these other outlets to get him that money. You

[00:37:58] Michael: know, if you were in town and you heard Norm was doing a, an act, like if you follow standup, people went to go see him.

Yeah. Like they knew he was a, he was as

[00:38:08] Amit: good a show as ever. I would pay 75 bucks or whatever that is.

[00:38:10] Michael: A hundred percent. So I, and I, and I think that he, he had a confidence on stage, and I think that probably was a, at some level had to be a significant portion of his revenue. Yeah. Yeah. The gambling addiction thing's weird.

I don't know what to make of it. I'm sure it's gonna come up more. So maybe we should just move on and keep talking. Yep. Category six Simpson, Saturday Night Live, or Halls of Fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons, as well as impersonations, SNL obvious.

Back again, Bert Reynolds in a commanding lead with $14. Hey, hey, uh, check out the podium. Look at this. Mr. Reynolds has apparently changed his name to Turd Ferguson. . That's right. Turd Ferguson. It's a funny name. Burt Reynolds. That's not my name.

Okay. Turd Ferguson. Yeah. What do you want? I saw nothing on The Simpsons, which was a little surprising. I would've thought he'd have popped in to voice himself at some point. Nothing on Arsenio Hall, I'm afraid. Kind of makes sense. He's a little late for that. Yeah. And then no Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hmm.

That's a little surprising. Posthumously perhaps. I actually really wonder how much he's gonna be. , you know, humor always has a shelf life and you know, have you ever had an old person bring up the comedians of their day to you and you're like, I got no idea who that is. Very few comics from like the fifties or sixties are household names to me.

Yeah. I kind of know Bob Newhart and Don Rickles gets brought up. But like

[00:39:59] Amit: Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce, yeah. I mean he was huge, huge, huge. Yeah. But a name recall amongst our generation. Tiny. Yeah.

[00:40:06] Michael: So I think he might be forgotten, man. I'm afraid. So. I think this is about right. It's a bummer he wouldn't on Arsenio.

I think there probably should be an a Hollywood walk of fame. Like do people revisit snl? Will celebrity Jeopardy be funny? You know, once Alex Trebek memory has, you know, faded from mind, I think this stuff just has a shelf life.

[00:40:27] Amit: Yeah. And even if you're not voiced on The Simpsons, a passing reference to you.

Yeah. Uh, what was his role on Family Guy?

[00:40:35] Michael: Who the hell do you think I am? I'm deaf. Which one is Peter Griffin then? Then that's kind

[00:40:39] Amit: of perfect. It is kind of perfect. A soothing death. That's a

[00:40:42] Michael: pretty good segue. Category seven over under. In this category, we look at the life expectancy for the year somebody was born to see if they beat the house odds and as a measure of grace.

So in 1963, the life expectancy for a Canadian man, cause Norm is Canadian, is from, uh, 71.38 years old. Norm died at age 61. So under way, under way to be 10

[00:41:07] Amit: years

[00:41:07] Michael: under is way under, I think. And I guess we should talk about the fact that he didn't tell anybody. Yeah, that's,

[00:41:12] Amit: that's kind of what I wrote down in my notes about this.

This

[00:41:15] Michael: is such a

[00:41:16] Amit: curious thing. He did tell those four closest to

[00:41:19] Michael: him, his brother and his son. Yeah. And his producer. But almost everybody was caught off guard. She, is this the place to talk about that final Netflix appearance?

[00:41:28] Amit: I think so. Because this category, we wanna look at grace, right? Yeah. So let's explain this, the final act.

Okay. So

[00:41:34] Michael: first of all, premature death. I think we can safely say premature, tragic. Yeah. And I also did find one. Clip saying that he actually had survived a cancer at a younger age and it was a stomach cancer. I couldn't verify that. So I don't know. But I mean, he had cancer for nine years. Yeah. I sounded like he didn't want that to affect how he was interpreted.

The story as I understand it, it was that Netflix had paid for a special, he was gonna do a Netflix standup special because

[00:42:05] Amit: he had done one in

[00:42:05] Michael: 2018. Right. And in 2021 it's still sort of covid times. There's quarantine going on. So he is being protective. He is gonna get a treatment the following day. And he's like, if this goes south, I want this act to be recorded.

So he does the act with no audience into basically a webcam. Mm-hmm. . And that's the last thing we got. And then Netflix decides to publish it. And then also has a round table discussion with Letterman, Dave Chappelle, Molly Shannon. Sandler Spade and Conan, like talking about Norm's legacy. I thought in that debriefing Letterman was really like on the ball about like, what did we just watch?

You

[00:42:45] Amit: get more than a joke and a laugh. You get that tone, you get that attitude.

[00:42:50] Michael: There is that, uh, invisible connection. We know what you're up to Norm and this is what we love.

[00:42:56] Amit: He was

[00:42:57] Michael: telling us, uh, this is a good joke. You've

[00:43:00] Amit: got what I'm serving tonight. That's right. This is what we're serving at the

[00:43:03] Michael: restaurant.

Yes. And this is what you're eating and you're gonna Yeah. You know, that's the perfect way to put it. It's like a master chef. Ah, what do you know? Fuck your taste butts.

[00:43:13] Amit: And, and a good third of the material is about death and mortality

[00:43:16] Michael: as well. And Right. And it's Bowie like too. Right? I mean that's the, the black star comparison I think is astute.

Is

[00:43:23] Amit: it graceful? It's reconciling with his mortality and his imminent mortality. I mean, he didn't know

[00:43:29] Michael: when he recorded that night, but I think he's glad he had it, the tape. Yeah.

[00:43:34] Amit: So is it an act of grace? ,

[00:43:37] Michael: there was a resounding yes with David Bowie and Blackstar, I think. Yes. I think he had a real importance and contribution as a comic to other comedians.

I think one of the things he did as a comic, I heard him uh, talk about this in an interview, is he would sort of know where he was landing. He may take a while to get there, but he, he would sort of like, like this is scripted out his act. While it looks effortless and seamless and stream of conscious, it has a direction and a script underneath it, but it's more like a.

Landing point script, right? He, he can sign post into his head where he's going to land. And I think that if you are a student of comedy or a fan of comedy, to watch him do that with no audience is kind of like great thing for us to have. Mm-hmm. . So I think it's an act of grace. I think it is.

[00:44:27] Amit: Two, it's a pretty perfect last lecture or swan song for somebody like him.

Where I struggle is, I'm not certain that it's heroic to hide

[00:44:38] Michael: your disease. The, we've seen this pattern with a few celebrities now. Mm-hmm. And I think that they, celebrities exist in a, you know, we can talk about a post privacy world all we want with social media, but celebrities deal with a privacy issue in a whole different way.

Correct. And I could understand not wanting it to get out that you may be a dying man. I get that. But do you have to go so far that. Everybody who you're tight with also don't know.

[00:45:07] Amit: Yeah. And it's kind of contradictory to this, um, love language of his It is. Right. Spending time with people. He's not affording other people that same gift.

Yeah.

[00:45:16] Michael: Um, so you, oh wait, are you making an argument at Selfish? Somewhat, yeah. Like, I remember Richard Farnsworth was a old character actor and he did a, a David Lynch movie called The Strait Story. Mm-hmm Riddled with Cancer, you know, no one knew it. Uh, his family didn't know it. He kept it from everyone.

You know, you're not being a burden to your family, you know, they know nothing about it. And then, uh, you're gone. He wrote a nice letter to everybody, you know, in the family and said that, you know, he didn't wanna, he, that the reason he did it is he didn't wanna cause people to stress. So I thought, wow, how incredible.

Like, you know, I guess Norm was wired differently, they say. I, I see the case for it being selfish. I also see the case for it being virtuous, and I, I don't know that I have any like, conclusion on this. Do

[00:46:08] Amit: you? I don't, I mean, I, I lean selfish. I Okay. To be honest. Let's, let's make it a famous

[00:46:14] Michael: con gravy question.

Yeah. To be

[00:46:15] Amit: honest, is it desirable in my mind? No. To keep

[00:46:20] Michael: a disease secret? Yeah. But in your life, don't you have the luxury of containing who knows and who doesn't? Do you think maybe that was part of the reason for secrecy? Like if norm's not a celebrity or if he could have, I mean, he did tell four people, right?

But if he could tell 20 people and only 20 people, is it still. Lean, selfish, because I'll tell you something else. When somebody is posting on social media about something that they're going through, sometimes it makes some sense to me. Sometimes it looks performative and I could understand him not wanting it to be performative, especially since it's so sort of counter to his vibe.

If he goes up on stage in his norm way of I am here to set the tone and kind of keep you in a laugh like state for the next hour plus. And if he starts that out with, by the way, I might be dying. Like it's, it, it's hard to do that. So I do think it like is a threat to his act, which I think was precious to him and, and I want to give him that grace desirable.

I don't know. I never, I guess I never want any kind of art that I'm involved with to run into suffering in a way that. Doesn't allow me the full room to suffer. And I guess there is that question. Is this a walling yourself off? Is this a shutting down of emotions? Is this a a repression? That's a valid

[00:47:37] Amit: question here.

Yeah. On some level I think it is. Looks like, I mean, I think, I think it's okay to control your old narrative. I think you have that right to, and I have think you have, uh, an absolute right to do it on your own terms. Yeah. But I do think there is greater selfishness than there is heroism in withholding it from, especially those that would benefit from a friendship point of view and from a fan point of view, to a lesser extent I

[00:48:05] Michael: see that.

I still say it's ambiguous. . Yeah. Because in the old days they go, Hey, that old man died. Now they go, Hey, he lost his battle . That's no way to end your life. You know what a loser that guy was? Last thing he did was lose. And I'm pretty sure I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure if you die, the cancer also dies at exactly the same time.

So that to me is not a loss. That's a draw. That's a, you know what I mean? ,

[00:48:41] Amit: when we decided to do Norm McDonald, I was like, oh, this is gonna be fun. You know, I'm gonna go through old Claire. And it's, it's

[00:48:46] Michael: definitely fun. He's a good hang it. It's also like, what the fuck to make of this?

[00:48:50] Amit: Yeah. Cause no matter how much you read and how much you watch and how many you listen to, it's really hard to figure

[00:48:54] Michael: out the.

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The first of the introspective categories is Man in the Mirror. What did they think about their own reflect? I think he liked it. Yep. I think there's a fearlessness, a confidence, and an ease that I think feels very natural. I didn't give this a whole lot of thought. I think he's like really good with his reflection.

Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:56] Amit: You can't fake a smile. Yeah. Like that. So I think he did. I think he was generally happy to be anywhere at any time. Yeah.

[00:50:02] Michael: And I think like an mirror, I think it was like good with the reflection. Huh. You know, just sort of see it. It's a little head nod. Huh?

[00:50:08] Amit: I agree. I mean, I think he liked being everywhere.

He liked being in front of the mirror just as much as he liked being in the chair next to Conan. Yeah. I, I think the man just liked presence. He looked very, very comfortable. He liked that he

[00:50:19] Michael: lived, he, he was very comfortable in his skin. Okay. Next category, category nine. Outgoing message, like, man in the mirror.

We wanna know how do we think they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail. And also, would they have recorded the outgoing message themselves or would they have used the default setting?

[00:50:39] Amit: A million times over. Yes, I disagree. Really,

[00:50:42] Michael: I, I'll tell you what I wrote down.

There's that frog in the throat quality. His voice is all like sort of throat and head. It's not in the body at all. You know, you don't hear it in his lungs hardly ever. It almost feels like a voice that's supposed to be corrected somewhere. It's almost, it's not a speech impediment. Exactly, but it does seem like that, that, that there's something, there's something stopped.

[00:51:01] Amit: There's

[00:51:01] Michael: no breaths. There's something in the anatomy that sounds a little bit uncomfortable. I think he used it and lived with it. I see a lot of self-acceptance. I'm not sure he loved it. I do think he would've left a funny message on his outgoing voicemail. Absolutely. Oh, it would've been

[00:51:15] Amit: like 12 minutes long.

Yeah. . And to do that, you have to have fun talking. The

[00:51:20] Michael: journey is the

[00:51:20] Amit: thing, right. The journey is the thing with this guy and with his voice and with the telling of the stories. Yeah. And it all goes back to your number two, you know? He gives his time. Yeah. And maybe he gives way too much of it. Yeah. That, that just embodies his life.

Yeah. Is the long walk of the joke. And somehow, although the jokes are often terrible, It comes out to be

[00:51:41] Michael: the perfect joke. It works. It totally works. I don't know. I feel like I often go, yes, in this category that somebody likes it and I paused here and I wonder, so I'm gonna go, no, just maybe to be a little bit provocative.

Okay. Next category regrets. Public or private. What we really wanna know is what, if anything, kept this person awake at night?

[00:52:02] Amit: So everything I have here we've hinted at. I think it's worth,

[00:52:06] Michael: I think you basically need to take it. I mean, there's gambling, although I do kind of wonder if he's secretly proud of it that he earned it back.

I think he also, you know, in terms of private regrets, I said, I really scratched my head over this. It's not so obvious to me. So what do you have, let me just

[00:52:20] Amit: recap the things we talked about gambling. You said, you know, there was a misogynistic angle to a lot of his jokes and a homophobic one. And a homophobic one, but I think the sexist one was stronger.

Yeah. And more widely criticized. No question. Withholding death. Maybe we talked about that as a regret. Yeah.

[00:52:36] Michael: I doubt he regretted it. Do you think he's. You know, in the hospital thinking, fuck, I wish

[00:52:41] Amit: I told more people. I think so, yes. If you are in the face of mortality and you are seconds away from dying and you know it, or you're minutes away from dying, I think what pumps into you perhaps is all the love that you've felt recently, maybe,

[00:52:54] Michael: but not if you believe the journey is the thing.

And I believe this guy believes the journey is the thing. So I don't know. It's hard to know and it's dark to think

[00:53:02] Amit: about. It is dark to think about and it's a huge question, but my speculation, yeah, I think it could be. What else

[00:53:07] Michael: do you have in regrets?

[00:53:08] Amit: I think he kind of regrets not being Sandler or spayed or Chappelle.

You know, he gives off this aura of,

[00:53:16] Michael: of, of not, yeah, it's a legacy regret. or,

[00:53:20] Amit: or, uh, a career regret. Yeah. You know, that this insubordination essentially derailed his career. Yeah. He talked so often. If you hear interviews from 1995 and at the peak he was like, you know, I love doing week. I opened update. I wish I could do this till I was 65.

Yeah. Or like, what's your dream? He's like, I wish that at some point that they could crown the funniest man alive in the world and I would win that competition. Yeah. Mar Twain Award or something. Right? Yeah. Yeah. He, he had those dreams, you know, and I think fate took him away and made him a little bit of a tragic hero.

You know, it's gotta be so hard to know when

[00:53:55] Michael: you're self sabotaging if you're an acerbic comic. Right. You know? Yeah. Like, because the thing that brought you there is also the thing that's taken you down.

[00:54:04] Amit: Yeah. And Dave Chappelle is no greater than an example of that man had to take 10 years off, and he's lucky that he got the comeback that he had.

I o

[00:54:11] Michael: okay. If we're on regrets, I see your point about like, Did I hurt my career somewhere as a potential regret? God, did I play the hand right? You know? Yeah. Cuz a,

[00:54:21] Amit: a young Nor McDonald was not as acerbic and not as much of a, I don't give a fuck on every talk show appearance that he did.

[00:54:30] Michael: Well thanks. Good to be here.

Uh, uh, I've been traveling around a lot, watching a lot of the tv, you know, and, uh, a lot of violence on tv. You know, kids aren't supposed to watch violence now on a tv. They're afraid. Maybe the kids will copy what they see on a screen. You know, I can't even get a funny cartoon anymore cuz some 12 year old watched a particularly violent episode of the Roadrunner Coyote Show, , and the next day they found 'em in a bottom of a canyon

They had two giant springs Strat through his feet, get a couple of springs, get a little umbrella in his hand sign.

[00:55:05] Amit: And somewhere in there, whether that was by force of this fumble with the whole Saturday Night Live dismissal, or whether it was seeing something else that he didn't actually want to march down that path. Right. But I think it's a definite worthy consideration of not being Sandler or Chappelle.

[00:55:26] Michael: Yeah.

Fair enough. All right. Category 11, good dreams, bad dreams. This category is not about self-perception, but rather does this person have a haunted look in the eye? Something that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons, or unresolved trauma. What did you have here?

[00:55:42] Amit: This is a little bit of a shortcoming in the category.

I think he has that look, you know, he has that kind of heavy gaze. Hmm. But no, I think anybody that can tell a six minute joke that doesn't really have a good punchline can sleep well at night. Yeah. I think if you have that much tranquility, To deliver like he delivers. I think you can rest easy.

[00:56:02] Michael: The one thing that gave me pause here, cause I basically sign off on that.

He did talk about with the gambling addiction, at its worst, he would close his eyes and see the lights of the computer screen as he's going to sleep. I'd make money every day, but then I'd try to go to sleep and you'd close your eyes and there's just all these images going in your, in the back of your eyelids, you know, cause I, I used to have the same thing when I played Pacman.

I'm addicted to video games. . You go to LA and play any Pacman game, you'll see my name on number one. Same thing. I try to go to sleep and just be like, images going on. Can you quiet the storyteller to the chatter box inside your head? I do think he's got an active chatter box in a way. Oh, without a doubt.

Yeah. And I wonder if that interferes with sleep. And I think it, it plays into gambling addiction of like, okay, I'm just gonna engage in this activity that has variable dopamine hits and high highs and low lows, because I'm sort of on hunt for that kind of, I don't know,

[00:57:00] Amit: rush. Yeah. I mean, the question is, does he just exhaust it as much as he can by it?

Talking and rambling as much as he does or doing these obsessive acts. Yeah. And that allows him to actually, you know, rest peacefully and uh, and dream

[00:57:15] Michael: Well. I think the point here is that it's a little contradictory. I think that there is self-acceptance. I wonder about the inner peace part

[00:57:21] Amit: of it. We don't see much striving or many desires unmet with him.

Yeah. And that speaks to inner peace and tranquility.

[00:57:29] Michael: Yeah. And maybe a sort of like, I get what life has to offer more or less. I see what's on the platter here and I'm gonna take what I need and I'm not gonna be too greedy about it. It all. Yeah. You know,

[00:57:39] Amit: or maybe you date Elix Pon and you're like, I can sleep.

Okay. For the next 23 years. Good night.

[00:57:44] Michael: Yeah, I did. Well, that's good. Uh, all right, category 12, second to last category cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. This may be a question of what drug sounds like. The most fun to partake with this person or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them we are most curious about.

So let me lead here. I have things I'm curious about. I don't pretend for a second that any substance is going to unlock anything that really tells me something I cannot figure out with Norm McDonald. Therefore, I want a couple of cases of really light shitty beer, and I just want to hang out and drink beers like in a lawnchair in a backyard.

On a spring day all day long, me and Norma best friends in the movie and we're out at the pool, we're doing a pool scene. I'm Billy Madison, of course. So old Billy's gonna talk that you were Frank . I was supposed to be drunk and I didn't wanna come, come off. Oh yeah, that's right. I didn't wanna come off like Foster Brook.

Oh right. So you played it past that. So I just drank and drank and drink and I'm very low tolerance for alcohol. . Wow. This is great. When I graduated first parade, all my father did was tell me to get a job. , Hey, you wanna feed that donkey some beer? Get it all messed up. Maybe later I'll go put some beer in a pocket and not even get all that drunk.

I just want the quality time. Yeah. Can I get you another, Oh, we killed the case there Norm. You know I I with a cooler between us. That's the scene I

[00:59:14] Amit: want. It is uncanny how identical my answer is really? I literally paid in the backyard with like a cooler of beer scene and I had this reminder, the three of us Then we used to do this in college, a group of my high school friends that all went to various universities but weren't too far apart.

Mm-hmm. would get together once a semester and we'd actually do that. We'd just like sit in the backyard all night and tell jokes and crack each other up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think if you're doing it with Norm McDonald, he's not a drinker. I think he's gonna be the funniest one. You're never gonna keep up, but I think he'll have you belly laughing throughout the majority of the night until the sun rises.

[00:59:50] Michael: I gotta say, this is why I enjoy camping so much with friends, right? It's basically this, let's just do nothing and sit outside and hang out. Yeah. Let's just hang out and what

a

[01:00:00] Amit: perfect norm McDonald thing. It's the art of nothing.

[01:00:02] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. We're here. Our final category, the Vander Beak, named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in Varsity Blues,

[01:00:12] Amit: I don't want your life,

[01:00:14] Michael: Amit, based on everything we've talked about, do you want Norm McDonald's life?

Do you even have a lien here?

[01:00:22] Amit: I don't have a lien. I'm, I'm a 50 50.

[01:00:25] Michael: It's so hard because I just don't understand him. You know, on our very first episode with Robin Leach, I did sort of make the case that a yes to the Vander Beak is an attitude of like, it's all just a big fucking joke. And it's about the journey.

And I do think that that ethos runs strong in norm. I, I think that he seems to weather the ups and downs. His show gets canceled and it's not like he goes, and, I mean, I guess he, he has his problems with gambling, but it's not like he, I don't know, has massive patterns of self-destruction, I guess. I don't know.

I say that now. I'm second guessing myself because maybe that is how we acted out when things didn't go his way. And maybe that's worth asking. You know, the, we don't, we know he lost everything three times. Did it follow failure? Was it because his shows were canceled? Was it because a marriage went south?

Was it because that was his avenue for expressing pain? Or was it he was writing one sinusoidal wave with success and another sinusoidal wave with, you know, money and another sinusoidal wave with relational wealth? I don't, I don't know. It's really hard to purse this one through. Like, what's the most important thing I, I, I gotta say the one failed 10 year marriage and one son.

Something about that B that makes me wonder. I, I mean, I guess part of like how I usually think through the Vander beak is we've all got this void inside us that we're trying to fill with good and bad things. And how successful were we with that and how generous were we with in the giving back? I see generosity in places.

Mm-hmm. , including in the final act. He also, and we haven't talked about this at all, he talks about his spirituality in a very active way, and it's all over the fucking place. He's sort of like, if I lean anything, it's Jewish . Um, even though he is raised as a Christian and, and I think that there is a kind of heaven and hell for him, and I think he actively like questions, spirituality, and, and looks at generosity and, and service as part of the path to that.

I don't know. I do see something thoroughly lonely here, despite the friendships and despite, you know, the way he's regarded and the reputation there is something about the way he died and the family life that has me thinking that there's a kind of like. Sadness. That's not easy to see, but that's in there somewhere and that's persistent.

I think I'm a no, and I'm not sure I have any one good case for it here. It's an intuition that there's something I don't want here and I'm not sure I've put my finger on it, but my heart is telling me to go now. . So I think I'm a no, I don't want your life Norm McDonald.

[01:03:33] Amit: I think the companionship is a really big flag for me.

He did have the marriage. We have no other evidence of lasting companionship. I just, I need to be seen properly and that's, that's a flag for me with Norm McDonald and maybe his friend saw that, but I guess I need it a little more intimately with ideally one person. The other thing that you did say, you know, in our five things was he was a person that could make himself laugh.

Yeah. You know, and he could do that when he is on these talk shows. And I would very much like to think he can do that around the clock. Yeah. At home. And that's huge. Yeah. I am telling you it is huge and I think that is pretty admirable. Um, the journey is, is really, I mean, we need to rehash how remarkable it is.

Yeah. He was a high school dropout, became very book smart. Was literally a garbage man as he started dabbling in comedy. And then to be, you know, the weekend anchor is huge. I think there was somewhere in that guy that he was like, you know, I wrote for Roseanne. I was the weekend update guy. I dated El McPherson and I got a great

[01:04:41] Michael: son and, and Dave Letterman wants me on every

[01:04:44] Amit: week.

Norm did say that like he doesn't like to, to go back and talk about Saturday Night Live all the time. Cause he feels like an old guy talking about like how he was a track star as a junior in high school. Right. You know, cuz it was long ago and he wants new stuff to talk about it. I'm sad for him that he didn't have that.

But I'm gonna go back to the laughter of how much he amuses himself. Yeah. And the fact that he did do these things against all odd. , there is a feeling of satisfaction. Yeah. And

[01:05:15] Michael: just bringing other people into it. I mean, as, as well as anybody ever can

[01:05:19] Amit: or ever did. Exactly. And I think he's self-satisfied and that's why he's telling people he loves them cuz he wants 'em to feel satisfaction.

Yeah. And that's what I get from him. And man, like those, the, the absence of the things is tough. Like my, my soul could never do well in this norm McDonald's, uh, story, story. But if I'm gonna take, if I'm taking the soul and I'm taking the whole package of Norm McDonald, I think I'm actually a Yes. That's great.

I, I, I

[01:05:47] Michael: think more than anything what it does is elevate, like laughter as a life strategy, as a tool, as a sort of like how we fucking deal with the confusion and pain and, you know, the baffling nature of fucking exist. I'm sticking with my No, but I think your Yes is a great yes, and it's, it is

[01:06:03] Amit: right there.

You know, if you could be laughing and smiling and induce that on yourself,

[01:06:08] Michael: that's a beautiful fucking thing. Yeah, that's good. Fuck.

[01:06:11] Amit: That's good. I want your life Norm McDonald.

[01:06:14] Michael: All right, Amit, we're there. You are. Norm McDonald, you've died. You've gone to the part of the gates, the Unitarian proxy for, uh, the afterlife.

You're meeting St. Peter. The floor is yours. Make your

[01:06:28] Amit: pitch. Okay. So love, they kept saying love and love and love. I gave my time. That was love. I told people I loved them. That's. Love I amused myself. That is love, and I also made them laugh a lot unexpectedly from the belly for long periods. That is not only an act of love.

That is an act of longevity. and as somebody that you couldn't predict where I was going and you started laughing before the joke even ended. Or when I walked in the room and before I even twisted the corner of my mouth, you started laughing. Do you know how much god damn dopamine and serotonin I produced on that planet down there?

That is the reason to let me in. And I'm sorry, I said, God damn. What? I'm trying to get into Heaven. I shouldn't have done that.

[01:07:31] Michael: Famous and gravy listeners, before you leave, I have a request. If you are interested in participating in our opening quiz where we reveal the dead celebrity, then send us an email. You can reach us at hello famous and gravy dot. Send us an email. We can find time for a recording. It's usually pretty fun and it only takes about five or 10 minutes.

We love hearing from you, so if you're interested, drop us a note. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you're enjoying our show and you don't feel like emailing us, then tell your friends about us. You can find us on Twitter. Our handle is at Famous En Gravy. We also have a newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website, famous en gravy.com.

Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you for listening. Tell your friends. See you next time.