Name: Norm Macdonald Is A Comic Genius
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T16:58:24.000Z
Duration: 8 min 22 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

A moth goes into a podiatrist's office, and the podiatrist's office says, what's the problem?

Norm MacDonald is one of those comedians who functions as a litmus test for people's sense of humor.

If you find Norm hilarious, for example, I know that your sense of humor and mine are probably pretty similar.

And if he does so more than most, I think it's because his vision of comedy is unflinching, unflinchingly devoted to what he.

Which means that he won't ever try to modify his work to appease an audience.

Of course, this has led to what I think is the mistaken notion, one that you often see in YouTube comments, that norm just doesn't care what people think.

As I go to work for Gregory Olanovich, honestly, Doc, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.

I don't even know if Gregory Olanovich knows.

He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness.

I think Norm cares deeply about his audiences.

He wouldn't spend thousands of hours honing his material if he didn't want to make people laugh.

He just doesn't let the audience dictate the direction of his work.

In fact, during his time at SNL as the host of Weekend Update, he often did the exact opposite.

Norm's distaste for performing in front of an audience that was essentially forced to laugh urged him to tell jokes that would shock them into silence or gasps.

A decade before Ricky Gervais made a splash by making fun of celebrities at the Golden Globes, norm hosted the ESPYs.

With jokes like this, he became the first defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy.

That is something that no one can ever take away from you, unless you kill your wife and a waiter, in which case, not only does that take bravery, it takes dedication.

At night, I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that's on my arm.

Norm's dedication to the craft is almost inhuman, and so much of it is unseen.

He's one of the smartest well read people in Stand up, particularly well read in Russian literature if you couldn't tell by the names that he's making up in the moth joke.

And yet his Whole act is predicated on this folksy, dopey innocence.

He's like that magician from the Prestig who devotes his whole life to a character just to pull off a great trick.

This is why no one can detect his method.

And this is the hardest pill to swallow, Doc.

Norm was known for his super short jokes during his weekend update period.

And now he's known for these super long, rambling jokes that he often tells on late show appearances.

It's these longer jokes, which bear a resemblance to shaggy dog stories, that often get him labeled as an anti comic or a meta comic.

But he strongly insists that he is neither of these things.

In interviews, Norm rejects anything that sees itself as above comedy, looking down on it either to ridicule or to comment.

His jokes always have punchlines and punchlines that make sense whether or not you think they're funny.

Hey, you know the funniest part of doing an office conga line?

When you look back and realize you're doing it alone and you're not in an office, you're in a psychiatric hospital.

Or he can string out punchlines like pearls on a wire across a long story.

This joke from his special me doing stand up is 12 minutes long.

Seems like there's too much news, like, you know, because now they have 24 hour news.

Now, when I was a young boy, the news was half a hour.

He starts by talking about 24 hour news and eventually makes his way to a detailed description of.

And the progression is completely natural.

And then I would take her body to the woods and bury her in a very, very, very deep grave.

Along the way, there was plenty of punchlines to laugh at.

And as things get crazier, you get drawn into a kind of hysteria.

Matter of fact, I'm kind of happy it's Janice and not somebody I know.

That would be a lot of fuck, I forgot she vanished.

These serial killers are supposed to be so shrewd and cunning and everything, you know?

But then when it comes time for the grave, they get a little hasty.

You know What I would do is I would like.

I would select a lady, and then I would follow her habits.

What would I be holding in my right hand in the parking lot but a cheese sandwich?

I would get her in there and I would do that thing that makes me feel like God.

The intelligence of this joke is there if you want to look for it.

The word choices, the phrasing, it's all precisely chosen.

But Norm doesn't call attention to his own intelligence.

The punchlines just appear like flashes of light.

If only the cowardice was stronger, then perhaps, perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and name this hellish facade once.

In the constellation of comedy greats, Norm is among the least famous, but

he's also one the of one of the most underrated.

That's because Stand up was never a stepping stone for him to greater success or greater fame, but

His kind of comedy is built to last, like a low frequency noise that might not demand the same kind of attention as high pitched sounds, but

will travel a much greater distance in the end.

And Norm's jokes are the ones you'll remember late into your life, the ones we'll all be telling you for years to come.

Because their construction is sophisticated, but their delivery is easy to understand.

Getting that balance exactly right is the work of an entire career.

But Norm MacDonald, more than anyone else, knows that a long, winding journey is okay as long as the payoff is worth it.