Norm Macdonald's story about the first time he met Bob Dylan

[defen]

It's worth noting that Norm was a committed fabulist (I say this as his #7 fan). He would lie about anything and everything, to the point that it's impossible for an outsider to tell what is the real Norm Macdonald and what is the character "Norm Macdonald". He has at least 2 "meeting Bob Dylan" stories that are completely different.

[metagame]

The joke here is that this is something he only told by text, that was initially on his Twitter account, and it was a long-winded, typed story that ended with "don't be fooled by typists."

[throwawayboise]

His "I'm a deeply closeted gay man" bit was hysterical. He had Larry King completely confused when he did it in one of his interviews.

[emmelaich]

Two things that indicate for me the fabulism.

  1. Book of Job favorite book?  Not impossible but. ...
  2. References to the "original" Book of Job.  No such think AFAIK.
  3. The three friends in the story match the three others in the book of Job.
  4. Elihu possibly matches the old man with the funny story.

[IAmGraydon]

I’ve known a few people like this and I always got the feeling that it was a defense mechanism and they were deeply afraid of people finding out who they really are as a person.

[monocasa]

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

[josefrichter]

Yeah that’s why everyone says now “I didn’t even know he was sick” – Norm couldn’t really tell anyone even if he had wanted. No one would believe him. I also clearly remember him saying “I’m 68 years old now” in one of his standup, getting a round of applause in return.

[throwawaynorm]

if you listen to the conan podcast where they reminisce about norm, the producer indicates that norm actually did stay with bob dylan and hang out at his place. so this could be true and removed at dylan's request. what's up in the air is whether or not the producer got his info from norm / real events, or twitter/entertainment news...

[SV_BubbleTime]

This was the point of his book (one of?) that he wanted to tell some stories but probably legally couldn’t, so he sprinkled some truths in and called the whole thing made up. It’s pretty practical way to be a celebrity IMO.

[dereg]

There's no reason to doubt the veracity of his story. As Norm has said before: "It’s not facts, but it’s truth."

[ethbr0]

It's like he understood how the Internet would work, before there was an Internet. :)

[lqet]

Every few weeks, I hunt YouTube for Norm Macdonald material I haven't seen yet. I've been doing this for a few years now. My family usually responds with an eye-rolling "OK..." when I want to imitate one of his long routines, but I had great success over the years with his moth joke [0] and the professor of logic joke [1]. Last week, I wanted to look up some details about his SNL dismissal on Wikipedia and skimming over the article I suddenly realized that some personal details about him were now written in the past tense.

RIP.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxD3pT8C9-A

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oseqh7SMIvo

[jancsika]

> his moth joke [0] and the professor of logic joke [1]

You may already know this, but those are his versions of old street jokes. Comedians often fill time with short street jokes that have been told for decades (often to connect between longer bits), but Norm is one of the few who decided he would stretch one to fill an entire interview.

He also filled an entire Comedy Central Roast appearance with mundane jokes that he took from one of those silly "101 Jokes" books. Many of the jokes were so out of date they made puns on tech that is no longer used (like some joke that depended on the audience understanding that "Underwood" was a popular typewriter company back in the day.)

Somewhat related-- there's a video somewhere of Andy Kaufman essentially throwing an entire Saturday Night Live audition. He does a nervous recitation of a long, shitty monologue based on lyrics from a crappy 70s pop song, repeats it twice (making exactly the same mistakes each time), then recites the opening to the old Superman tv show in a purposely bad southern accent. Norm obviously did his pranks in an attempt to entertain an audience, but I cannot figure out what Kaufman's motive was in his audition. In any case, I found it hilarious and Norm was obviously greatly influenced by a lot of Kaufman's stuff.

[murat124]

Norm had a way of telling jokes. He usually inserted himself into jokes and told them as they were stories from his life. Plus he was an expert at turning silly jokes to great ones and improvizing. For example, the Swedish-German Andy Richter joke[1] where you can see the moment he decided to seize an opportunity to turn something not-funny into funny. I'll miss his way of storytelling and delivery.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv67QgVSqkk

[silisili]

If you haven't already seen it... here's every episode of NML. I can just go through these over and over and always laughing. I miss him.

https://archive.org/details/Norm_Macdonald_Live/Norm+Macdona...

[pwdisswordfish0]

>I had great success over the years with his moth joke [0] and the professor of logic joke

Have you tried the Dirty Johnny "but in this one, he isn't dirty" joke?

[apophatic]

Some background: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/heres-norm-macdonal...

[dhosek]

The whole tweeting and deleting part is pure magic.

[baron_harkonnen]

I'm a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned how much we have failed as technologists that a story is being shared by png images of text... brave new world indeed.

[CharlesW]

It's really is absurd that I can use a little cartoon poop in my tweets, but I can't italicize a word for emphasis.

[unyttigfjelltol]

When someone posts a 500 word story via 4 png's on Twitter ... they're just demonstrating it's a defective blog platform.

[PennRobotics]

@thingskatedid would be pissed. The whole story would probably fit in the alt-text, but there is no alt-text here.

[josefrichter]

Should have asked Bob Dylan whether he owned a doghouse.

[blackearl]

I'd recommend Norm's book Based on a True Story. It has a similar, dreamlike feel to it and is a confusing and fun read.

[a_d]

Norm is the Bob Dylan of comedy.

[robbedpeter]

I love hearing the stories from other comedians about Norm deliberately bombing, then saving, then ending with bombing a show, or variations on that, as a way of showing off to his fellow comedians. Or using uhms and ahs and verbal ticks, breaking up the flow of speaking, making things awkward, then tweaking a bit of a story and bringing it home with a punchline.

One of the strangest and most wonderful things to arise from the explosion of podcasts is the discussion among professionals of respected people in different fields. We all see George Carlin and Dave Chapelle and the major headliners, but that level of fame doesn't always accompany a high level of excellence.

I would never have known to pay attention to Norm as more than another good comedian without hearing his contemporaries and colleagues discuss his mastery and craft. I love that we're given a peek behind the curtains, that comics can point at Norm's genius and say "Look! Pay attention! This is special and beautiful and precious!"

RIP to one of the greats.

[AlbertCory]

The "tell" would be if he said those other men were The Band, but he didn't know that at the time.

[coldtea]

Why would they be the Band? If such a meeting took place it would be at the 90s or 00s, long after the Band wasn't with Bob.

[mediocregopher]

Norm Macdonald writes like Earnest Hemingway.... I wonder if Earnest was a true writer or just a typist.

[glaucon]

I was thinking that too, in fact I wondered whether in some way the writing style was intended to be humorous ? Probably not. I don't know who Norm Macdonald is except for some reason in the last few weeks YouTube thinks I might be interested in him. Just another YT puzzle.

Oh, OK, I'm sorry, he's died recently, hence the YT prompts. 61 doesn't seem very old.

[arketyp]

I feel like I missed the punchline.

[duopixel]

I'll go forward and offer my own interpretation: highly creative people experience the process of creation as something that comes _through_ them, not _from_ them, that's why Bob Dylan calls them "stenographers". I think most people have experienced some glimpse of this when you lose yourself in flow, wether you are dancing, coding, or writing. Norm doesn't understand that calling the author of his favorite passage a stenographer is actually praise, because he means it comes from a higher source than the ego. One week later he understands the koan and tells Dylan, who laughs.

[happytoexplain]

It's not intended as humor (I assume - I would never claim anything about Norm Macdonald with 100% confidence).

[ericmcer]

Norm was pretty big into literature, especially the Russians. I wouldn't be surprised if he had aspirations to be a writer and the style of this piece is for aesthetic and not humorous purposes.

[ProAm]

It's a parable to today's startup/SV atmosphere.

[dang]

"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[adrianmonk]

Twitter's inscrutable, baffling UI strikes again. Direct links to the images are easier to read:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBRaTBWVUAIIE8G?format=png&name=...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBRacxMVQAMMj6S?format=png&name=...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBRagQtVkAE6CvG?format=png&name=...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBRakT8VQAI-pJu?format=png&name=...

EDIT: Also, this page has it in text form, though you need to scroll down a way (past several embedded tweets, ironically) to get to it: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/heres-norm-macdonal...

[detritus]

I just had a weird experience on mobile where I for a second quite enjoyed spastically swiping left then right, scanning down the lines as if I were some quaint analogue mechanism reading like a human me ght, for the first time.

[rcpt]

I saw Bob Dylan at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.

[rendall]

Whoa. That really happened?

[mbg721]

Which just proves my theory...Germans love David Hasselhoff.