[HN Gopher] Norm Macdonald's story about the first time he met B...
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Norm Macdonald's story about the first time he met Bob Dylan
Author : apophatic
Score : 87 points
Date : 2021-10-10 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| arketyp wrote:
| I feel like I missed the punchline.
| [deleted]
| ProAm wrote:
| It's a parable to today's startup/SV atmosphere.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| It's not intended as humor (I assume - I would never claim
| anything about Norm Macdonald with 100% confidence).
| samtheprogram wrote:
| I believe it is intended as humor -- the whole joke is that
| the story is fabricated, and he himself is deceiving you with
| fiction as a typist himself.
|
| Of course, like you, I'm not 100% sure I'm right as with many
| of Norm's gags.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _the whole joke is that the story is fabricated, and he
| himself is deceiving you with fiction as a typist himself._
|
| That would be a pretty lousy joke by Norm's standards.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Some of Norm's jokes are intentionally very long with a
| lousy punchline, making them funnier... which I could see
| in this case because the story was told with every
| sentence in its own tweet, making it painful to read
| chronologically (and possibly adding another element to
| the "typist" bit).
|
| But in the other cases usually the joke is much more
| obvious, so again, I'm not sure.
| [deleted]
| ericmcer wrote:
| 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.
| defen wrote:
| 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.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| 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.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's like he understood how the Internet would work, before
| there was an Internet. :)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| 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.
| defen wrote:
| I asked him about this once. The primary reason it was
| structured the way it was, was that he wanted to write a
| novel but couldn't get any publishers to take him seriously
| as an author. They only wanted a memoir, so he published a
| metafictional one.
| monocasa wrote:
| "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"
| olivermarks wrote:
| Reminds me of Frank Abagnale, Jr. ('Catch me if you can') who
| despite making p the story of his life is actually a security
| consultant and has made millions out of his 'life story'
| https://whyy.org/segments/the-greatest-hoax-on-earth/
| josefrichter wrote:
| 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.
| rectang wrote:
| That happened with Andy Kaufman, too -- long after he had
| passed, many people maintained that the cancer was a long-con
| put-on and he was in fact still alive.
| throwawaynorm wrote:
| 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...
| emmelaich wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think it's a different story when you're a professional
| comedian.
| Kenji wrote:
| Sounds very much like a personal cult.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Norm Macdonald writes like Earnest Hemingway.... I wonder if
| Earnest was a true writer or just a typist.
| glaucon wrote:
| 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.
| poszlem wrote:
| The reason is that Norm died a few days ago, I guess people
| have been rediscovering his content which pushes it up in the
| algorithm.
| shmageggy wrote:
| > a few days ago
|
| Just shy of a month actually. Sept 14
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I love norm but I'm not reading these tiny images on Twitter
| adrianmonk wrote:
| 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...
| dang wrote:
| " _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
| detritus wrote:
| 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.
| josefrichter wrote:
| Should have asked Bob Dylan whether he owned a doghouse.
| [deleted]
| lqet wrote:
| 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
| murat124 wrote:
| 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
| jancsika wrote:
| > 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.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _a video somewhere of Andy Kaufman essentially throwing an
| entire Saturday Night Live audition_
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oMjXZUKUQEk
|
| I mean, aside from the obvious end-of-sentence punches, the
| southern accent isn't that bad. Especially for someone who
| grew up in NYC and Boston(?).
| blackearl wrote:
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The "tell" would be if he said those other men were The Band, but
| he didn't know that at the time.
| coldtea wrote:
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| As I _said_ , that's how you'd know it was fake.
| apophatic wrote:
| Some background: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/heres-
| norm-macdonal...
| dhosek wrote:
| The whole tweeting and deleting part is pure magic.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Wow, if it really was a sentence per tweet, that would've
| been really obnoxious.
| a_d wrote:
| Norm is the Bob Dylan of comedy.
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(page generated 2021-10-10 23:00 UTC)