Friday, September 12, 2008

Norm MacDonald

Hey Kids:

Taking a day off from the music. Look for a gang of music stuff soon, but why not cleanse the palate with a little humor in the interim.

There are two pillars of below-the-radar comedy in my book. One is the great Super Dave Osborne. Jimmy Kimmel has been smart enough to have him on with some regularity when he's not doing Curb Your Enthusiasm, but our Norm has been off the grid for the most part since releasing the brilliant Dirty Work. There was the Ridiculous cd (left) that came out a couple years ago, but that was a bit of a misstep in my mind. Why Norm would release a Bob Newhart-ian record in this millenium is a chin-scratcher, but then again Norm isn't a guy who is about doing what the average comedian does.

Case in point would be the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget. Saget has been riding a wave of ironic hipness in recent years via many re-runs of Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos as well as the funny-the-first-time Rolling With Saget video that Jamie Kennedy threw together. He's made forays back into comedy recently and I can honestly say that they are some of the worst things I've ever been subjected to, but when you've got tens of millions in the bank, I guess it's a lot easy to be cavalier about such things. Why he would get this much shine on Comedy Central is beyond me, but I guess he is like shooting funny fish in a comedic barrel.

The Roast was decent enough, but Norm straight up killed it with a set of warmed-up Friar's Club material delivered as deadpan as he could. The aired stuff was good, but some unaired footage has popped up on the Internets and it's pretty stellar. Check it out:


here
and
here

Norm's at Caroline's for a couple shows from 9/25 to 9/27. You can get tickets here.
I would welcome guest list privileges from any industry professionals that might provide.

R


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