The truly great Norm Macdonald, one of the world’s few interesting people, is dead. Some notes on Norm’s strange life for devoted fans:
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The essence of Norm’s comedy was his dislike of abstraction, of the way language can be used to distance a person from unpleasant realities. Patton Oswalt thought the worst part of Bill Cosby’s exposure was the hypocrisy, Norm thought it was the raping.
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In this way Norm was very old fashioned, in fact he was old fashioned in practically every way. Many people commented that he had “classical” or “1950’s” good looks (like 50’s stars, he also had no muscle), that he could have fit in as an ad executive in Mad Men.
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He had this weird rapport with old men: his best friend was Billie Joe Shaver (born 1939), on Norm’s show they reminisced about their childhood outhouses. He looked and talked and thought as though he was born in the Great Depression.
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Which raises the question, which I think about a lot: can a person, if properly isolated at an early age, exist outside of their generation?
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End of conversation
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What do you make of Drake Sather, who was also a comedian then screenwriter/producer, also born 1959, and looked eerily like Norm? Very mysterious guy, wrote Zoolander, died by suicide in 2004, quite a striking presence but there’s not very many videos of him out therepic.twitter.com/UipMn7A8LB
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spitting image of Paul Newman (whom Norm idolized and had an opportunity to meet but chickened out)
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