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.We're talking about a guy who didn't even tell anyone (that we know of) that he was dying of cancer. He went so far as to say that doing so would be narcissistic, as it only burdens other people. Pretty interesting take I think.
It's not about trying to give an accurate historical account, the focus is primarily entertainment.
It's been like this for thousands of years.
That it muddies the waters of "who I really am as a person" is probably true, but that's mostly just an unintended side effect. It's just that my real person is definitely way less entertaining than a well-constructed yarn or joke.
Norm has said publicly in a radio interview that he thought that talking about cancer in a stand up act was the height of narcissism.
In regards to Norm's age, Norm incorrectly listing his/others' ages has been a recurring bit over the past three decades in many, many appearances in both his standup sets as well as television appearances. It's a meta joke poking fun at the idea that the specific age even matters.
RIP.
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.
Addendum: maybe you don't know the noun meaning of "tell"?
Oh, OK, I'm sorry, he's died recently, hence the YT prompts. 61 doesn't seem very old.
Of course, like you, I'm not 100% sure I'm right as with many of Norm's gags.
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.
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(?).
Andy was very uncomfortable about that joke because he didn’t want being gay to be a subject of ridicule, and he didn’t know how to face the gay crew members on the show, or gay friends and family, after making fun of the mere fact somebody could be gay.
At first I didn’t emphasize because the value of Norm MacDonald is that anything is fair game in the service of comedy and entertainment.
But now I get it. For Norm it was an improv bit in the middle of a “standup” bit on some show he was taping. For Andy it was an externally-imposed combo of ruined relationships, happening in the middle of his 9-5 entertainment industry career.
Both sides are valid, and I say this as someone who’s lovingly absorbed every Norm clip there is.
https://archive.org/details/Norm_Macdonald_Live/Norm+Macdona...
Have you tried the Dirty Johnny "but in this one, he isn't dirty" joke?
Just shy of a month actually. Sept 14
In either case, the Band eating with Dylan in the 90s would indeed be a tell that it's a made-up story, but I see no reason for Norm to use this particular tell to convey so. There are tons of either funnier or more contemporary and relevant tells he could use.
It could've been Thomas Pynchon or it could've been Cormac McCarthy, and now we might never know.
Hell, even in the modern era there's loads of things that absolutely unequivocally did not happen, and everyone understands and agrees with that, yet collectively goes "but it's better if we pretend it did though".
There's some old adage about truth and good stories...
I know this is a weird question, but I’ve been having fun playing around with the idea of exposing the workflow and research behind the book as opposed to restating context from others (and limiting my area of generation to the novel arguments.)
That would be a pretty lousy joke by Norm's standards.
But in the other cases usually the joke is much more obvious, so again, I'm not sure.
Sure.