I would love to tell a Norm story since-
Yeah, yeah.
You really moved me at the memorial and I love Norm.
He was my, when I was a very, very beginning comedian,
my first real legit road gig was MCing,
his seven or eight shows
of Catch a Rising Star in Princeton.
This would've been about like '90-91.
Norm was not famous.
He was this sort of like hot-young comic
coming out of Canada.
And he wasn't famous here.
He hadn't done Letterman.
He hadn't done really much here.
And it was a big gig for me.
And I'm hosting Norm shows.
And this is when Andrew Dice-Clay was the number one comic
in the world.
And Norm was so different than that.
Yes, yeah.
But comedy was hot.
So the club was packed every night
and Norm had this weird accent
and his jokes were long and they were often absurd.
And you know, the crowd was seven shows.
He probably bombed three of them.
And he killed the other four.
They either got him, they either loved him
or they hated him.
And when he killed, we'd go backstage
and we would play poker until the next show.
When he bombed inexplicably, he would go to the exit
and say goodbye to every single person.
(group laughs)
I think to entertain me,
I don't know if he just loved the awkwardness
of it or he was always one step ahead of me.
One step ahead of his vans, the industry,
I wish he had been been, he wanted to tell the most honest,
the most brutally funny joke
no matter what the consequences,
I would play poker with him later on when he was at SNL,
he would have the guys over on Mondays
when whatever it was Sundays,
whenever there was no one up there
and we'd play poker and he liked to play poker there
'cause he had the long table and he could watch five TVs,
so he could gamble on football.
Yep.
While playing poker and while holding court.
And it was so much fun for me.
And then he said, come back Saturday,
come hang out at the show.
So this is an example of Norm
just not giving a flying fuck about anybody.
Like he just wanted to make people laugh no matter
what the consequences and Rosie O'Donnell was the host
of the show that week, a guest guest host
and height of her fame with Penny Marshall.
They were this famous team
and they'd done a big movie together.
And penny by now is a big movie director.
And I'm in that hallway, where the pages are,
where the desk is, and everybody kind of congregates
in that area.
It's crowded.
It's 10 minutes to show time and I'm standing there
with Norm and a bunch of writers and pages and whoever else
and our guests and Penny comes in with a baseball hat
and sunglasses head down just kind of big timing everybody,
just cutting through the crowd, celebrity style
and Norm starts going,
starts pointing at her and screaming Laverne, Laverne.
(group laughs)
A month later, I think he was fired for telling OJ jokes
but it really shows
that he just wanted to tell the best jokes.
I wish he was so brutally honest about his health.
We would've gotten to say goodbye to him.
I know.
A proper send off.
I think that bothered a lot of us.
And I think a lot of us assumed
everyone knew when it happened.
I thought, oh Jesus, he didn't tell me
but I guess I would assume you would know.
We all assumed everyone else knew.
And then it turned out that nobody knew,
his family knew and Lori Joe knew, but that was,
he didn't want people to know.
That's what he wanted, so I guess you have to-
I get it.
I had fricking a skin condition,
I didn't want anyone to know.
Anything that makes you think the audience might feel sorry
or sympathy or not think you're just funny.
Anything that undercuts the comedy
you don't want the audience to know.
So I get it.