To me I was never a huge Norm Macdonald fan, but that clip just shows how great of a comedian he was. I mean, the joke itself isn't anything special, but his delivery is so good that he has you just waiting with anxious anticipation throughout the whole thing that when he got to the punchline I really lol'ed. Mad respect.
Yeah, it is tempting to think Norm is very dim-witted given his deliberate choice of slower tempo and buildup, but you see things like his Larry-King-interviews-Larry-King skit https://youtu.be/7A6ba43XuOg?t=122 and like he immediately cracks a situational joke without missing a beat and actual-Larry-King catches it immediately and falls over laughing, and only then do I process it and start laughing myself.
I never dove too deep but always liked him a lot, and I have to agree his delivery was exceptional. I knew about 10% of the way in this was a shaggy dog joke, but he kept me second guessing that the whole time. And he had such a dopey style of speaking, like he was just as surprised and amused by what he was saying as if he was out of body listening to himself. Which is totally disarming when done well.
I respected his comedy, but a lot of it was "comedy for comedians" which highlights the level of his craft. I think his fatal flaw was he never wanted to stoop to the general audiences too much.
Unfortunately his comedy is held up by way too many people as a gatekeeper to "true appreciation of comedy" which is ridiculous. That always seemed part of the self-destructive aspect of top comedy, which almost always is a public face of deep depression.
Norm was a tragic figure, much like many of the comedic greats.
His book has an even longer, more beautiful version of that joke. I highly recommend checking it out, he spends something like a chapter on the joke. It's executed like serious Russian literature, and makes how much he was butchering it on Conan even better when rewatching.
Someone posted a quote from his book on Reddit, I didn't know he had one so I went to go buy it, it sold out while it was in my cart. Now there's just a "collectible" version for $550. People are awful.
While I'm sure there are digital editions for sale and probably a few physical copies at your local library, if it's being gouged, the guy's already dead, and his book is not one of the few hundreds of books on the internet to have gone uncopied. It's truly wherever you can find books.
Love it. Reminds me of a great comedian that died in the early 90's, Lewis Grizzard. The punch lines didn't have to be funny because he was such a great storyteller.
