Norm MacDonald was pretty much the gold standard for comedy for me. Unlike my other comedic hero, Dana Carvey, he wasn't good at impressions -- his Bob Dole was pretty much just Norm speaking as if his pronouns were Bob Dole/Bob Dole -- but he could take literally anything and make it funny. Even if a joke failed to land, he would just "do the Norm thing" for a couple seconds and everybody would laugh. The Norm thing is like the Christopher Walken thing -- it's a person's ineffable talent of being that person.
To this day I still speak of my "inner Norm MacDonald voice", which kicks in when I observe something hilariously absurd. Like when Jeff Bezos launched his evocatively-shaped rocket, what Dennis Miller called the "Pynchonesque cock rants" practically write themselves -- in Norm's voice in my head.
His Burt Reynolds impression, one of his most famous, was a good example of a good impression: close enough to show a resemblance but with a weird caricature twist. Most of Norm's impression were like this. His Johnny Carson was also not half bad.
To this day I still speak of my "inner Norm MacDonald voice", which kicks in when I observe something hilariously absurd. Like when Jeff Bezos launched his evocatively-shaped rocket, what Dennis Miller called the "Pynchonesque cock rants" practically write themselves -- in Norm's voice in my head.