Norm Macdonald dead at 61

Stand-up comic Norm Macdonald died today. He was 61.

I keep seeing him identified primarily as an anchor on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, so I suppose that has superseded stand-up comic as a primary identifier for him. But I deliberately chose to use it because he was so naturally funny and gifted with a crowd and a microphone. I have this video cued up to his pit bull bit, which was one of the very first things I ever saw him do.

Norm Macdonald is/was one of the last of that grand golden wave of comics in the ’80s and ’90s, so it’s a little extra sad that he’s one of the first to go. He was one of a very few whose early bits I could mimic well enough to get laughs from my children growing up. Though he got a bit darker and bluer in his later years, he rose to stardom with kind of a “Newhart plus” brand of mostly family-friendly observational deadpan, and it remained what he was best at.

Thank you for the many laughs, sir. RIP.

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