Name: Norm Macdonald on q with Tom Power (Oct 2016) CBC Radio
Uploaded: 2021-07-01T21:39:12.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on q with Tom Power (Oct 2016) CBC Radio' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on q with Tom Power (Oct 2016) CBC Radio' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-01. Transcript available.

Norm Macdonald is the kind of comedian who knows how to keep you on edge.
If you've ever watched his stand-up, if you remember him being on Saturday
Night Live,
you've experienced that sort of uncomfortable feeling when Norm says something
so bizarre
or something so beautiful, and all he can really do is laugh.
I mean, just check this one out.
A new study found that men with beards are more attractive than men without beards.
More great work from the University of Bob Seger.
Yeah, you know? You see what I mean?
He's absurd, man. He's unpredictable. He's incredible.
And as a person, Norm is kind of unknowable.
I mean, ask any talk show host. It's hard to get a straight answer from him.
And his new book doesn't really help.
It's called Based on a True Story and Memoir.
And, you know, while Norm's really funny, we talked really kind of deeply
about whether being real is overrated.
So, Norm, you have a new book out.
It's based on a true story, a memoir.
I got that in the right order.
It covers key moments in your life, growing up here in Ontario,
going on Saturday Night Live.
And so many people want to hear the stories, you know,
the stories of getting hired,
the stories of not getting hired,
the stories of growing up in Ontario.
But in this book, you kind of tell them as half-truths,
and then you make up stories around them.
So I guess I want to know,
why didn't you want to write a traditional memoir?
Why did you want to make some of these stories up?
Well, because I read a lot of memoirs,
and they all were horrible.
And then, I mean, as it turns out,
like anything backstage is just by nature inferior to anything that's onstage.
And backstage is just eating sandwiches,
trying to figure out what to do onstage.
So I wanted the book to be its own onstage
and have nothing to do with the backstage of some other medium.
I wanted it to be a book.
One thing I see as a,
and forgive me for being presumptive or presumptuous,
is that I see a distinction between your love of show business
and your love of celebrity.
So, like, you seem to really like the construct of show business,
people getting onstage and telling jokes,
you know, late-night talk shows, you know, radio,
the forms of entertainment you seem to have a lot of respect for.
However, it does seem like celebrity is something you eschew,
like something you're not as fond of.
So, like, what's the difference there for you?
Well, just that celebrity is empty and vapid,
and, you know, we need no better example nowadays
than all the example we have nowadays.
So it's reached a point where people, you know,
listen, it's like Andy Warhol said,
in the future, everyone will be Colonel Sanders for 15 minutes.
I also like when you said, like Andy Williams said,
everyone will be famous for 25 minutes.
Did I say Andy Williams?
You said that to Letterman one time, yeah.
It was, yeah.
Letterman likes all time.
He does.
But that's, but you do, speaking of Letterman,
like, you have a lot of respect for those old comics.
You have a lot of respect for Letterman,
for Rodney Dangerfield,
for George Carlin,
Bob Hope.
And this is,
you have a lot of time for comedians
that came before you,
or maybe you watched when you were coming up.
But I'm interested.
I know it's a big question,
but how do you feel about comedy now?
Well, I remember
there was a comedian named Robert Klein,
and he said that when he started out in New York,
there was 100 comics,
and only five were funny,
and then there was 500 comics,
and only five were funny.
So he thought 500 was a huge amount,
but now there's 50,000,
and there's only five that were funny,
because it just does not work
by supply and demand.
You know, you can't create art
because you need art.
So it doesn't, you know,
just because you need more paintings
doesn't mean there's going to be
a million great painters.
So naturally, it's going to be worse,
and the audience doesn't seem to know the difference,
as long as the structure is there
and the craft is there.
You know, anyone can learn it
the same way you can learn chords on a guitar,
you know,
and you can trick the audience pretty simply.
Trick them how?
Well, I was going to write a book,
but then I thought it would be too dangerous,
but I was going to write a book
like how to become a stand-up
without being funny at all,
because those are the most of the stand-ups
I've ever seen.
like I talked to them offstage,
and I'm like,
did anyone ever tell you
the funniest guy
like in the room,
in the lunchroom,
let alone like
that you dared to do this
such a presumptuous thing
as to stand on stage?
But what they did was they learned tricks,
and I started to realize,
because I started at Yuck Yucks,
and I'd go across the country,
and it was sort of the start of the boom,
and I'd go,
that guy looks familiar,
that opener,
and they'd go,
he used to be the bouncer.
I'm like,
what?
And then it turned out
he would,
the bouncer would just watch
from the back of the room
and just,
you know,
either consciously
or otherwise
pick up on,
on how to,
you know,
on techniques
of crowd control
and,
and saying certain things
that made audiences applaud
or,
you know,
just a number of different tricks
that you can use
in lieu of,
of actual comedy.
You also say in the book,
sorry,
sorry, Norm,
I didn't mean any interview.
Go on.
I had,
I had nothing to say.
Just fluff.
Because you weren't,
you weren't speaking,
so I felt I had to.
But that's a trick.
You know,
that's a trick, right?
That's a trick.
Is that an interviewer's trick?
No,
like when we're not in person?
Yeah,
that's a thing.
Like,
I don't talk,
hopefully that,
you know,
and sometimes it works because,
sometimes it works because I'm,
you know,
I'm not entirely sure
what to say next either.
And I go,
I go,
I'm going to give him 15 seconds here
and hopefully.
I can see.
So you just,
you just throw the rope,
you just throw the lucid rope.
You just throw it out of your mouth.
It makes me sound like he's really pondering
and considering what Norm's about to say.
But I do have something to say.
Norm,
you seem to have like a gold standard
of what a comic should be.
Like,
you know,
you say things like,
well,
you know,
like you're not going to be as funny as this.
You're not going to be as good as that.
Like the greatest comic in the world
is not necessarily going to be that.
Like,
I know it's a big question,
but like in your craft,
like what's your ideal comic?
Who's your ideal comic?
Well,
Rodney Dangerfield would probably be my ideal comic
or Richard Pryor might be my ideal comic,
depending on the type of comic that they are.
Why?
But,
well,
because they're the,
they're the best at,
it's very hard to be,
it's very hard to be considered naturally funny,
which is just a nonsensical phrase.
but it's,
you know,
it's,
it's used as a sort of a put down in some ways
that the person could read a phone book or something.
Of course,
no one could read a phone book and be funny,
but it's just that they're so good.
They don't look good.
So on the other hand,
if you had someone like Bill Hicks,
there's just this fraud that screams at the top of his lungs
and tells you that,
you know,
multinational oil companies are not a good thing,
then that will attract a,
a wide,
wide audience of,
you know,
half smart college or college kids or whatever,
but to truly conceal everything like somebody like Bob Hope would do,
then he becomes a vilified,
you know,
somebody like Bob Hope,
because it looks like he's doing nothing,
which is of course the magic of it,
you know?
And who's he talking to?
You,
you said that,
I know I was probably supposed to give you a space there,
but,
you know,
you,
you mentioned an audience of,
of half smart college kids.
And Norm,
earlier in the interview,
you talked about how you don't really do comedy for anyone,
but yourself,
you don't,
you don't,
you don't worry too much about the reaction from the audience.
However,
you talk about Bob Hope and,
and,
and,
and,
and Rodney Dangerfield,
and the reaction mattered a lot to them.
Yeah.
Well,
I don't know about how much it meant to them.
Well,
they,
they did it for,
they seem to,
they seem to legitimately be concerned with entertaining the audience.
Oh,
yes,
yes,
yes.
But no,
when I,
when I do a gig for,
um,
sometimes people confuse,
what I do for no money and what I do for money.
Like,
if I,
what's,
what's,
what's this one?
Well,
like,
I'm not being insanely funny now,
because,
because it's not the,
the purpose of what I'm doing,
you know,
but if I do stand up at a,
at a comedy club,
I will throw away jokes that don't work.
I would not keep doing the joke only because I liked it.
I just mean the creation of the joke is,
is aimed at me.
I don't,
I don't know how it's possible to,
you know,
I mean,
I know how it's possible,
but it's a bad idea to go,
well,
what does the audience think?
And then I'll start there,
you know,
so I'll start with Trump's an idiot.
And then you just end,
you end with Trump's an idiot too.
That becomes the entire point of what you say.
And so it's just empty.
And they knew that before they showed up,
you know?
So I,
it's not like I,
I would ever in front of an audience deliberately do a joke that I know would
not get a reaction.
Now I've done stuff on television before where I've experimented with joke
structures.
And I did that on Weekend Update and I did that other places on television.
But that was for my own consideration because oftentimes,
you know,
I would be getting like $500 for the appearance,
you know,
let's say on a talk show or something.
So I go,
well,
let me try something here because I,
I know I'll be just as good as the,
the girl talking about her third swimming pool.
Yeah.
Or the Melrose place.
The moth joke is a good example of that,
Norm,
because if like you,
you go into,
you tell a really beautiful version of the moth joke.
And if you're listening to this,
by the way,
this is Norm MacDonald talking about his new book based on a true story and
memoir.
My name's Tom Power.
You're listening to Q.
I should have said this about 10 minutes ago.
And I didn't.
And my producer is now waving his arms in the air,
thanking me for doing that.
So,
so you,
you do tell the moth joke in the,
in the book.
You told it on the tonight show with Conan back when he was doing the tonight
show.
It was,
it's,
it's a,
it's a long kind of joke.
And just a few months ago,
maybe about a year ago,
it kind of got revived online.
And people were putting it up online,
calling it the best telling of a,
of a joke ever on television.
And,
but Norm,
that seemed to me like you were trying,
you were experimenting there.
You were,
you were trying to experiment with,
you knew the punchline and you knew the beginning of it.
And you knew it was a,
it was a pretty straight,
straightforward street joke,
but,
but you wanted to do experiment with how to get from one point to another.
Yeah,
it was,
it was both an experiment and I had,
it was an experiment born of necessity because Conan told me I had to do a
second spot,
which he'll sometimes do.
But I said,
I don't have anything else to say.
I have nothing left to tell you.
And so then I thought of this joke that Colin Quinn had told me,
the street joke.
A moth goes into a podiatrist's office and the podiatrist's office says,
what's the problem?
And the moth says,
what's the problem?
Where do I begin,
man?
He goes,
I go to work for a.
It was just a two line joke.
It was just a,
you know,
one line times two.
So then I thought,
well,
how can I do it?
I started thinking during the commercial,
is it possible to do a one liner for an entire six minute segment?
So I thought if I can put in between this very little boy's joke,
just a set of horrifying facts laid end to end,
then it could make the sweetness way,
way funnier at the end,
because they'd have,
they'll have completely forgotten where,
where I was.
And so it ended up working by fluke,
like often things will when you're experimenting.
He says,
Doc,
sometimes I feel like a spider,
even though I'm a moth,
just barely hanging onto my web with an everlasting fire underneath me.
I'm not feeling good.
And so the moth,
the doctor says,
moth,
man,
you're troubled,
but you should be seeing a psychiatrist.
Why on earth did you come here?
And then the moth said,
because the light was on.
And then,
yeah,
and then what happens in,
but the computer is that people put things on the computer and they live
forever.
And you were talking about the Melrose Place thing,
which I did with Courtney Thorne-Smith,
where I was just in,
you know.
Yeah,
just for context,
if you're listening to this,
this is a kind of a legendary late night moment where Courtney Thorne-Smith is
the second guest on Conan after Norm.
She's in a new movie with Caratop called Chairman of the Board.
I hope you don't mind me laying that joke right now.
So she's in a new show and Norm calls it,
Norm calls it box office poison.
And then she,
It just went on.
And then Norm and Conan says,
No,
that's,
she's in the show.
And then Courtney Thorne-Smith says,
Yeah,
I'm in the show.
And Norm says,
Well,
no,
I'm sure,
I'm sure you're a very good talk show guest.
And then she says,
No,
the movie's called Chairman of the Board.
And Conan says,
Let's see you do something with that.
And you say,
I bet the board is spelled B-O-R-E-D.
And what was funny about that was,
that was before computers.
So then you would just say something
and they would just go out into the ether
and people would go,
Remember that thing?
And the other guy would go,
No.
And they go,
Well,
I don't either.
But nowadays,
it exists forever.
And I don't even know
if I would do that joke.
But anyways,
now I'll go on talk shows
and I'll go on first
and then they'll always go like,
The next guy to come,
just say anything you want.
And then they'll warn the second guest.
I'll go,
Norm might attack you at any moment.
But that's not what I do.
So sometimes you'll see a guest
that'll come out
and then like peremptorily attack me
for no reason at all.
So I just don't say anything.
Just being unnecessarily hostile to you.
Yeah, I don't,
if that ever happens,
I never say anything.
So it just seems sort of odd
to the audience that
Thomas Hayden Church
is like attacking me out of the blue.
Is there a difference?
So is there a difference
in how you prepare yourself
for going on a late night show now
than you did back in the 90s?
Yeah, I try to resist
going anywhere
towards expectation of the,
what I started to do very early on,
which could have got me
knocked off talk shows forever,
but I did not understand
that when you went on a talk show
that you had to tell a producer
the stories that you were going
to tell on the talk show
and then the producer would go
and tell the host
and then you would have to tell the host
the same story
that he's just heard.
We don't have that here.
We don't have the money
at the CDC for that.
No, exactly.
So then, of course,
the host has all these,
you know,
comebacks in his pocket
and stuff, you know.
So anyways,
the second time I did it
on the late night
with David Letterman show,
I said,
I'll just make up
a whole, like, thing.
So I just told the producer
a secondary bunch of funny stories
and then I didn't do them.
So then David Letterman go,
I understand you have a cat.
And I go,
I got no cat.
You know,
but I was just in Michigan
and then he got a kick out of that
and he go,
so you don't have a cat.
I like you keep that going
for the entire...
because he knew that
I was just going to talk to him.
So then after that,
he just let me do
whatever I'd want to do.
And Conan,
God bless him,
also did the same.
Do you feel the same comfort
with Fallon or Kimmel
or with James Corden
that you do,
kind of going anywhere
and exploring
that you did
with Letterman and Conan?
Oh no,
I have complete faith in that.
You know,
you're not in this...
Obviously,
these guys were masters,
so it's a little bit different.
Like,
I was talking to Howard Stern
about it
because I'd done Fallon
and I said,
it's weird when you look over
and there's a child
sitting at the desk,
you know,
and you're like,
what is such a surreal thing,
you know,
because you're used
to this giant of a man
whose hands you could sit in,
you know,
and now there's a kid.
And then Howard said something
that hadn't occurred to me,
but it made sense.
He's like,
yeah,
you can't be like the dopey fool,
you know,
when the guy's 20 years younger
than you,
you know,
it's hard to.
But somehow I managed
to be able to do that.
Yeah,
yeah.
Norm,
you somehow pulled it off.
Norm MacDonald,
thanks a lot
for talking to me today.
Thank you, Tom.
This was fun.
I had a great time
talking to you, man.
Well,
I did too, man.
Maybe we'll do it again.
Norm MacDonald,
by the way,
the moth joke he tells,
I think we cut it down
to like maybe 45 seconds
in that,
but it's six minutes long.
It is six minutes long.
It may be the greatest telling
of a joke you'll ever see.
We'll put it up
on our Twitter.
That's at CBC Radio Q.
Norm MacDonald's new book
is called
Based on a true story,
a memoir.
It is beautiful.
Some of it's true
and some of it ain't true.

Norm Macdonald on q with Tom Power (Oct 2016) CBC Radio

Norm Macdonald is the kind of comedian who knows how to keep you on edge.
If you've ever watched his stand-up, if you remember him being on Saturday
Night Live,
you've experienced that sort of uncomfortable feeling when Norm says something
so bizarre
or something so beautiful, and all he can really do is laugh.
I mean, just check this one out.
A new study found that men with beards are more attractive than men without beards.
More great work from the University of Bob Seger.
Yeah, you know? You see what I mean?
He's absurd, man. He's unpredictable. He's incredible.
And as a person, Norm is kind of unknowable.
I mean, ask any talk show host. It's hard to get a straight answer from him.
And his new book doesn't really help.
It's called Based on a True Story and Memoir.
And, you know, while Norm's really funny, we talked really kind of deeply
about whether being real is overrated.
So, Norm, you have a new book out.
It's based on a true story, a memoir.
I got that in the right order.
It covers key moments in your life, growing up here in Ontario,
going on Saturday Night Live.
And so many people want to hear the stories, you know,
the stories of getting hired,
the stories of not getting hired,
the stories of growing up in Ontario.
But in this book, you kind of tell them as half-truths,
and then you make up stories around them.
So I guess I want to know,
why didn't you want to write a traditional memoir?
Why did you want to make some of these stories up?
Well, because I read a lot of memoirs,
and they all were horrible.
And then, I mean, as it turns out,
like anything backstage is just by nature inferior to anything that's onstage.
And backstage is just eating sandwiches,
trying to figure out what to do onstage.
So I wanted the book to be its own onstage
and have nothing to do with the backstage of some other medium.
I wanted it to be a book.
One thing I see as a,
and forgive me for being presumptive or presumptuous,
is that I see a distinction between your love of show business
and your love of celebrity.
So, like, you seem to really like the construct of show business,
people getting onstage and telling jokes,
you know, late-night talk shows, you know, radio,
the forms of entertainment you seem to have a lot of respect for.
However, it does seem like celebrity is something you eschew,
like something you're not as fond of.
So, like, what's the difference there for you?
Well, just that celebrity is empty and vapid,
and, you know, we need no better example nowadays
than all the example we have nowadays.
So it's reached a point where people, you know,
listen, it's like Andy Warhol said,
in the future, everyone will be Colonel Sanders for 15 minutes.
I also like when you said, like Andy Williams said,
everyone will be famous for 25 minutes.
Did I say Andy Williams?
You said that to Letterman one time, yeah.
It was, yeah.
Letterman likes all time.
He does.
But that's, but you do, speaking of Letterman,
like, you have a lot of respect for those old comics.
You have a lot of respect for Letterman,
for Rodney Dangerfield,
for George Carlin,
Bob Hope.
And this is,
you have a lot of time for comedians
that came before you,
or maybe you watched when you were coming up.
But I'm interested.
I know it's a big question,
but how do you feel about comedy now?
Well, I remember
there was a comedian named Robert Klein,
and he said that when he started out in New York,
there was 100 comics,
and only five were funny,
and then there was 500 comics,
and only five were funny.
So he thought 500 was a huge amount,
but now there's 50,000,
and there's only five that were funny,
because it just does not work
by supply and demand.
You know, you can't create art
because you need art.
So it doesn't, you know,
just because you need more paintings
doesn't mean there's going to be
a million great painters.
So naturally, it's going to be worse,
and the audience doesn't seem to know the difference,
as long as the structure is there
and the craft is there.
You know, anyone can learn it
the same way you can learn chords on a guitar,
you know,
and you can trick the audience pretty simply.
Trick them how?
Well, I was going to write a book,
but then I thought it would be too dangerous,
but I was going to write a book
like how to become a stand-up
without being funny at all,
because those are the most of the stand-ups
I've ever seen.
like I talked to them offstage,
and I'm like,
did anyone ever tell you
the funniest guy
like in the room,
in the lunchroom,
let alone like
that you dared to do this
such a presumptuous thing
as to stand on stage?
But what they did was they learned tricks,
and I started to realize,
because I started at Yuck Yucks,
and I'd go across the country,
and it was sort of the start of the boom,
and I'd go,
that guy looks familiar,
that opener,
and they'd go,
he used to be the bouncer.
I'm like,
what?
And then it turned out
he would,
the bouncer would just watch
from the back of the room
and just,
you know,
either consciously
or otherwise
pick up on,
on how to,
you know,
on techniques
of crowd control
and,
and saying certain things
that made audiences applaud
or,
you know,
just a number of different tricks
that you can use
in lieu of,
of actual comedy.
You also say in the book,
sorry,
sorry, Norm,
I didn't mean any interview.
Go on.
I had,
I had nothing to say.
Just fluff.
Because you weren't,
you weren't speaking,
so I felt I had to.
But that's a trick.
You know,
that's a trick, right?
That's a trick.
Is that an interviewer's trick?
No,
like when we're not in person?
Yeah,
that's a thing.
Like,
I don't talk,
hopefully that,
you know,
and sometimes it works because,
sometimes it works because I'm,
you know,
I'm not entirely sure
what to say next either.
And I go,
I go,
I'm going to give him 15 seconds here
and hopefully.
I can see.
So you just,
you just throw the rope,
you just throw the lucid rope.
You just throw it out of your mouth.
It makes me sound like he's really pondering
and considering what Norm's about to say.
But I do have something to say.
Norm,
you seem to have like a gold standard
of what a comic should be.
Like,
you know,
you say things like,
well,
you know,
like you're not going to be as funny as this.
You're not going to be as good as that.
Like the greatest comic in the world
is not necessarily going to be that.
Like,
I know it's a big question,
but like in your craft,
like what's your ideal comic?
Who's your ideal comic?
Well,
Rodney Dangerfield would probably be my ideal comic
or Richard Pryor might be my ideal comic,
depending on the type of comic that they are.
Why?
But,
well,
because they're the,
they're the best at,
it's very hard to be,
it's very hard to be considered naturally funny,
which is just a nonsensical phrase.
but it's,
you know,
it's,
it's used as a sort of a put down in some ways
that the person could read a phone book or something.
Of course,
no one could read a phone book and be funny,
but it's just that they're so good.
They don't look good.
So on the other hand,
if you had someone like Bill Hicks,
there's just this fraud that screams at the top of his lungs
and tells you that,
you know,
multinational oil companies are not a good thing,
then that will attract a,
a wide,
wide audience of,
you know,
half smart college or college kids or whatever,
but to truly conceal everything like somebody like Bob Hope would do,
then he becomes a vilified,
you know,
somebody like Bob Hope,
because it looks like he's doing nothing,
which is of course the magic of it,
you know?
And who's he talking to?
You,
you said that,
I know I was probably supposed to give you a space there,
but,
you know,
you,
you mentioned an audience of,
of half smart college kids.
And Norm,
earlier in the interview,
you talked about how you don't really do comedy for anyone,
but yourself,
you don't,
you don't,
you don't worry too much about the reaction from the audience.
However,
you talk about Bob Hope and,
and,
and,
and,
and Rodney Dangerfield,
and the reaction mattered a lot to them.
Yeah.
Well,
I don't know about how much it meant to them.
Well,
they,
they did it for,
they seem to,
they seem to legitimately be concerned with entertaining the audience.
Oh,
yes,
yes,
yes.
But no,
when I,
when I do a gig for,
um,
sometimes people confuse,
what I do for no money and what I do for money.
Like,
if I,
what's,
what's,
what's this one?
Well,
like,
I'm not being insanely funny now,
because,
because it's not the,
the purpose of what I'm doing,
you know,
but if I do stand up at a,
at a comedy club,
I will throw away jokes that don't work.
I would not keep doing the joke only because I liked it.
I just mean the creation of the joke is,
is aimed at me.
I don't,
I don't know how it's possible to,
you know,
I mean,
I know how it's possible,
but it's a bad idea to go,
well,
what does the audience think?
And then I'll start there,
you know,
so I'll start with Trump's an idiot.
And then you just end,
you end with Trump's an idiot too.
That becomes the entire point of what you say.
And so it's just empty.
And they knew that before they showed up,
you know?
So I,
it's not like I,
I would ever in front of an audience deliberately do a joke that I know would
not get a reaction.
Now I've done stuff on television before where I've experimented with joke
structures.
And I did that on Weekend Update and I did that other places on television.
But that was for my own consideration because oftentimes,
you know,
I would be getting like $500 for the appearance,
you know,
let's say on a talk show or something.
So I go,
well,
let me try something here because I,
I know I'll be just as good as the,
the girl talking about her third swimming pool.
Yeah.
Or the Melrose place.
The moth joke is a good example of that,
Norm,
because if like you,
you go into,
you tell a really beautiful version of the moth joke.
And if you're listening to this,
by the way,
this is Norm MacDonald talking about his new book based on a true story and
memoir.
My name's Tom Power.
You're listening to Q.
I should have said this about 10 minutes ago.
And I didn't.
And my producer is now waving his arms in the air,
thanking me for doing that.
So,
so you,
you do tell the moth joke in the,
in the book.
You told it on the tonight show with Conan back when he was doing the tonight
show.
It was,
it's,
it's a,
it's a long kind of joke.
And just a few months ago,
maybe about a year ago,
it kind of got revived online.
And people were putting it up online,
calling it the best telling of a,
of a joke ever on television.
And,
but Norm,
that seemed to me like you were trying,
you were experimenting there.
You were,
you were trying to experiment with,
you knew the punchline and you knew the beginning of it.
And you knew it was a,
it was a pretty straight,
straightforward street joke,
but,
but you wanted to do experiment with how to get from one point to another.
Yeah,
it was,
it was both an experiment and I had,
it was an experiment born of necessity because Conan told me I had to do a
second spot,
which he'll sometimes do.
But I said,
I don't have anything else to say.
I have nothing left to tell you.
And so then I thought of this joke that Colin Quinn had told me,
the street joke.
A moth goes into a podiatrist's office and the podiatrist's office says,
what's the problem?
And the moth says,
what's the problem?
Where do I begin,
man?
He goes,
I go to work for a.
It was just a two line joke.
It was just a,
you know,
one line times two.
So then I thought,
well,
how can I do it?
I started thinking during the commercial,
is it possible to do a one liner for an entire six minute segment?
So I thought if I can put in between this very little boy's joke,
just a set of horrifying facts laid end to end,
then it could make the sweetness way,
way funnier at the end,
because they'd have,
they'll have completely forgotten where,
where I was.
And so it ended up working by fluke,
like often things will when you're experimenting.
He says,
Doc,
sometimes I feel like a spider,
even though I'm