Name: Norm MacDonald on his Thoughts and Emotions
Uploaded: 2022-08-17T21:34:50.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm MacDonald on his Thoughts and Emotions' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm MacDonald on his Thoughts and Emotions' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-17. Transcript available.

I noticed because I I'm very bad with me being alone with my own thoughts at
night a lot of times if I'm just in a quiet room without the TV on like I'll
just think too much to go to sleep it could be anything it could be like oh
there's a kind of a program I want to maybe work on tomorrow on the computer
or it could be hey I wonder when I'll die yeah you know and and that so I like
having the TV on just for that are you are you good with your own thoughts just
laying there in the quiet no I try to because you know you try something to
get off the whatever the fuck you'd use to quiet your mind whether it's booze
or
whatever the fuck pills whatever it is but I try so I try a way at meditation
try
that you know to me it worked the opposite like I'm sitting in a room of
people they go just close your eyes they go thoughts will happen no fucking
kidding
racing hellish thoughts you know and then the guy's like just let them go
and then you open your eyes you look at some other fuckers right beside you
and I tried it three times I could never get to any place of quiet no I need a
lot of
distractions and I could still operate and work like I can I can make myself uh
you
know go to sleep or if I'm working on a computer or something uh I'm good with
the
tv on or something like that but I need this little distraction because if you're
just left alone to your own devices your thoughts will turn horrid I tell you I
stumped a fucking psychiatrist once I said to the guy because I was fucking
gambling all the time shit right I had a gambling addiction I'm over it now but
he said I bet you're not that's a good one he almost lost everything
yes chipperson is very funny yes but he said the psychiatrist he said you're
using
gambling you're using you know you're fixating on gambling in order to escape
your real thoughts
you know and I said to him isn't that why you do everything in life and
literally I
stumped him he had no answer he was like huh and then he recovered and tried to
make it
but isn't that why you do everything yes so you're not sitting at home just
thinking
thinking about what's really going to happen to us where it all ends as I was
writing this
book over the past year and a half I began noticing that some of the events and
themes described
within loved ones becoming ill and how comedy gets us through our pain which is
kind of a theme of
the book we're coming true yet again how crazy that I was basically living out
many of my tragic
moments from the book once more as I was writing it I find it ironic yet also
sweetly poignant that
life goes in cycles as the book went to press I lost my loving mother at the
age of 89 a beloved
wife mother grandmother aunt and friend she touched countless lives through the
generations and will always be remembered this is for you mom dolly saget 1925
to 2014
that's made up she didn't die
you can't just cry I don't want to be you know I did I started to cry sorry we're
starting to cry
that's my mother joke that's the story of exactly what this book's all about it
is you start to cry and
you go to a joke you do because you don't want to let people into that you have
a lot of stuff that's
happened in your life and you don't want to you and I have talked privately and
see see what you do
that was the first comedian that I ever saw perform when I was a boy live and I
loved him
but one thing that bonds us as comedians is we're bitter and jealous and and we
hate everyone else
that has any success but Bob honestly has never had an unkind word for anybody
and I love him and I hope
uh everybody else does so uh I just wanted to say that thank you so anyways I
just like to say
I know that uh Mr. Letterman is uh uh uh not for the mawkish and uh he has uh
he has no truck for
the sentimental but if something is true it is not sentimental and I say in
truth I love you
oh my god
how'd you get it how'd you get peace of mind out of the other well when I was I
I am when I was very I this is a weird thing that happened to me when I was
young yeah
I don't know if this means anything let's try it I remember it but it was a
moment I had that was
uh it wasn't religious or epinafic or anything but it transformed me to some
degree is that I was
always fucking so afraid of everything and if I went to a store I'd have to
walk around forever
before I could even face a person in the store to buy a pack of gum I don't
know why the
fuck I was like this yeah but anyways when I was nine um there was a blind we
lived in rural
Ontario and there was a blind friend of my dad's yeah that I had to he said
take him to the store
I was like what the fuck like I have to take this blind fucker and I'm already
shy and shit so I'm
taking him to the store and then the fucker wants me to explain everything
describe everything to him
yeah so I'm like there's a some grass over here and now there's a lamp post and
this guy's all happy
oh wow what about the lamp post I mean it's just a lamp post yeah so it goes on
and on but something
happened to me during this sounds bizarre but something happened to me where I
was actually
instead of always looking inward which I think I'd always done before that one
time I was looking
outward anyways uh while I was talking to him I suddenly had a sort of a hysteria
like I was laughing I
started laughing and stuff and um I don't even know why I'm remembering this
but I started laughing
about everything and everything seemed like um very very funny to me and then a
couple weeks later
I saw a homeless guy and he was talking about he was he was talking he started
talking to me yeah
and he was talking to me about john d rockefeller he's like I was at john d rockefeller's
funeral
yeah and all this yeah I was laughing at him and then he started laughing and I
was like
it's all fucking crazy shit like something came to me yeah where I started and
uh so now I find
everything funny except like fucking real serious like I'm no fear of going on
stage right about death
and shit right and so uh but the other thing I but the problem with laughing is
I I will get uh it will
build to a hysteria sometimes that I have to uh uh crank a couple of benzos to
uh oh yeah and a panic
attack you really yeah I can get you can laugh yourself into an anxiety attack
absolutely yeah
I start laughing and then it gets out of control like hysterical it's um and I
still have extreme
sensitivity to um to things like I can uh not not to nor not to life things
yeah but to to like um
literature or something like that I have incredible sensitivity I kind of have
to
stay away from it like what's an example like a painting or a yeah
fucking paintings like I don't know anything about art nothing at all really
but I have had
fucking experiences that have been so hard on me like one time I was in New
York and somebody dragged
me to a fucking art museum which I hate art yeah and I was looking at this
picture this girl
and uh I was like falling in love with her she's so fucking beautiful this
fucking girl in this fucking picture yeah and then a guide was telling me the
fucking thing was written you know drawn in the 16th century obviously this
lady was dead
long dead yeah and here I am fucking in love with her yeah and so I'm like ah
fuck it I was like so hard on me for so many days so I try not to it sounds
crazy right
not really but I can be very uh it sounds like that's a very good painting it
was an incredible
funny but like I you know I uh it would make me cry I didn't cry at my dad's
funeral though like
real life stuff seems so prosaic to me that it never really touches me much so
you have a sensitivity
towards well I mean that's what art's supposed to do on some level I guess for
people that like me
that can't access uh feelings or something it gets me well yeah I mean I get
that with uh yeah
I can get that with television commercials sometimes if I'm not protecting
myself oh you mean like
where they really can manipulate well yeah well you jerk me around but like I
remember there was
I can be manipulated without and know I'm being manipulated yeah yeah like some
movies I'll just
let it go yeah but like you know if my girlfriend's afraid afraid of something
or need some help I'm
like I don't know what to yeah yeah this is crazy I mean maybe you should call
a friend I can't
maybe it's because we're we live in fantasy lives I guess I remember a kid when
I was in uh
grade school we read old yeller and the dog gets then they got to put the dog
down right that's a
motherfucker yeah and this kid Jeff was just like you know sobbing uncontrollably
as he read out loud
and they had to take him to the nurse because he couldn't pull it together oh
my god
so that's they call it stendhal syndrome is it oh so there's a name for it well
there was apparently
there was this guy uh I guess seen stendhal or something some 16th century yeah
but he had an art
museum that was so beautiful I don't know if it's anecdotal but uh it was an
art museum where people
would come in and have nervous breakdowns from the uh beauty of the art but
that can go either
way with you it can be laughter or sadness yes it's mostly laughter the sadness
doesn't throw me into
anxiety uh the laughter what's the feeling though like you like at a joke are
you with friends or
something and you just can't you can't get it out of your head how funny it is
and then you get
anxious because you can't stop laughing yeah I guess it's that like I laugh a
lot like that's
fucking great as a comic yeah that's a gift I tell you I've never trusted
people that don't laugh
like I've worked on shows and you know shit sitcoms and stuff like that where
the motherfucker doesn't
laugh yeah he's the head writer yeah I'm like you're not laughing at nothing
yeah and I don't
know it's all math to him yeah it's math it's like haiku or some yeah and like
the but the
best guys I've met are the guys that are able to laugh and fucking you know