Name: Heads Up With Remko Podcast - Norm Macdonald (July 2018)
Uploaded: 2022-12-25T22:59:27.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Heads Up With Remko Podcast - Norm Macdonald (July 2018)' from Norm and Other Stuff on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-12-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Heads Up With Remko Podcast - Norm Macdonald (July 2018)' from Norm and Other Stuff on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-12-25. Transcript available.

Heads Up With Remko Podcast - Norm Macdonald (July 2018)

Hello and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another edition of Heads Up with
Remco.
And this week on the show, I am joined by one of my favorite comedians, Norm
MacDonald.
There's quite a story attached to this podcast as I went out on a limb here
asking my good
friend, Maury Escondani, basically straight up like, hey, Maury, I know you
know Norm
MacDonald, could we potentially do a podcast? And Norm was extremely gracious
with his time
and I guess I should thank Norm as well for his time. But Maury immediately
said, yeah,
of course, come over to my house. He's coming over for lunch and you guys can
come over to
the podcast on the kitchen table. And I was like, whoa, that is pretty cool.
That is really
intense. And as a longtime fan of Norm's podcast and of his comedy shows, I was
really excited
to have him on the show because he also loves the game of poker. So we had a
lot of stuff
to discuss. Before we get into the podcast, however, I just want to mention the
sponsor
here of the podcast because Keeps.com is still supporting us. Go to Keeps.com
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Keeps.com slash poker go.
Then diving into the podcast with Norm MacDonald, it gets pretty dark. Let me
just say that right
here off the bat. Norm is a compulsive gambler, as he says it himself, and
poker has been a way
for him to stay away from the gambling. And his stories are really intense. And
there are some
funny ones. There are some dark ones, like I said. And there's an amazing one
in there about winning
$100,000 playing craps in Atlantic City and going home with the money in chips
and putting it in his
fridge and cashing them out $10,000 at a time, and then losing it back in the
process. But of course,
Norm tells a story much better than I can. But just a little tease here to
start off the show.
Norm also loves sports betting. He loves playing poker. He still does. And he
has ongoing shows
all around the country. So if you are inspired to hear more from Norm, please
check out his Twitter
page and have a look at his upcoming shows. And feel free to support him
because he might parlay
some of that money that you use to buy some tickets into a buy-in of some kind
of poker tournament.
As we get into the show, please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast
network. And feel free
to email me on podcast at Poker Central if you want to chime in with some hot
takes, or if you want to
suggest a guest, or if you have Barack Obama's cell phone number, please pass
it along. Without further
ado, let's get to the podcast with Norm Macdonald. All right, Norm Macdonald,
welcome to Heads Up
with Remco. No poker chips, no poker table, but I think this table will do just
fine. Yeah,
this could be a poker table. Any table could be a poker table. I like how you
think. Let's start
with the present. Nice little lunch. We've been invited by Maury Escondani.
Yeah, the great
Maury, who changed the face of poker. We're at his house. And it's rather
lovely. There's a fruit
spread on the counter. The hospitality is next level. It's wonderful. His
family makes something.
Is this just a way for him to beat you out of $10,000 playing golf?
He hasn't hit me out of anything. He is an incredible putter. I thought I'd out-putt
him,
but I say in all chagrin that he's a better putter than I am, it turns out. On
his home thing,
obviously. It must be the life to have a putting course just in your backyard.
I have one. I was going to say, have you reached that level yet?
Well, no, no. I just have a condo, but I got it because it has a swimming pool
on one side.
It's super cheap. An Olympic-sized swimming pool. So if you bought a house with
an Olympic-sized
swimming pool in L.A., it'd be like $10 million. This place was like $200,000.
So I have that on
one side and then this 18-hole putting green on the other. So I putt about 1,000
putts a day.
Wow. That's a big number. You did say that you suck at golf.
Yes. So you're only good at the putting?
I'm good at winning. You know what I mean? But I'm not as good at, I'm pretty
bad at golf,
but I can beat people though. The cool thing for me is to see someone like
yourself in this
poker world, which seems to be sort of the perfect combination for people from
all walks of life to
act out in the best possible way. And the degeneracy that comes along with that
fits into
many lifestyles and I guess it still does into yours as well. What's the
relationship with
Vegas been like over the years?
The relationship with Vegas has been pretty good. It got bad in online, you
know, because
it became like, at one point I was playing like, you know, 20, one, two games
at the same time.
Wow.
And then I'd make money every day, but then I'd try to go to sleep and you
close your eyes
and there's just all these images going in the back of your eyelids, you know?
Because I used to have the
same thing when I played Pac-Man. I'm addicted to video games. You go to LA and
play any Pac-Man
game, you'll see my name on number one. But I used to, same thing, I'd try to
go to sleep and
just be like images going on. Like, it's different than, than real life poker,
you know?
So you got into poker because of the...
I got into poker so I wouldn't bleed money. I originally got into poker because
I was in New
York when I was a kid and I played backgammon. This is way back. Like I was 16.
And backgammon was a big game, you know?
And I still think the doubling cube is the greatest gambling thing ever
invented. But anyways, people
began cheating like crazy, you know? Because it's dice inside of a thing, you
don't know what's
going on. So everybody moved toward, all the background players moved toward
poker and there
was one, only one room. It was a place that's in Rounders.
Mayfair.
Mayfair, yeah. And there was actually like a rumor that it was about me, but it
was not about me. But I
knew those characters because there was a guy that Chorturo played Joey Kanish
and his real name was
Joey Bagels. But he was much more interesting than the, than the movie
character because he was called
Joey Bagels because he used to, he owned a bagel truck and he would deliver bagels
and he would pick
me up in this crazy bagel. He hadn't told his wife that he had quit the bagel
for like two years.
And he picked me up on this insane bagel truck or just an empty truck. And if
someone was sitting
in the front, I'd just be like cargo and sitting in the back. But he was a very
interesting guy. But
the problem was you had to deal yourself. So I'd be flashing every card, you
know? And then other
guys could be magicians. I didn't know.
Wait, so how young were you? Because you said you were 16 playing backgammon.
You must have been
really young playing at the Mayfair then. You must have been one of the young
kids there.
Yeah, I was pretty young.
What was that vibe like? Was that like a smoky sort of low ceiling kind of
place?
It was crazy how low stakes it was looking back because there was one no limit
table and no one
ever went near it. No limit hold'em, right? Everybody played low ball, ball
limit. But there was this one
no limit hold'em table. And then whenever somebody was all in, a big crowd
would gather. There was
probably $400 in the ball. I don't know. It wasn't much. I know that. And then
the guy going in the tank
for 15 minutes. Nobody thought anything of it, you know? I wonder what he's
going to do.
So now looking back, it seems so crazy that that was, that's probably how it
should be.
Did you have any idea back in those days that poker, the World Series of poker,
was a thing? And did
you sort of see this be a mainstream thing that people would be interested in
watching as well? Or
were you just sort of in it for the playing?
No, I never thought it would be anything. And when I was in Vegas and I knew
these guys,
I mean, they were all right, but they were kind of shady kind of guys, a lot of
them. And then to see
them become celebrities, I'm like, what? Wait a minute, huh? But so that
surprised me. And also
the idea of hold'em surprised me. But I think rounders in that first scene so
perfectly explained
hold'em, you know, in a sophisticated hand, in a way that was really amazing,
how they portrayed that
one first hand to set it up. So that was really, I think it was that, and then,
of course, Moneymaker
won, but...
Koppelman did such a great job with that story and the way it was written. And
I've probably watched
that movie like 15 times.
Yeah, isn't that story, that first hand, incredible?
It just works, because poker is the easiest thing to screw up in a movie, and
you see it
all the time.
Like the Cincinnati Kid.
Oh, my God. Like, I check and I raise. Like, it doesn't work like that.
I always watch that Cincinnati Kid. I got it on a thing. Because the greatest
player, Edward
G. Robinson, he's drawing to an inside straight flush. And Steve McQueen, like,
has four or fives
or whatever he has. He has quads on board. And then he just keeps drawing to
this inside straight flush
with all this money in the pot. And then even the dealer had to go, like, that
was idiotic. Like,
why'd you do that? And then he goes, he goes, it's all, Edward G. Robinson goes,
it's all about doing
the wrong thing at the right time. It doesn't make any sense at all. That's
what it's about. But yeah,
that's the same with Maverick. And it's always comes down to full house against
four of a
kind.
I mean, James Bond was like a royal flush quads, a straight flush. They had
every possible
big hand clash.
And they were betting whole countries on that one hand.
What's your earliest memory of Las Vegas?
I went with my mother and my aunt. This was before I realized I had a compulsion
that was
within me. And I went with my mother and my aunt to the Excalibur hotel. And I
remember going,
they were checking in. I said, oh, I'll just go. You know, I had $2,000. And I
was worth about
$3,000. So I went to the pit. I said, I played blackjack, one hand, which
suddenly turned into
six hands because of split, double and all this. I just have all my money in
the pot and lose. And
then they're not even to the checked in yet. So I have to go back and they're
not checked in and
I have to hide my fury, you know. And then the whole weekend I'm just in my
room and my aunt would
come in like, I'm up 35 cents. You know, she'd have this bunch of nickels. She
did much better than
me. And I was just trying to, I just watch old reruns and try to, if you don't
have money in a
casino, it's pretty rough. It's funny how the first experience was a losing one,
yet you were
tempted to keep returning. Well, you know what really knocked me out with
gambling was a friend
of mine who wasn't a gambler said this thing that I thought was real smart. He
said, I've always been
lucky in gambling. I've never won, which I think gamblers understand, but I don't
know. He doesn't
gamble. So I thought it was pretty smart of him to say that. But I was playing
in Atlantic City.
I was just playing $25 blackjack, you know, just to kill time. And then I went
broke. I had
$300 left and I went to my friend. I said, can you go to my ATM machine and get
me some more money?
And I'm passing this craps table. I don't know anything about craps. It's very
inti