Y'know

Norm Macdonald is the only comedian I ever really gave a shit about. I often think of someone who used to live around here saying that he had two heroes, Jesus Christ and Nick Cave. If I were going to start naming heroes of mine, first of all, that would seem like a weird thing for me to do, but Nick Cave would certainly also be up there, and anyone who has been paying any attention at all here over the years will know that Howard Adelman is really my most obvious hero. Sam Mallin you'd have to say is up there, and certainly my maternal grandfather is as well. If I were just trying to list heroes of mine, I probably wouldn't think of Norm Macdonald ... or if I did, it would take me a really long time. But if I'm thinking of Norm Macdonald then I think, yeah, that guy is a hero of mine, in the same kind of way that Tony Fernandez and George Bell were heroes of mine when I was a kid--I emulated them, channeled them ... as you say on the schoolyard baseball diamond, I was them, when I was trying to do the kinds of things they did. If I'm telling a joke or a funny story, I'm Norm Macdonald.

Anyway, back around the beginning of COVID I came up with this joke that I certainly couldn't get away with telling in public myself, but Norm could. So it was "a joke I wrote for Norm", though, y'know, I wasn't gonna be a random lunatic sending jokes to Norm Macdonald. Turns out it's a little close to the bone, but by God ( this is the joke Norm would be telling today if Norm were here. )