So, I picked up Norm Macdonald’s ‘Memoir; Based on a True Story,’ and let me tell you, reading it was like sitting with the guy himself, sharing a few laughs, and you can't help but read it in his voice. Hell, you may even start writing like him: )
Now, this isn’t just any memoir; it's the real life, dead-pan, made up brand of humor kind mixed with a nasty dose of antibiotic resistant ridiculousness. Delving into it was like that restaurant that looks like it might be Italian, doesn't have a menu outside but you go in and sit down and it has candles on the table and the lights are down low, and you don’t want to ask the waiter what’s good as you know what to expect because it looks like an Italian restaurant. You order something you think is going to be spaghetti, and it arrives and it's actually a stuffed aardvark. And spaghetti.
Anyway, I own this book and I read it. I started reading it in the bookshop because I don't trust books, I have learnt that lesson the hard way - they have sequels and I dont care for something that is part of a series of 10 about a boy wizard at boarding school. So I read the first chapter and thus satisfied I left the bookstore; my natural athletic ability, long legs and fear of law enforcement gave me a fast enough turn of speed to get out of the mall without paying for it.
Norm's lengthy missive talks about his first steps in comedy; his failures, the glimpse of success and then largely indifference that has greeted much of his early work before getting the SNL gig and then not having the SNL gig anymore. His misadventures, the moth joke - God, I love that joke - and completely unreliable memories had me laughing out loud. It meanders through his life brilliantly.
The background to the whole thing is of a fantastic adventure and it was probably the greatest idea he ever had. Until it wasn't.
I can honestly say I like the the tilt of this Mr Macdonalds massive foam hat, I would certainly have been happy to pay mostly full price for it. I didn't think there were enough OJ jokes but that's my only complaint.
Get yourself to the bookshop and hope some other spring-heeled rogue hasn't had the last copy away..
(With apologies to any Turd Ferguson fans)