re: Top 5 Comedians - Does Norm Macdonald fall into that discussion

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Gallagher

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I hate him. He fricking sucks.

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Dave Attell

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I've been to two comedy shows in my life. The second one was Mitch Hedberg, Dave Attell and Lewis Black. Attell is so underrated by the public.

My top five would be, in no particular order:

Doug Stanhope
Bill Burr
Norm MacDonald
Dave Attell
Dave Chappelle

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Unpopular opinion. Dying was the best thing to ever happen to his popularity

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yup

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Ari, as he himself will admit, is just an all around awful person. Ari once drugged his friend Bert Kreischer with molly at his own house in front of his wife and kids. And Ari has said he doesn’t feel remotely bad about it, and Bert’s wife (rightly) won’t go anywhere near Ari or let Ari anywhere near their house or kids anymore after that. All that being said, Ari is hilarious.

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Yeah, but you kind of expect that kind of shite with him. Go find the Ali Siddiq This is not Happening episode about the mushrooms. The first time Ali did that show Ari was still running it. As a "thank you" to all the people on it, he gave them each a bag of mushrooms. Ali thought it was just dried mushroom chips and ate the whole bag in a few minutes. The story he tells after that is damn hilarious.

Ali Siddiq - The trip: Downing a bag of mushrooms - This is not Happening

Ari is also the same guy that used to come into a town on tour and hide weed in a random place in a random store and give out clues on his Instagram. There were a few pissed off malls and such that led to him being not so kindly forced to stop that game.

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Mitch Hedberg belongs nowhere near that list.

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The kind of comedy Mitch Hedberg did is probably the most difficult to do well. Most of the comedians mentioned in this thread could attempt to do what he did and how he did it and they would bomb ten times out of ten.

Hedberg made what he did look easy, but it isn't easy at all. Finding a rythm in that style is nearly impossible. Every single joke stands alone and is reliant upon the delivery moreso than anything else. It is why you can tell a lot of those jokes out of context and they aren't funny. When Mitch told them, he'd kill with them.

I would have loved to have seen where he would have gone as a comedian had he not died.

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Crazy to think he was fighting that this whole last few years when he was cranking content online.

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Norm used humor to cope with everything else in his life. He didn't really get personal with the jokes, but it was like they were cathartic for him. It is no surprise that as his health got worse, he dove into the jokes even harder.

I guess the pandemic would have been both a blessing and a curse in that regard. He couldn't get on stage every night for a year. Hell, he may not have been able to. But, he had internet access and a captive audience that would eat up any and everything be did. He used that opportunity.

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List without Steve Martin is not a list


Not funny, ever. Good actor.

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I would say "younger" folks who say he was "not funny, ever" weren't around in Martin's prime in the late 70's/80's before he became a movie Dad. In his day he was the biggest standup in the world. He would fill arenas that normally only huge rock bands would fill.

You many not like his brand of standup, but in his day he was unique, original, and hilarious.

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I love Norm but not sure if he makes my top 5 for SNL comedians.

1. Chris Farley
2. David Spade
3. Eddie Murphy
4. Kevin Nealan
5. Norm Macdonald

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You're too young.

"Jane, you ignorant slut."...among others.

Any top 5 without Johnny Carson is an automatic downvote.