Me Doing Standup

After releasing an album of audio skits, 2006’s Ridiculous, Norm MacDonald took five more years to release his first-ever full-length standup album, the appropriately titled Me Doing Stand-Up. Of course, even as downtrodden oddball Norm enters the realm of the normal comedy business, things have to get messed up, and this set kicks off with a series of bleak bits, covering cancer, death, alcoholism, and the possible abduction and murder of a woman named Janis. You’ll notice, “Sex” doesn’t even come up till track six, and while it would be convenient to say that Norm takes all the above topics and turns them into something light, he arguably makes them darker, reducing the “Courageous Battle” patients wage against cancer into a depressingly long ride toward death broken up by reruns of Matlock. This is what his fans crave as he becomes a creep in an everyman disguise, just occasionally letting his heart show through the cracks, like when he addresses the death of his father. Special attention should be paid to the excellent pace and overall construction of the show, which shows Norm spent much more time honing this set than he did titling it.