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bozodubbedover 's review for:
Based on a True Story
by Norm Macdonald
Trigger warning:
Reference to sexual violence
Norm Macdonald has always been a scathingly unique voice in comedy and his sardonic wit that has all the bluntness of a meat cleaver translates well in his “memoir”.
Oscillating between liberal fabrication of real events and deliberately fictionalizing the rest, Norm paints the least flattering portrait of himself in stark contrast to the saccharine and overly flattering memoirs written by countless other comedians and celebrities. In doing so, he crafts a harrowing tale of his life that’s prose is equal parts Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and genuinely hilarious, leaving me laughing aloud countless times throughout.
If you don’t find Norm’s style of humor totally objectionable (always an equal opportunist, the topics up for skewering are to name some: Swedes, prison rape, terminally ill children, Inuits, himself (endlessly and mercilessly), the trans community, and even his real life best friend Adam Eget, whose the butt of nearly every joke in the book, your mileage may severely vary. There was a couple instances for me when I just had to say “God damn it, Norm.”, and keep going.) you may find you’ll enjoy this book as much as I did.
"I've been convalescing in this suite in the Tropicana for about a week now. I got the same one I got almost twenty years ago, for the luck. Most of my purple flesh has turned yellow, and that means I'll be able to move soon. I relax in my big hotel bed and I reflect on my life and career. This turns out to be a huge mistake. Anxiety begins to crawl across my motionless body like a spider. So, instead, I begin to reflect on the life and career of Adam Sandler.
This calms me."
"There is the way things are and then the ways things appear, and it is the way things appear, even when false, that is often truest. If I am remembered, it will always be by the four years I spent at "Saturday Night Live" and, maybe even more than that, by the events surrounding my departure from that show. As long as SNL exists, then so do I.
When people come to see me do stand-up, it is because somewhere in their memory I live on SNL, dressed as a young Burt Reynolds, insisting Alex Trebek refer to me as Turd Ferguson. And they come to see me and I am old and fat and I don't mention SNL and I do my answering-machine joke and they are happily disappointed. After the show, they stand beside me and take pictures, the way you would with a donkey at the side of a road. They tell me they are big fans and they don't care what their girlfriends say. They understand me even though they know good and well that nobody else does. I'm dry, they say. The next time I come to their town, they don't show up."
Reference to sexual violence
Norm Macdonald has always been a scathingly unique voice in comedy and his sardonic wit that has all the bluntness of a meat cleaver translates well in his “memoir”.
Oscillating between liberal fabrication of real events and deliberately fictionalizing the rest, Norm paints the least flattering portrait of himself in stark contrast to the saccharine and overly flattering memoirs written by countless other comedians and celebrities. In doing so, he crafts a harrowing tale of his life that’s prose is equal parts Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and genuinely hilarious, leaving me laughing aloud countless times throughout.
If you don’t find Norm’s style of humor totally objectionable (always an equal opportunist, the topics up for skewering are to name some: Swedes, prison rape, terminally ill children, Inuits, himself (endlessly and mercilessly), the trans community, and even his real life best friend Adam Eget, whose the butt of nearly every joke in the book, your mileage may severely vary. There was a couple instances for me when I just had to say “God damn it, Norm.”, and keep going.) you may find you’ll enjoy this book as much as I did.
"I've been convalescing in this suite in the Tropicana for about a week now. I got the same one I got almost twenty years ago, for the luck. Most of my purple flesh has turned yellow, and that means I'll be able to move soon. I relax in my big hotel bed and I reflect on my life and career. This turns out to be a huge mistake. Anxiety begins to crawl across my motionless body like a spider. So, instead, I begin to reflect on the life and career of Adam Sandler.
This calms me."
"There is the way things are and then the ways things appear, and it is the way things appear, even when false, that is often truest. If I am remembered, it will always be by the four years I spent at "Saturday Night Live" and, maybe even more than that, by the events surrounding my departure from that show. As long as SNL exists, then so do I.
When people come to see me do stand-up, it is because somewhere in their memory I live on SNL, dressed as a young Burt Reynolds, insisting Alex Trebek refer to me as Turd Ferguson. And they come to see me and I am old and fat and I don't mention SNL and I do my answering-machine joke and they are happily disappointed. After the show, they stand beside me and take pictures, the way you would with a donkey at the side of a road. They tell me they are big fans and they don't care what their girlfriends say. They understand me even though they know good and well that nobody else does. I'm dry, they say. The next time I come to their town, they don't show up."