News You Can Bruise for 2005 June 17

Permalink [Comments] (3) Fri Jun 17 2005 23:42 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell:

I can't say enough good about this book (mainly because I'm tired). It's great. You should read it. I borrowed it from the library--it was just sitting there and I was able to read it for free! Amazing, these libraries.

literature

Comments:

Posted by Anonymous at Sat Jun 18 2005 11:53

reading the leonardonics entry that mentions a shaggy dog story about Norm McDonald's call stack makes me want to read the shaggy dog story about Norm McDonald's call stack, but i can't find it anywhere!

Posted by Leonard at Sat Jun 18 2005 14:30

The shaggy dog story is based on the aspect of Norm McDonald that Kris and I chose to caricature, which is his habit of putting the punch of his punchlines into the noun at the end of the sentence, and then pausing before delivering that noun. When we impersonated Norm McDonald we would always pause and sort of stutter around the last word of a sentence.

The shaggy dog story is that the reason he does this is that he's nearsighted and it's hard for him to read the cue cards. So one day he's doing Weekend Update and the joke has him reminiscing about some movie he saw. He says "Yeah, that was a really good..." but he can't read the last word of the cue card. He reaches into his shirt pocket and says "Hang on, let me get my...", but he can't finish that sentence either. So the cue card person takes a Magic Marker and writes "glasses" on a new cue card.

Norm McDonald squints and can't read that cue card either. "Hang on, let me get my..." The cue card person writes "glasses" larger, on a third cue card. Norm McDonald still can't read it. "Hang on, let me get my..." A fourth cue card, written even larger. "Hang on, let me get my..." A fifth cue card. Now "GLASSES" is written so huge takes up the whole cue card. Now Norm can read it. "Glasses". He pulls his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on.

The cue card person drops the fifth cue card, and Norm McDonald can read the fourth one. "Glasses". The cue card person drops the fourth cue card, and now Norm can read the third one. "Glasses." The third cue card; now Norm can read the second one. "Glasses." The cue card person drops the second cue card, and now Norm can finish reading his original line. "Movie". Thus, "glasses glasses glasses glasses movie". Then he continues doing Weekend Update.

Posted by Anonymous at Sun Jun 19 2005 11:02

That was great.

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