Me Doing Standup is a perfect title for a Norm Macdonald's new album in the same way T.I.'s Fuck a Mixtape was: Both concede the nonchalance of their creators and acknowledge that artists at their level have better things to do. But while free mixtapes can boost the profile of a rapper at any level without earning a legit dime, comedy records are at best peripheral income streams for their headliners and useless for most everyone else.
But this release makes sense for Norm Macdonald. While he's managed to be at least on the periphery of cultural awareness over the past two decades on screens both big and small-- "Saturday Night Live"'s Weekend Update, the cult classic Dirty Work, and the recently canceled "Sports Show with Norm Macdonald"-- none of it involves him telling jokes on stage for 40 straight minutes. Not even 2006's album Ridiculous, which mostly compiled skits done with his famous friends. But if you liked him in any of those guises, Me Doing Standup is pretty much foolproof, a likable set from a guy who's basically never had to break character in his entire career.
Macdonald's delivery has a certain expressive deadpan to it, a slack-sounding outsider cadence that's quietly insightful and insidiously hilarious. He imparts meaning through small gestures and inflection such as a homespun pronunciation of "pillow," or an eyebrow raise at his own recognition of the word "defibrillator." And Standup might be one of the few comedy records you'll hear that's quite literally timeless. There isn't one instance where Macdonald gives an indication of what year it is. Even stranger is how absorbing it can be even though Norm Macdonald, the human being, is all but removed from the proceedings. I can't think of a comedy album that's less beholden to the life of the actual person who made it. That his own father died from a heart attack comes off as a small asterisk to the larger point of how our own bodies are the terrorists most likely to end our lives ("He wasn't expecting it, he was looking for fuckin' Arabs and shit"), and he only pledges political allegiance to officials who can eliminate death by their second term.
Indeed, though softened by his affability and implicit self-deprecation, Me Doing Standup is almost entirely obsessed with mortality, even if cancer, heart attacks, murder, and alcoholism are namedropped with the gravity comedy usually grants to consumer products. It comes nowhere near the high-wire truth-telling of Louis C.K., nor does it really attempt to push any sort of measure of taste. Macdonald acknowledges his existence as absurd to the point where even he hardly takes it seriously. Within the first couple of minutes, he pledges "that's my goal in life-- is not to die" even though he "come[s] from a long line of death." Ultimately, Me Doing Standup really does end up honoring its title's definitiveness, as it's something like the quintessential Norm Macdonald set: occasionally indulgent, frequently hilarious, and always managing to make this strange guy come off as likeable everyman.
