Doing a gig at a mental hospital:

The first guy was scratching his hair real hard even though it was shorn close, like he was trying to scratch inside his head or something, and he just kept saying, “I was at John D. Rockefeller’s funeral.” Then the next guy was just staring at me, stone still, and he had a big smile on his lips but his eyes were cold dead. I started laughing to beat hell. “How do you work with these characters all day and not crack up?” I asked the orderly. “Oh, you get used to it.” “What about the guy with the cold dead eyes standing there?” I asked. “What’d he do to get in here?” “Oh, his name’s Fred Henshaw. He took his mother out to the cold northern tundra where the sun never sets and he cut off her eyelids. That way she couldn’t sleep or even shield her eyes from the sun. Then Fred had her wander around, tripping in the snow, falling, getting back up, falling again. Every day Fred would take a hypodermic needle and remove a half a pint of blood from the old lady. After about a week, his mother just lay down on the hard snow. Then he sat down and waited. Waited for the crows to come.” “Oh my God, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard of. What about the guy before him, Mr. Itchyhead—what did he do?” “Oh, him? Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Adam Eget

Adam Eget puts what is left of his cigarette into his mouth, but it is very short now and a full third of it is orange ember. He tries to pull the cigarette from his mouth, but it is stuck to his molasses-covered lips, so instead his fingers slide down and fix upon the ember. It takes him a considerably longer time to feel the pain than a smarter man would take, but when he does, he jumps to his feet and yelps loudly. He digs at the ember embedded in his thumb until it finally dislodges. “Sonofabitchbastard,” he shouts, and an uproar of laughter fills the coffee shop at Whiskey Pete’s. Adam Eget finishes his fine burlesque with a stupid smile to the laughing patrons. I wait with the patience of Job.

Lorne Michaels:

“You can’t write,” said Lorne. “You can’t act or do characters. I simply don’t know how we can use you.” There was a lot of truth in what Lorne said, but it still hurt. I knew I could write, because I had been doing stand-up for years and had plenty of surefire bits that would make for dynamite sketches. And I knew I could appear in those sketches, because I’d performed those stand-up bits thousands of times, to wildly mixed reactions. I told Lorne as much. He looked at me long and his eyes were tranquil and pale. “Norm, the thing is, you’re not really suited for the show. You’re more suited to touring the country, playing smaller and smaller clubs until you finally fizzle into oblivion and are given an unattended pauper’s funeral,” he said. There was a lot of truth in what Lorne said, but it still hurt.

Adam Eget #2

“Well, it’s like that expression, Adam Eget. Everything happens for a reason.” “I’ve never heard that expression.” “You haven’t? It’s a very, very famous and popular expression. Women are particularly fond of it.” “I don’t even know what it means,” says Adam Eget. “So everything happens for a reason? I never knew. Everything happens for a reason….So there’s some secret reason I ate that bowl of Frankenberries for breakfast.” “You know something? You make it hard to tell a story, but I will go on. As I was saying, everything happens for a reason,” I say, and then I tell my story.