Watch Norm Macdonald's beloved, infamous 'moth joke'
Comedian Norm Macdonald, who died on Tuesday at 61 after a private battle with cancer, was known for many things: his bizarre, deadpan tenure as Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update anchor, his career-damaging feud with NBC's Don Ohlmeyer, and his cult movie Dirty Work. But he was most revered as a pure comedian, an inimitable standup whose seemingly random constructions worked almost in spite of themselves.
The best example of this is undoubtedly "the moth joke," a Dostoyevskian tragedy about a troubled moth's visit to a podiatrist. It's an epic, four-minute-long mess that GQ once admiringly described as a "groaner" that "shouldn't work." But it did work, beautifully, on a Macdonald appearance on The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien. When the punchline finally came, O'Brien, after a spell of relieved laughter, offered "congratulations to anyone who stuck it through to the end." See if you can make it to the absurdist kicker in the video below.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
