How To Turn Anything Into A Witty Joke

Some people can say just about anything, tell jokes that should be terrible and still make an audience roar with laughter.

Until I met my wife, I always felt incomplete. Now I'm finished.

That was Norm MacDonald. And it's why in this video, we'll be breaking him down to cover how you can make people obsessed with you by telling bad jokes that still manage to kill.

That's fine with me. About that owl. I don't give a hoot.

Before the jokes, though, we have to note that in near every clip of Norm, he smiles like crazy while he's joking. Smiling is just a plain good charisma habit in most situations. But with comedy specifically, it sub communicates you've just said or will say something worth laughing at. So by adding that mischievous smile, it makes getting the laugh much easier.

What's the movie gonna be called? Really? I know what it's gonna be called. Yeah, what's that? If it's got Carrot Top in it, you know what a good name for it would be? What's that, Norm? Box Office Poison.

I won't belabor the point, except to say that everything Norm does is enhanced by the fact he makes you expect to laugh with his smile and demeanor and then subverts what you'd expect to laugh at. Which brings us to Norm's first comedy sin and second comedic habit. Norm explains his jokes. The old adage is you have to explain a joke.

There is no joke.

But Norm flips that advice on its head by explaining jokes the audience already understands, which winds up being even funnier than just being witty. To see that, watch for the reaction to the genuinely clever part of Norm's dig at Carrot Top compared to his explanation of the dig.

Do you have a scene where you and him embrace?

Yeah, lots of making out.

Oh, for God's sake.

It's like nine and a Half Weeks. But carrot talk.

Is it called nine and a Half seconds like he's premature ejaculating?

We got it. You know, in your own life, you can use this trick to turn a bad joke into a great one. If it doesn't land, just explain the punchline with a big expectant smile on your face. Like playing like the other person would erupt into laughter if only they got the joke. It works even better with truly bad jokes since they are more obvious, making the explanation less necessary and therefore more funny. Watch here.

Now, the Bob has a beautiful face, like a flower. Yeah, cauliflower. No offense, but your face looks like a cauliflower.

Similarly, Norm will set an audience up to think he's going to say something interesting or insightful, only to hit them with the least insightful thing he could possibly say. He uses pregnant pauses to bait the audience into thinking something great is coming and then hits them with nothing, which is somehow even better.

Kickboxing, and that's an odd sport. What they do is they combine the style and grace of boxing with. With kicking.

This works because jokes are supposed to be non obvious. Comedians will even razz one another when jokes are too obvious and they can see the punchline coming from a mile away. But Norm takes advantage of this expectation by making his punchline so stupidly obvious that they manage to surprise you. So if you find yourself stuck with nothing interesting to say to close out a thought or a story, purposely saying the least interesting thing possible can save you. This takes guts, because it has to be as lame redundant as possible for it to be funny. If it's only mildly uninteresting, you're actually just being boring. You've got to commit like Norm does here.

I asked you to. Come on. I find out you pussed out on me and quit smoking. What is that all about? No, because it's bad for you. They have these f ing things on the side. You have to read the fine print where it says it's bad.

Now, another adage of humor is that jokes are funnier when told in the first person, even if they didn't really happen to you. You're supposed to hide this narrative sleight of hand, though, to maintain the effect.

I was on this plane once and I'm sitting there and. You ever been on a plane? No, but it's a fucking joke.

It works better if I tell it.

In the first person.

Norm follows this rule, starting jokes off in the first person like you're supposed to. But then he makes it painfully obvious he's lying about it all having happened to him. In this next case, he purposely screws up the details of a character's name to tip off the audience.

When I was young, there was a fella went by the name of Jacques de Gaultier. While I was scrambling to get out of high school, Jacques Zagatinot had already. I think he just changed his last name. Well, you know, a man grows.

Other times, Norm uses old timey language that you know he'd never have said to create the same effect.

If this were a memoir, I would tell about my wife. What a battle axe. Honey, I look in the mirror and all I see is a fat, ugly old man. And I need you to give me a compliment she says, all right then, your eyesight is damn near perfect. I said, you dirty dog.

And other times, he includes impossibly absurd details. In this case, he's saying that he was once a bartender with a ridiculous item behind the bar, but then acts confused when Conan asks for clarification.

And I see right in the bottom of the bar area, there's a. There's a shoebox with a turtle in it from where? What is that doing there? What?

In these cases, the joke shifts from being solely about the content of the story to Norm's unconvincing first person delivery. He's putting on a deliberately bad performance for his and the audience's enjoyment. Now, you don't need to make up stories to put the essence of this joke into practice. Instead, recognize that if you're trying to be funny and you mess up the delivery, skip important information in a story or flub a punchline, that's not the end of the joke. It's the beginning of a new joke about how bad you are at telling jokes. And that's almost always one that people love. Which takes us to the least copyable but most iconic Norm joke, the long, meandering prank joke. It's one where Norm delays and delays and delays. The punchline.

A moth goes into a podiatrist's office. The potato's office says, what's the problem? And the moth says, what's the problem? Where do I begin, man? At night, I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady. She fell in the cold of last year, and my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, Doc. And then this hellish facade once, how long a drive was this?

Only to arrive at the end and have the punchline underwhelm in spectacular fashion.

The doctor says, moth man, you're troubled, but you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here? And then the moth said, because the light was on.

These jokes do not work in normal life, where the expectation is that people do tell long, unsatisfying stories. So please don't deliver a three minute long pun to your friends and family. It will not go over well. But Norm was in a setting where we expect the guests to come on with curated stories proven to get laughs. His brilliance was to upend that expectation. Do everything you're not supposed to do and finish with a pun you might hear from your dad. Upsetting contextual expectations makes this a meta joke. And in Andy Richter's words, somebody saying.

I gotta show you something. They take you on a four mile.

Hike to show you a dog turd. Like I said, the specifics of a three minute pun are tough to copy effectively, but you can use your environment to make bad jokes land harder than they have a right to. Like Norm did. You just need to pick an environment where playfulness is less expected, for instance, the first minutes of a job interview, networking event, or the initial awkward phases of a first date. Obviously you're not going wild using toilet humor here, but something light, like an exaggerated compliment, perhaps joking about how the company's cool technology makes you feel like Tony Stark. That can lighten the mood tremendously. And this is a mindset that has run through everything we've covered, and one that will make you much funnier if you adopt it. Norm seemed to believe that you could make just about anything funny. It didn't have to be a zippy one liner or super quick wit, which he definitely had. For him it was about playing with whatever the moment offered and reducing all the rules down to one primary. Do what you can to make people smile. If you internalize that mindset, even your worst jokes can become awesome. So hopefully that all helps to punch up your own humor from Norm. But quite frankly, there won't ever be another Norm. Now if you want to become the most charismatic and confident version of you, that is something we can help with. And you might like to check out our course Charisma University. It's a step by step program for building your confidence and charisma as quickly as possible. Over 9,000 people have joined the program so far and here's what just a few of them have to Loving the course. I have cherry picked a few things for example the filter lesson in the conversation module. The this one lesson completely changed my life. I've liked a girl for over a year now but never thought much of it because I thought she was just too pretty. Took your lessons, gave things a shot and now we are dating. Another member wrote. I've already watched a lot of the YouTube channel and loved it, but Charisma University's action guide really helped me put this stuff into practice and change my life. Insane social experiences I never thought I'd have and work wise I ended up getting a best selling author as a mentor. I am so glad I joined and this last one comes in saying I am significantly more confident in all social situations. The connection I feel with strangers and close friends and family alike have increased dramatically. I transitioned from someone who never got asked to hang out regularly to multiple people texting me on a daily basis. Many people have openly expressed their admiration for me and I get a lot more positive attention. I have grown so much because of this course. I can't thank you enough. Now the program comes with a 60 day money back guarantee, which is for any reason whatsoever. It's a 60 day guarantee even though the course is just 30. So there's absolutely no risk on your side. You either like it, you become confident and charismatic up to your standards, or you get every penny back. So if this interests you and you want to unlock your own confidence and charisma, go ahead, click the link on the screen or in the description below and you can learn more about joining. Either way, I hope that you guys enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next.