THUNDER BAY -- Norm Macdonald isn’t for everyone.
He swears like the nastiest sailor you’ve ever met, his stories ramble without an end in sight and no subject is out of bounds for the Canadian comedian, who rose to fame on Saturday Night Live before an obsession with O.J. Simpson cost him his job.
To the uninitiated, the 52-year-old comic might be a little hard to take.
Sixty or 70 patrons Thursday night actually walked out of his performance at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium, but the 1,000 or so that took in his entire set – an hour-and-forty-five minutes at that – spent most of the night laughing.
He touched on his Canadian roots almost immediately, opining on the looks of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“By the way, your prime minister is one hot piece of ass,” he said. “He’s no Diefenbaker. This isn’t your grandfather’s prime minister,” later joking that in his father’s day, “You just voted for the guy who wasn’t French.”
But in the year of the most contentious election in U.S. history, politics was an afterthought. Donald Trump had but a single mention, a throwaway line in a lengthy tale that included pot shots at Jughead Jones, Caitlyn Jenner, Canadian Tire and a reminder to aspiring comedians in the crowd not to drop a handful of acid before hitting the stage.
Pornography, kinky sex and Bill Cosby jokes were also on the bill, the latter drawing his wrath for a swath of alleged sexual assaults against women.
At that point the crowd laughed nervously, unsure if it was OK to react with applause. Most did.
There were a few cringe-worthy moments during the show, in particular when Macdonald strayed into the topic of suicide, a touchy subject in a region where suicide epidemics have been declared in several First Nations communities. Most of his best material cannot be reprinted here, but trust us, it was pretty funny, if not unasbashedly politically incorrect.
Macdonald, a can of Coke his only prop, did work a little local knowledge into his show.
“Port Arthur, Fort William, that’s what I call it. That’s what my dad and mom called it on our way through on our way to Parry Sound,” he said, recalling a boyhood cross-country trek.
“I never saw the Sleeping Giant on my way through. I saw him today. He’s not looking well. I think he may be dead – which is good, because you don’t want live giants running around.”
Macdonald was the second half of a bill that included fellow SNL alumnus Kevin Nealon, who went on first because of his co-headliner’s tendency to run long.
Nealon’s 45-minute set was equally hilarious, though unlike Macdonald, the 62-year-old did take time to reminisce about his nine-year run on the show that made them both famous.
He discussed the origins of how he landed a part on the show and later he and Dana Carvey being called to a meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger to discuss the origins of their characters Hans and Franz.
“We figured he was coming on the show and was going to kill us,” Nealon said, before slipping into his Mr. Subliminal character.
“There are some really nice parts to Thunder Bay," he said, muttering Simpson Street under his breath.
About as risqué as Nealon got was recalling the time he passed gas on Jack Nicholson at a Hollywood party.
He riffed on the Hoito for not being the Japanese restaurant he assumed, the lack of Nipigon nylons in the crowd and the sparse Auditorium stage.
And he poked fun at his own success.
“Life is good,” he said, “for me especially, it’s really, really good.”
It’s a pretty good way to describe the night as whole, despite a few missteps by the closing act.
