A Norm Macdonald Fan Has Restored All the Stories Norm Told on Twitter

Norm Macdonald passed away in 2021, but to quote Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (and that one episode of Seinfeld), he’s not really gone as long as we remember him.

Obviously, Macdonald left behind a huge body of work, not just his on-camera performances, but his writing as well. Like his 2016 book Based on a True Story: A Memoir, which, despite its title, was a mischievous fantasy that critics compared to the writing of Hunter S. Thompson.

Then there was Macdonald’s Twitter account (he obviously didn’t live to see it rebranded as “X”), which is quite the repository of material. Not just jokes, but poems, short fiction and personal anecdotes. There’s his lengthy account of the time he had a sleepover with Bob Dylan. Or his story about how Robin Williams, the “funniest man in the world,” calmed the “terrified” Macdonald before his first ever Letterman appearance, by dressing him for the show while pretending to be a Jewish tailor. 

But combing through old Twitter accounts can be an onerous task, and so many of Macdonald’s stories played out in seemingly endless threads. Plus, his posts prior to 2017 were seemingly deleted, and even the surviving ones are in no way organized. Thankfully, one devoted fan has compiled and archived much of this content in a webpage dubbed “The Norm Macdonald Twitter Anthology.”

According to the site, the “anthology” is “a scrappy kid’s efforts to compile and recover the best of Macdonald’s prose, short stories and comments on Twitter from 2011 to 2021. Tweets have been preserved in their original format, typos and all!”

Some of the archive’s highlights include Macdonald’s recollection of the time he met Harold Ramis about a role in Multiplicity, his account of meeting Eddie Murphy at Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary (“a rock star even in a room with actual rock stars”) and a short story chronicling the entire life of a rural Ontario woman named “Gertrude Dash.”

Then there were threads that can really only be described as “poems,” such as this rumination on childhood:

One of my earliest memory was when my mom took us to town and the park.
There were monkey bars and slides and go-rounds and I never got any of them.
I was only interested in the swings.
The entire time I was at the park I was on the swings.
When I walk by a park, and the park is empty, I swing.
The swing does not know my age and makes child of me.
The swing takes away all the years and weight and pain and shame.
The swing is a time machine.

In retrospect, it’s surprising that Macdonald used this social media platform, typically a repository of petty complaints and inane observations, to offer up ruminations on human existence. 

Which isn’t to say that his account was exclusively for artistic expression. A lot of his tweets were reactions to sporting events, and at least one post was just an ad for Pepsi?

Presumably that one came immediately after one of his bets didn’t pay off.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).