Comedian Norm MacDonald, that self-identified Old Chunk of Coal, was sick with cancer for almost a decade before he died the other day, and told almost nobody. He started referring to himself as “just an old chunk of coal” seven or eight years ago, and this, apparently his favorite country song, is where the phrase came from. Shaver, an outlaw country singer who rarely tickled even the bottom of the charts but had a loyal cult following, died last year. He released the song in 1981.
As puck suggested, you can spend all day watching clips of MacDonald’s talk show appearances and SNL skits (someone has compiled a reel of the O.J. jokes that got him fired from SNL), but if you’re pressed for time, this appearance on one of David Letterman’s last shows is the best of the bunch. Norm explains why he’s not afraid of North Korea but he is scared of Germany (“I don’t know if you guys are history buffs or not…”), then gives a truly heartfelt tribute to the guy who gave him his first network TV guest slot 25 years earlier. We didn’t know it then, but MacDonald already had been ill for three years at that point.
