Mar 05 NORM MACDONALD ON NEW SPORTS SHOWS AND PREDICTS CANADIENS WINNING THE CUP

Being one of a kind is extraordinary in show business. With an overload of similar styles and acts it’s refreshing to see that one rare talent has taken the trite, curled it up and refined it as their own. Actor and comedian, Norm MacDonald, is bringing his unique and unorthodox form of comedy back to television.

A career far from in its twilight, the 47-year-old has a gig currently in progress and another on the way. MacDonald is the new host and play-by-play commentator of High Stakes Poker’s seventh season, making his debut on February 26. MacDonald replaced actor and comedian, Gabe Kaplan, who MacDonald says was a great poker analyst and is “a little scary” to follow. However, MacDonald’s debut was a great experience, where he threw in a few wise cracks along the way.

“It’s pretty surreal watching these guys play for crazy amounts of money and not even blink about losing these hands,” said MacDonald. “When you see the World Series [of Poker] on TV and people are going crazy cause they busted out of a $15,000 buy-in tournament. Then you see High Stakes Poker and they’re losing $300,000 a hand and people are like joking about that and it’s so weird to watch but it’s really fun, it’s exciting to watch.”

MacDonald also explained the magic on why people become such great poker players.

“You know what’s fun about poker is when you’re commentating you see their hands,” said MacDonald. “Now I realize why they’re all experts because you can see their cards so you’re like, ‘what’s this idiot thinking? Clearly that guy has an ace of diamonds and six of diamonds.’”

The former Saturday Night Live cast member also has a brand new show coming out on April 12 on Comedy Central. The show is called, “Sports Show with Norm MacDonald” and it has an eight-episode commitment.

“I wanted to do a show that was a lot like ‘Weekend Update’, I really liked that and it was the closest thing to stand up, [where] I got to do jokes,” said MacDonald. “So I said, ‘what about sports?’ because I did it on Weekend Update about politics and I’m not interested in politics at all, nothing could be more dull to me. So I said, ‘what if I did it on sports?’ which I’m really interested in and ‘what if we did it in the same style? Just a bunch of funny jokes and features and stuff about sports.’ So then Comedy Central went for it.”

Although MacDonald wanted the show to be live, it will be on shot one day prior to its air date each episode. As of now, Comedy Central has a sport themed show called, “Onion SportsDome” but MacDonald says the two shows won’t be competing and will be similar to a Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert companionship.

“The Onion show is more satire, they don’t deal with actually what’s going on with sports it’s more of a satire of SportsCentre,” said MacDonald. “[My] show would not do that, it would be topical jokes about sports, like everybody writing on the show is giant sports fans so it’s not going to be a satire or anything. So I think [the two shows] are going to co-exist.”

MacDonald joked about bringing back an old favourite topic from his SNL Weekend Update stint on the first episode.

“I might address O.J. [Simpson],” MacDonald said. “It’s so long ago but they do want me to do something about O.J. so maybe I’ll talk about his life in prison and how it’s going for him.”

Despite MacDonald’s busy schedule he still finds time to watch his favourite team, the Montreal Canadiens, or at least he tries to.

“It’s very hard in Los Angeles [to watch hockey] it’s very bizarre and frustrating because hockey is hard to get and they show all these crazy sports like a guy on a mini-bike jumping over sand and they have all these sports and I’m like, ‘well, what about hockey?’” MacDonald said. “Once in while they have like a Sunday where they’ll show hockey, like once a week, but that was like when I was a kid and they showed Hockey Night in Canada, like one game a week it was crazy. They don’t offer like what they do with other sports, they don’t offer a Montreal Canadiens package where you can watch every one of their games on satellite or I’d get that.”

Without hesitation MacDonald predicted the Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup.

“This is their year,” MacDonald said. “I was from Quebec City and I didn’t care about the Nordiques. I already liked the Canadiens so by the time the Nordiques came out it didn’t matter to me and then I was happy that all the Nordiques fans got jipped when they left.”

MacDonald will surely declare his Canadiens winning the cup and his entire sports analyst on his new sports show.

Tags: Montreal Canadiens \ Norm MacDonald

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