Norman Lawrence Crosby was an American comedian. He is popularly called by the nickname of Norm Crosby. Crosby was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Crosby was born to a Jewish family. He was often labelled as "The Master of Malaprop". Malaprop is a form of comedy in which a word is misspelt in place of other words to make it sound funny.
Crosby used to perform solo as a stand-up comedian. He is known for having adopted a congenial blue-collar persona in the 1950s. He honed and polished his stand-up monologues by the interpolation of malapropisms.
Crosby first appeared on " The Tonight Show" in December 1964. In late-1968, he co-starred on "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show". In 1974, he co-hosted a television series called "Everything Goes". Then, from 1978 till 1981, he hosted a series called "The Comedy Shop", in which upcoming stand-up comedians got a chance to perform alongside the veteran ones.
From 1983 onwards, Crosby co-hosted the annual "Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon". Crosby has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Besides that, he gave his voice to the Judge in the film "Eight Crazy Nights" (2002). Crosby developed a hearing impairment during his life about which he created great awareness.
On November 7, 2020, Crosby died of heart failure at his home in Los Angeles, California.
Below are some of the best Norm Crosby quotes.
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
Going into a court means that you are trusting those twelve jurists who will decide your fortune. Without knowing much about your life or otherwise, they will take an important decision of your life. Yet these are those people who weren't smart enough to get out of their formal duty. It means that to decide someone's life, one has to take a step further than just being a jurist. They have to get acquainted with the person's life personally.
Old is when people compliment your alligator shoes and you aren't wearing any
Well, old age comes with apparent physical features which are recognizable. Thus, in old age, you start developing folds in your skin which means that your skin starts looking like the alligator's scales. So, even if it seems that your skin resembles the design of alligator skin, we all know that it's just the old age taking a toll on us.
A handicap is only if you let it be a handicap
A handicap is nothing but a manifestation of the way of thinking. If you are handicapped, you can turn it into your strength rather than making it a weakness. Also, a handicap will hinder you only if you let it hinder your work. If you turn the tables and do great work, you will be able to get rid of the stereotype associated with a handicap.
I think it is- the biggest plus the performer can have is to be a little unique.
A performer cannot be someone who has similar qualities like the other people around him/her. A performer has to bring something new and extraordinary to the table, and thus, he/she must stand apart from the regular crowd.
I don't do the same show twice. I have never done a show word for word.
Crosby is putting forth an important point over here. Doing the same show twice means that the comedian is adding no new value to the audience. If one makes the same kind of content, there won't be any intrigue or mystery. So if you are a performing artist, make sure you come up with exotic things every time you perform.
I'm a great audience myself. I tried to keep in the background while others were on, but sometimes I'd just get hysterical.
This is quite funny yet insightful. Crosby says that most of the time he behaved as an audience. This means that while cracking jokes, sometimes the comedian starts laughing himself. So he does agree that he always kept himself in the background. Yet at times, he lost control and gave hearty and hysterical laughter.
That to me is what comedy is all about: keeping fresh and keeping current and changing with the times.
Comedy is an art that cannot be mastered in a few days. It takes grit and determination to come up with brilliant content that's fresh. It also has to be contemporarily relevant and new. Thus, comedy in its standard definition must be novel and reflect the latest sentiments and current scenario.
It's extremely hard work keeping fresh.
Keeping fresh here can mean two things. Normatively, it means that staying fresh all the time is very difficult as one or the other thing may spoil our mood. On the other hand, this quote has a deep connotation in the realm of art. This means that keeping your mind always up with new fresh ideas is an extremely difficult task.
I think it's the most wonderful thing in the world to have an identity, something the audience can remember you for.
How will people remember you on stage? How will you embed yourself in the minds of others? It can only happen when you create a unique identity of your own. No one will remember you if you don't have a speciality. Thus, it's so crucial to have an identity. And it's amazing to see that the audience remembers you by it.
I don't ever remember overcoming adversities.
Everyone has their struggle.
Some people may regularly visit their past to keep memories of their struggles fresh. At the same time, some, on the other hand, may not revisit their adversities. Thus, remembering or not remembering your challenges is an individual way for everyone to cope with their lives.
Although I had a good job as an advertising manager for a shoe company in Boston, I really liked to fool around with comedy.
Doing things that give you joy is so beautiful. Not everyone may have the privilege and courage required to quit one job and join another. However, if you strongly feel about something, just go for it. If you feel the zeal to do something great other than your regular job, go for it!
I was the first spokesperson for the Better Hearing Institute in Washington. And that's the message we tried to send out-there is helping out there, and the technology and options are amazing.
As a figure, Crosby is brilliant as he did comedy and created awareness around his hearing impairment. Thus, he proudly claims that it's important for each one of us to learn and know more about hearing aids. If you have some handicap, use technology and expert knowledge to get rid of it. Don't believe in anything other than the good and latest technology.
When people have hearing loss, I think they often take that burden and pass it on to their friends and family, and we make them scream and yell at us so we can hear! But I think it's better to take responsibility and wear hearing aids!
Hearing impairment can be very fragile and detrimental to a person's mental health also. It's often seen that people don't act responsibly and rather than wearing hearing aids, they pass on that burden. They ask their young children to yell at them or speak loudly. However, the only reasonable method to solve the problem is to start using hearing aids.
When my dad was explaining the facts of life to me, he drew me a big diaphragm.
Crosby had some hearing impairments. However, this was the biggest strength of his life as he took it positively and later went on to do some amazing comedy! So this quote says that his father drew him a diaphragm as it forms an important part of the ear and acoustic system. That's quite reflective of Crosby's handicap, which was related to the ear diaphragm.
My school was so tough the school newspaper had an obituary section.
This is a very sad and heartfelt quote. Crosby remarking that his school newspaper had an obituary section meant that children and teachers lost their lives. This was further memorialized in the newspaper. While it's a good thing, yet the fact that the obituary section existed means that personal losses occurred usually. Thus, it was tough to read the newspaper.
If your eyes hurt after you drink coffee, you have to take the spoon out of the cup.
This quote is full of humour and pun. The basic meaning is that if you are sipping coffee from your cup and by chance the spoon in it pierces your eyes, then remove it. However, a deeper reference is that if something like coffee that should ideally heal your eyes is causing more pain, then figure out where the problem lies. So if the spoon is the problem, then remove it out!
Listen to the blabbing brook.
This is yet again, a funny and witty remark. The brook here is nothing but a metaphor used for either a person who chats a lot or perhaps a comedian like Crosby. Crosby asks us to listen to the blabbing brook as if reinforcing the importance of his art in which blabbering or blabbing about things is important. Yet in that blabbing, are some serious truths told.
A young comic, if he's any good, can easily get on 'Carson' or 'Griffin' or 'Dinah Shore,' because they want to say the same thing, that they discovered the new talent.
Crosby criticises the very idea of young talents being taken up by brands that are very much into launching newcomers. So he says that a young comic can easily get into these brands as they hold the main purpose of introducing them to the world.
Every city you go to has television and radio talk shows that are dying to give young comics a showcase. They all want to be able to say that so-and-so started here, got his first break on this show.
Television and radio talk shows are quite good when it comes to creating a buzz about something fresh. Thus, these shows publicize their content and performances whenever any newcomer comes up. Yet there's cleverness behind the very concept of launching newcomers. This is just their tactic to later take the overall credit of the performer's entire success journey and show their success graph to the world.
Hearing aids didn't cause any problem with my social life, my career, no problem at all, and I've been wearing them for a long time. As a matter of fact, once I became an entertainer and started working on television, I was probably the first performer to talk about hearing problems on the air
This is truly a motivational quote. It shows how one can turn their physical impairment into something as strong as what Crosby did. This means that he was very proud and open about the hearing aids he wore. By quoting these lines, he encourages all those who shy away from freely talking about their problems and impairments.
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