WASHINGTON — He made us laugh on Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn” (2002) and his stand-up comedy specials including Netflix’s “Mouthful of Shame” (2017).
This week, comedian Jim Norton cracks up the DC Improv with his “Kneeling Room Only” comedy tour, bringing five shows over three nights on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“It’s one of those clubs where if you bomb at the DC Improv, you should really get out of the business because you stink,” Norton told WTOP. “It’s an amazing room, so every comic loves working it. It’s actually not the easiest room to get booked in, because everybody works there, so their availability, you have to book it pretty far in advance. But I’ve been there 10-15 years.”
What topics can we expect to hear in his routine?
“I’m covering everything,” Norton said. “My own dating and sexual updates, of course I talk about the #MeToo movement, I talk about the president and politics and dating, I just kind of cover everything that’s happened in the last year since my [last stand-up] special came out.”
How does the D.C. comedy crowd compare to other cities?
“Anyone that’s coming to see me is kind of garbage,” Norton joked. “They’re the same everywhere. I attract the same people in Boston that I attract in North Carolina that I attract in San Francisco. If they like what I do, they’ll come; if they don’t, they wont. D.C. is no different. You get a lot of people from Virginia coming in — it’s not just people from the Beltway.”
Growing up in North Brunswick, New Jersey, Norton quickly fell in love with stand-up comedy.
“When I was a kid, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Robert Klein, the most underrated comedian of all time … Rodney [Dangerfield] and of course Joan Rivers I always thought was really underrated,” Norton said. “I used to tape them off the ‘Tonight Show’ and just do their acts to myself. I knew what I wanted to do my whole life. All I’ve ever wanted to do was stand-up.”
He’ll never forget his first time out on stage.
“The weirdest part was hearing your voice projected back at you over a microphone,” Norton said. “I got a couple of laughs, but you’re so used to the cadence with your friends. You say something stupid and they laugh. But walking on stage and saying something filthy [and] hearing silence was really, really unsettling. … But I’ll tell you what else was amazing was getting a laugh. … You could not believe you just heard that sound. Both things were jarring.”
Norton was discovered by controversial comedian Andrew Dice Clay, who spotted him on Louie Anderson’s sitcom “The Louie Show” and asked him to be his opening stand-up act.
“He changed my life,” Norton said. “Political correctness started when he popped up, because people were so mad at what he was saying. … It was just a dumb comedian making jokes; who cares? He is not a tough guy. He is a silly guy. Dice is a silly dude. Dice likes goofing off and making his dumb friends laugh. … He’s got this tough-guy persona, but he complains like, ‘I’ve got a sore throat!’ He wants his tea with honey. He likes to be treated like a giant baby.”
This new recognition earned Norton a spot on the nationally syndicated “Opie & Anthony” radio show with Gregg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia in New York from 2001 to 2014.
“Opie is actually the one who told me to come in and said, ‘Hey, we’ll get you some money.’ Anthony and I were always friendly. … I worked with them until 2002 when the show got canceled. … We came back on satellite in Oct. 2004, Anthony got fired in July 2014, so we had a decade there. Then Opie and I continued for two more years, but we stopped getting along.”
Why did the relationship fray?
“Anthony and I always had great chemistry, Anthony and Opie had great chemistry, but me and Opie [only] had okay chemistry — we were the last two guys who should have done the show,” Norton said. “Creatively when you’re collaborating … we both just had issues with each other … and stopped seeing eye to eye. He was still technically my boss and I resented that; he could tell I wasn’t having fun and he resented that, so we just started to resent each other.”
Meanwhile, he became a TV staple on Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn.”
“My memories are how much joy Colin would take when one of us would bomb,” Norton said. “That show was showing comedy in a really honest way. There were nights where we were really funny and great, and other nights where we stunk and the jokes were weak. You were just seeing it for what it was. It wasn’t polished garbage. Polished is nice, but it gets boring.”
He thinks the show would be hard to do in today’s political environment.
“They would never allow us to do that today,” Norton said. “We used to get complaints back then … so today that show would be very hard to do. Colin’s doing okay; he had his heart attack, but he is on the mend. I’m around, [Nick] DiPaolo is around, Keith Robinson had a stroke, so he is still very funny but he is slowed up a little bit, [Greg] Geraldo and Patrice [O’Neal] are dead, so it would be a hard show to do because so much of the spirit isn’t there.”
In true Norton form, he makes light of heavy situations like Quinn’s recovery.
“Colin is too young to die,” Norton said. “Colin has a lot more people to make unhappy. He is got another 30 years of making people unhappy and bothering people, so yeah, he is not going anywhere. He is such a brilliant comedian. It makes me sick to say that, but he really is.”
These days, Norton co-hosts the “UFC Unfiltered” podcast with former fighter Matt Serra.
“It’s fun to do because I’m not a UFC historian, I’m a UFC fan,” Norton said. “Matt is a legend, so the fact that he knows everything about the fight, and I’m the fan, it works out really well.”
Here’s hoping we’re laughing so hard at the DC Improv that we have to tap out.
Find more details on the DC Improv website. Listen to our full conversation with Jim Norton below:
