“It’s the greatest gig in the world, being alive. You get to eat at Denny’s, wear a hat, whatever you wanna do.” - Norm MacDonald

I am terribly saddened by the death of Norm MacDonald, the comedian who was best described as "relentlessly funny." He died yesterday morning, and it turned out that he had cancer for nine years before finally losing his fight to live.

I know that Norm was not as well-known as others in the comedy field, so I looked for a clip to illustrate how great he was, and found something else to talk about.

Take a few minutes (your boss isn't watching you!) and watch him perform on the final David Letterman show in 2015. 

No one else but Norm ever mixed comedy with real emotion like that. And another thing about Norm, something he played down but he really couldn't hide it always: the man was brilliant, and well-versed in English.

Did you notice what he said toward the end of his stand-up?  “Mr. Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental. If something is true, it is not sentimental. And I say in truth, I love you.”

I tend to say I have no truck with things from time to time, and I get a lot of sidelong looks, like what does a Ford F-150 have to do with anything? 

Not that kind of truck! It's a perfectly cromulent expression, as Ms Krabappel would say,

To have no truck with something is to reject it or have nothing to do with it.

We get the term from the word "troque" in early French. "Troque" meant to trade, to exchange or barter, and it snuck across the English Channel into our lexicon as "truke."  

In the 1600s, the use of the word "truke" was extended to cover association or communication, and "to have truck with" came to mean the same as "to commune with."

I guess it's like nonchalant; you never hear of anyone being chalant, as George Carlin put it. You don't hear "have truck with" used in the positive sense. I've yet to hear anyone say he would really like to have truck with that new chicken sandwich everyone is cackling about. It's almost always in the negative sense: "I'll have no truck with a fake meat sandwich when I can always go to Popeyes and get something great!"

Norm did a great job playing Sen. Bob Dole in the 1996 SNL presidential campaign season. Senator Dole tweeted this: "Norm MacDonald was a great talent, and I loved laughing with him on SNL. *Bob Dole* will miss Norm Macdonald.”

You can say your life has gone well if you can make people laugh while teaching the finer points of their language. I just wish that Norm's life had gone on longer.