Rob Schneider Radio Interview

And now, the real Vegas gambling story of Norm Macdonald, as told to me (although I’ve cut out five uses of the “f” word):

“I seem to have gotten compulsive gambling out of my system.

“It’s the one disease people don’t feel sorry for you. They just get mad at you, as if you were supposed to have given them the money. I wasn’t donating! I was actually under the delusion I’d win.

“They’re like, ‘How could you give that money to the casino?’ I go, ‘That was never my intent. I always thought they were going to give me a bunch of money.’

“I had an idiot assistant one time. … I told my assistant to go down and put a four-way parlay down, which would have paid $168,000 if it won. And this retard put it all down wrong — a different ticket and everything.

“And I won $240,000. So my horrible picks, and my chance of having a retarded assistant, combined. And that was a day where it was hours before the plane was leaving Las Vegas. So it was one of the three times I actually left ‘up.’

“The most I’ve ever been up was $186,000 — in chips. I had chips in my refrigerator. … I never, ever transferred that to cash. So if I win $168,000 in chips, they never change from chip form. They end up being deposited in the same cashier’s window where the cashier handed them to me.

“Craps — it’s a very, very bad name. It should be called ‘(expletive)!’ with an exclamation mark after it.

“You just go on a run, you know, and you keep pressing. If you’re a compulsive gambler, you’ll keep pressing the bet. So if luck does hit, it hits you the biggest because you’ve been gambling so much.

“You know you’re in trouble when the pit boss starts feeling bad for you. The guy that’s making money goes, ‘Maybe you should go to bed.’ Meanwhile, he’s profiting from your crazy actions. You become human beings — that’s how far you’ve sunk.

“Like, ‘Maybe just go upstairs, have some soup, relax a little bit. You don’t have to play every number on the roulette wheel. It’s not a good idea.’

“My stories end up with me and a bag of Fritos and a Coke watching a pornographic film in my bed up in the casino.

“It’d be fun to be walking around on the floor, but that’s when every machine’s been exhausted — every phone call to the money guy I have in L.A. — everything.

“I haven’t played a table game — in other words, an unbeatable game, or sports gambling — I haven’t played an unbeatable thing in 21/2 years.

“And I’ve been in casinos before, so I’m over that. I’m not gonna do that anymore.

“I play poker, but I don’t think that’s gambling.”