Jim Norton says he hates jazz and traffic, lands in New Orleans

Jim Norton marked his arrival in New Orleans by naming the two things he hates most in life. Jazz and traffic. Then he said it is going to be a great weekend.

That is the whole post, and it works because the city he picked is more or less built out of both. New Orleans is the place where a brass band can stop a street, and then the street stays stopped. Norton did not say which of the two he expects to get first.

The joke is the setup and the punchline

There is no second tweet, no thread, no follow up explaining himself. He put the complaint and the enthusiasm in the same breath and left it there. Read it straight and it is a man dreading his weekend. Read it the way he clearly means it and it is a man who knows exactly what he signed up for and is going anyway.

It is also a very Norton move. Lead with the misery, land on the good news, give the reader nowhere to go but the comments. Nothing in the post says he is unhappy to be there. The structure does all the work.

Why New Orleans, this weekend

Norton did not say what has him in town. He did not name a venue, a show, a lineup or a reason. All he confirmed is that he is there and that the weekend is going to be great.

The timing does line up with the comedy world's current center of gravity. Skankfest X is in New Orleans from November 13 to 15, which has a lot of comics pointed at the same city at the same time. Norton made no mention of the festival in his post, so treat the overlap as timing and nothing more.

What we do have is a comic landing in a city famous for music he does not like and roads he likes even less, and calling it a great weekend before it has started. He may be right. The traffic will not care either way.

Jim Norton

@JimNorton

X

The 2 things in life I hate the most are jazz and traffic.