- Sometimes when I do phone interviews
and a journalist is boring
I just start saying crazy stuff,
(audience laughing)
to make it fun for me,
and to make the most out of my time.
And she said "What do you talk about in your comedy?"
I said "I talk about the streets."
(audience laughing)
And she put that in the paper for real.
His performances include comedic jokes...
Wait, wait, wait, comedic jokes?
(audience laughing)
As opposed to all the other types
of jokes that are out there?
Am I missing out on a genre of jokes?
I hate to have to be the reason
I don't make it big.
Yeah, Hannibal Buress could have been huge,
but he focused all his energy on comedic jokes
when there were so many other type of jokes out there.
He really pigeon holed himself.
(audience laughing)
Then I'm some bitter old man comedian.
"Yeah, these young comedians,
"they focus on all types of jokes,
"esoteric jokes and jokes about hats.
"We're a purist, we only did comedic jokes.
"These young dudes, man."
(audience laughing)
I don't like the enviornment at all.
(audience laughing)
I'm not an environmental person.
Sometimes I let the water run for 45 minutes
before I hop in the shower just to do it.
It keeps running, it won't stop running.
It feels you feel all...
It makes me feel like the Poseidon of my apartment building.
(audience laughing)
Let the water flow.
It just keeps running.
So wasteful but it feels awesome.
(audience laughing)
You never know, I might be saving somebody.
Say some dude is drowning in a lake
or the river or whatever,
he's drowning,
but the water only comes up to right there
because I decided to play a game of Madden
before I hopped in the shower.
I'm a hero, my methods are just different than yours.
(audience laughing)
I see people yell at their dogs
I get upset.
I get mad for the dog.
The people are like sit, sit, sit.
It's like relax, the dog is already kind of
sitting in relation to you anyway.
(audience laughing)
I feel like I just wanna
tell another species to do something,
relax, maybe that dog don't wanna
put his bare ass on Sixth Avenue,
you ever thought of that?
'Cause I wouldn't wanna put...
(audience applauding)
I could see if the dog was doing something crazy
for you to tell it to sit,
like if it stood up on its hind legs,
and started trying to box people.
(audience laughing)
Is your dog trying to fight me right now?
Tell it to sit.
Two years ago I got a job
writing at "Saturday Night Live,"
my first week writing at "Saturday Night Live"
Megan Fox was the host,
and you can meet with the host
to talk about your sketch.
So a producer comes around,
says "Hey, do you want Megan Fox to come by your office?"
Yeah.
(audience laughing)
Yeah, I do.
And you create a situation where Megan Fox
has to talk to me?
Hell yeah.
So to give you some background
on the sketch I wrote for her,
I'm a big fan of scatting in music,
not scatting shitting on people.
(audience laughing)
You gotta be clear for people
'Cause I always wondered how scatting started.
I bet you two singers in the back of a club
wanna, "Hey, man, did you write your song for tonight?"
"No, I only wrote half of it."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I think I'm gonna sing that half,
"and the rest I'm singing gibberish."
"You can't sing gibberish."
"Listen, man, these people are drunk,
"we got a band back here with us,
"if I feel I could sell it
"we can just do some rhythmic gibberish."
And he goes out there
(Hannibal scats)
And people go crazy for gibberish.
He's walking around stage all cocky,
the other guy's like "Whatever, when you right, you right."
(audience laughing)
So I wrote a sketch where Megan Fox
was a horror movie villain
that killed her victims with scatting.
(audience laughing)
Yeah, it didn't make it to television at all.
(audience laughing)
It didn't deserve to make it to television.
But what's cool about SNL
is that all the sketches get read through,
so Megan Fox had to scat in a room full of people.
(Hannibal scats)
And I'm like a creep in the corner
holding my script like
"Yes, Megan Fox is reading my words right now, yeah.
"Megan Fox is reading words right now that I wrote.
"Oh no, Megan, you messed up a line."
(audience laughing)
One week there was a monkey
written into the opening monologue,
and then the day before the show
we got a message saying we had to write new jokes
because the monkey isn't available anymore.
(audience laughing)
Which makes me picture a monkey on the phone
like "Yeah, I don't wanna do 'Saturday Night Live' anymore,
"I don't like that show, that show sucks,
"it hasn't been funny since the 70's."
(audience laughing)
Like damn, that monkey's kind of mean,
and he's over romanticizing the Belushi era.
That shit was...
(audience laughing)
So there was a dress rehearsal,
and an air show.
And they do more sketches on the dress rehearsal,
whatever doesn't do well gets cut,
and then that's the air show.
So I had a sketch that made it to dress rehearsal.
And when you have that you sit under the bleachers
where the audience is sitting
with Loren Michaels,
and you watch it on a monitor,
and he gives you notes.
This particular sketch of mine
was bombing horribly,
and during that I was just practicing,
acting like my sketch wasn't bombing.
Hey, chill out, man, it's a slow build.
(audience laughing)
It's a slow build, relax.
(audience laughing)
It was a slow build to nothing,
the sketch bombed horribly.
And he usually gives a note,
hey, maybe this person should walk in quicker,
he didn't have nothing to say,
it just was quiet.
He said "Well, that was conceptually adventurous."
(audience laughing)
I like that job though.
We had interns at the job,
you tell them to do stuff,
and they do it, it great.
You gotta be nice to them though.
I had this guy fax something,
"Hey, man, fax that for me."
And I gave him another page,
"Hey, fax something for yourself too."
(audience laughing)
I was leaving work one day,
I got on the elevator going down,
it stopped on three,
this man got on
and said "Thank you."
What are you thanking me for?
I don't work on the elevator,
this ain't "Mad Men,"
why you talking to me?
(audience laughing)
Why you thanking me to get on the elevator?
What is your life like?
Are you not allowed on the elevators?
Do people usually push you off the elevator?
Get off the elevator, Steve,
stairs for you, it's always been stairs.
(audience laughing)
I try to forget part of my past,
but they don't let me do it
when I can't get a Macy's card.
(audience laughing)
I feel like I'm succeeding in life,
but when you try to get a Macy's card,
and it doesn't work out,
it let you know what you did
when you were 19 years old.
(audience laughing)
Just trying to figure it all out, man.
They say you teach people how to treat you
based on your behavior,
you teach people how to treat you.
So I'm trying to teach people
that if my zipper's down just let that shit go.
(audience laughing)
But people love telling you your fly is down
without even knowing your position on zipper politics.
(audience laughing)
They just assume you share their views.
"Sir, your fly is down."
"Oh yeah, my fly is down?
"Well is my dick out?
"'Cause if my dick isn't out
"I feel like you're over exaggerating right now."
"Sir your fly is down."
"Yeah, my fly is down 'cause I'm not
"a conformist piece of shit like you,
"it's anarchy down here and I'm living it.
"What's up?"
(audience laughing)
I was downtown Chicago,
there was a homeless dude,
he walked up to him,
he said "Hey, sir, your fly is down."
I said "Hey, man, your life is down."
Couple things.
(audience laughing)
Hey, listen man, this is a quick fix for me right here,
don't worry about me, sir.
You need to be making short term plans
and long term plans.
Good comedy punches down.
What's up?
Tom sun glasses.
Give sight.
(audience applauding)
I've got nephews and nieces.
I don't understand, my nephew's always crying,
I'm like "Dude, why are you crying?
"Your life is great,
"all you do is eat applesauce and take dumps,
"that's your day."
(audience laughing)
My sister's like
"Hannibal, he's crying because he's sleepy."
I'm like "Why doesn't he just go to sleep then?"
(audience laughing)
"That's what I do when I'm sleepy,
"I just go to sleep, I don't stay awake,"
like "I'm so sleepy."
(audience laughing)
I'm so sleepy and exhausted.
I'm so tired right now,
what should I do about this?
Hey, man, just go to sleep
'cause right now you're wasting time
you could be spending sleeping with your crying.
Why aren't you a more practical baby.
I think this baby's really horrible at time management.
(audience laughing)
He should learn how to manage his time more effectively.
My nieces is four, she's very smart,
too smart for her own good.
She was coloring one day,
and I tried to connect with her
on a coloring level.
(audience laughing)
I grabbed the red crayon,
put a little red on the paper,
I grabbed the blue crayon,
put a little blue on the red.
I was like "Look, Peyton, red and blue makes purple."
She was like "I got a purple crayon right here."
(audience laughing)
Like touche.
That was the dumbest I've ever felt.
(audience laughing)
in life and a four year old did it
(audience laughing)
So when I drink I get into weird stuff,
like older women.
It's been happening a lot lately.
I went on a date with this 40-year-old chick,
I'm 25, she's like "Yeah, Hannibal,
"you're gonna be my toy."
I was like "Nah, you're gonna buy me Xbox 360 game."
(audience applauding)
I want a toy.
(audience applauding)
Then after one of my shows this 47-year-old woman came up,
"Yeah, Hannibal, I'm 47,
"I could teach you some stuff."
I'm like "Ooh, 47 kind of old, baby."
(audience laughing)
But I took her number anyway,
'cause you never know when you could
use a 47-year-old woman for some stuff.
Call her, be like "Hey, what's up?
"There's this episode of 'Happy Days' on,
"I don't really understand what's going on,
"can you, uh, explain
"this 'Happy Days' plot line to me, please?"
(audience laughing)
I left this girl's place late one night,
it was like three in the morning.
She said to me "Hannibal, what if we just laid here tonight?
"What if we didn't do anything?
"What if we just laid here?"
I was like "Yo, I'll probably leave."
(audience laughing)
I moved to New York a few years ago.
Well, the first time I came to New York
I didn't really move to New York,
I just popped up in New York
'cause my sister was living here,
I just popped up at her place,
"Hey, what's going on?
"I have $200 and dreams, let's do this."
(audience laughing)
I just popped in her...
I was rude as hell.
So they kicked me out after two weeks.
And so I was packing up,
and my sisters said "What are you gonna do, Hannibal?
"What are you gonna do?"
I said "Don't worry what I'm about to do,
"you just kicked me out."
It's like if you shot somebody, pow, pow,
"So what hospital you going to?"
(audience laughing)
"You got health insurance?
"You got an HMO or PPO?
"You should get some gauze or Neosporin
"on those gun shots."
So I was in New York, I had to find a job,
I applied for a job at Starbucks.
One of the question was
"Why do you wanna work at Starbucks?"
"Uh, because my life is in shambles."
(audience laughing)
Stuff isn't going how I thought it'd be going,
that $200 is gone.
(audience laughing)
I remember I was just trying to crash
wherever I could crash,
and I was hanging out with some other comedians,
and we were at this girl's place
hanging out, smoking and drinking.
Her place was so disgusting,
it was the most disgusting place I ever been in,
and everybody bounce,
and she says "Hannibal, you can crash here if you want to."
I said "Nah, you know what,
"ima just go sleep on the train."
(audience laughing)
I'll take my chance sleeping around strangers.
I was on the train,
I made eye contact with this woman,
the train stopped,
and she got off and moved to another car,
which was a good move on her part
because I definitely was about to pull my **** out.
(audience laughing)
So great intuition random lady on the train.
Good call,
but it's my move now, I got legs too, what's up?
You're not gonna foil my creepy plans that easily,
I'm dedicated to this.
(audience laughing)
I was waiting for the train,
and I fell asleep,
and I woke up,
and there was a guy sitting two seats away from me,
but he was wearing my hat.
(audience laughing)
I walk over I say "Hey, man, that's my hat."
And he said "You gave me the hat."
(audience laughing)
Which means either
I'm just really generous when I'm sleeping,
"Hey, man, strangers a cool ass hat."
"Whatever, leave me alone, take the hat."
(audience laughing)
Either I'm generous when I'm sleeping,
or he's the boldest thing ever.
(audience laughing)
'Cause how bold is it to steal something from somebody,
and then fall asleep
wearing the thing that you stole from them two seats away.
Like whatever I have no fears.
(audience laughing)
I do shows at colleges sometimes,
and when I do a college show
I'll do an interview with the school paper,
and the result could be a horrible article.
So I wanna share with y'all this article
from a gig I did at Eastern Illinois University
in Charleston, Illinois.
This is all real and in print.
A human being wrote this,
and then they sent it to a higher ranking human being,
an editor,
and that person said "Yeah, let's go with that."
(audience laughing)
Quick-witted Buress set for laughs.
Comedian helps bring diversity to campus.
(audience laughing)
Wait, wait, wait, I'm responsible
for bringing diversity to your campus?
'Cause you realize the type of diversity I bring
is very temporary
because I'm leaving as soon as I get my check,
this town sucks.
Actually, pay me before the show.
(audience laughing)
It was a phone interview,
and sometimes when I do phone interviews
and a journalist is boring
I just start saying crazy stuff
to make it fun for me,
and make the most out of my time.
And she said "What do you talk about in my comedy?"
I said "I talk about the streets."
(audience laughing)
And she put that in the paper for real.
"His performances include comedic jokes..."
Wait, wait, wait, comedic jokes?
(audience laughing)
As opposed to all the other types of jokes
that are out there?
Am I missing out on a genre of jokes?
I hate to have to be the reason
I don't make it big.
"Yeah, Hannibal Buress could have been huge,
"but he focused all his energy on comedic jokes
(audience laughing)
"when there were so many other types of jokes out there,
"he really pigeon holed himself."
Then I'm some bitter old man comedian,
"Yeah, these young comedians,
"they focus on all types of jokes,
"esoteric jokes and jokes about hats.
"We were furious, we only did comedic jokes,
"these young dudes, man."
"His performance includes comedic jokes
"related to personal stories, current events,
"the streets."
(audience laughing)
You know what, I take the blame for that,
I said that on the record.
I take the blame.
"His performance includes comedic jokes
"related to personal stories, current events,
"the streets and even food," he said.
(audience laughing)
What?
Even food?
Who else is talking about food
in the comedy game right now?
Nobody, just Hannibal Buress, that's all.
He has cornered that subject matter.
He is the Lenny Bruce of grocery store humor.
He is so edgy.
You should have saw when he was in Dallas, Texas,
half the crowd walked out when he did his new bit
about lettuce, it was crazy.
He was too edgy for that town.
(audience laughing)
Matt Caponera, the university comedy coordinator
said Buress was picked because
he stood out more than other choices.
He stands out like an exclamation point, Caponera said.
I don't know if that's weird
or borderline racist.
Let's go with weird.
It's easy to go weird.
Let's go with weird
'cause I think it's weird to compare people to punctuation.
Nah, I think he's more like a semi-colon comedian.
Very semi-colon like in delivery
and how he paces.
(audience laughing)
I don't even know how to use a semi-colon to this day.
(audience laughing)
I use a comma every time.
And you know what, if I email somebody,
and they get upset about me using a coma
instead of a semi-colon,
that's not a person I wanna work with anyway.
And that's how you weed people out of your life.
(audience laughing)
Buress was the most popular comedian
in Caponera's price range of $2000.
(audience laughing)
It was a couple years ago.
Two things about that.
(audience applauding)
One, you goddamn right I was, hell yeah.
I was real in that price range
in the Midwest two years.
Two, how tacky is that?
Did she go to her editor,
"Hey, I wanna make this article more tacky,
"do you have any ideas?"
"Well maybe you could mention the amount of money
"he's making from the show
"that adds nothing to the article at all,
"plus we'll get the added bonus
"of putting his business out there,
"and making it harder for him to charge
"more than that in the future."
(audience laughing)
So I think if you're going for word count
that's your move.
Caponera said he also picked Buress
because he is African American,
which added more diversity
to the comedic lineup this semester.
He's a Black comedian,
so it makes our crowd more diverse,
and everyone gets what they want, Caponera said.
(audience laughing)
Everyone gets what they want?
That's a weird, broad thing to say.
Even people that didn't attend the show,
"Hey, did you book Hannibal Buress?"
"Yeah, we booked, you coming to the show?"
"Nah, I'm not coming to the show,
"but I got what I wanted."
(audience laughing)
Because everybody gets what they want
when I come to town.
Town morale peeks, it's at an all time high,
everybody's happy,
they go to the local grocery store
just juggling items,
no intention on buying them,
just in the aisles yelling
(indistinct) he's coming to town, y'all.
Hell yeah.
"You think he's gonna do the lettuce bit?"
"I don't know, I'm not even going to the show,
"I'm just happy he's here."