In what can best be described as a love letter to a comedian, Brian Raftery profiles Hannibal Buress for New York Mag, extolling how Hannibal combines the strangeness of masturbation/lizard murder jokes with his sweet, relaxed stage presence. David Letterman viewers, Juggalos, the olds down at Town Hall, JUGGALOS: Buress can play, and win over, practically any crowd. His glasses also play some role, I think. “I had a friend who was doing comedy,” Buress says about getting into stand-up while at Southern Illinois University. “I saw some other people, and I was like, ‘These people are really bad. I can be really bad.’ So I went on to be bad for a few years.” Buress also admits the frustrations that came with writing for SNL, with no guarantee that your work will see the light of day. “Just to write every week and not get on. It was rough, man. But that happens to a lot of people. Larry David only got one or two things on,” he explains. Hannibal says he’s planning an hour-long special of “maybe angrier stuff, more personal” material, but he’s going to have to get really hostile or go really dark in order to not come off like the friend you’d trust to cat-sit every time.
