10 Bill Burr Jokes for the Hall of Fame
Bill Burr is big, big enough to be the only comedian to ever play Fenway Park, in fact. His style can be described as “permanently surly,” and his dialed-in rants traverse the many facets of daily life both large and small that raise his ire — like when he totally called Kanye’s arc back in 2017.
But in recent years Burr has shown another, softer side that some of his audience didn’t appreciate. Not that he let it slow him down — not taking shit from anyone is a signature quality of his — and if anything, it seems to have spurred on further growth as a performer. Either way, it’s a career that more than deserves admission into our Jokes for the Hall of Fame. To that end, here are 10 of his best…
On His Temper
“Yeah, I have a temper. That’s what kind of ruins things. Everything else I do is fine, but I have a fucking temper and it just ruins shit. Then my wife always says the same thing: ‘I just don’t understand. Where did that come from? Where is that coming from? You just go from zero to 100 in two seconds.’ It’s like, first of all, I idle at 75 miles an hour, all right? So don’t give me this zero to 100. I walked into this restaurant at 75. I could hear that guy talking too loud on his cell phone from the fucking parking lot!”
On Fake Legs
“Do you know what fake legs looked like when I was a kid? First of all, there was only one color — it was like a Band-Aid color. And everybody knew you had a fake leg. You’re fucking walking down the street and everybody was like, ‘He’s got a fake leg! What do you think happened? Motorcycle accident? Fell down a flight of stairs? Got impatient with a woodchipper?’ Now if you have fake legs, you’re not allowed to compete with people with real legs in the Olympics, because not having legs is more of an advantage than having real legs. Doctors make better legs than God.”
On Chain Restaurants
“You know what I hate about these corporate chains? You go in there, you’re paying for a business and they make you do like half the job now. I don’t get it. I walk in, ‘Hey, let me get a turkey sandwich, lettuce, tomato, on rye, with mayonnaise. The guy behind the counter is like, ‘Alright, turkey sandwich, lettuce, tomato, on rye, and the mayonnaise is right over there.’ Really? Why don’t you fuckin’ go over there and put it on my sandwich. You get it. I’m on this side of the register — guy who orders the sandwich; guy who makes the sandwich. I’m sorry they fired the mayonnaise guy, but I’m not doing it. I just gave you 100 percent of the money to make 100 percent of the sandwich. This isn’t a relay race.”
On Spell Check
“You know what I love about spell check? You don’t have to be close to getting the word right. All you gotta do is get it somewhere within the ballpark of the word. It’s almost like your computer can start guessing like, ‘I don’t know… Dinosaur?’ When you’re sitting there like an idiot, like, ‘Nah, I wasn’t trying to spell dinosaur.’ So now what does your computer do? It starts throwing out like every D word it can possibly think of: ‘Okay, how about dictionary, diary — any of this stuff looking familiar? Are we moving toward the goal or away from it?’ You ever spell a word so bad, your spell check has absolutely no clue what the hell you’re trying to spell? When you end up getting like a question mark? You’ve got a million dollars worth of technology looking back at you like, ‘You got me, buddy.’”
On Brunch
“You can’t have a day off when you have a girlfriend. It’s almost like they see that open day and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, let’s go fill it up with shit!’ Then they come at you with one horrible idea after another. Horrible ideas like, ‘You want to make some sandwiches and go to the park? You want to go to the Container Store, and get some containers for your T-shirts?’ This is the worst one: ‘You want to go to brunch on Sunday?’ Inside you’re like, ‘Fuckin’ NOOOOO!’ But you can’t say that, right? You gotta keep them happy, so what do you do? You agree: ‘Yeah let’s go to brunch. What a great idea! Why would you want to sleep in on a Sunday when you can go pay $18 for eggs? We can sit around and listen to your friends have moronic conversations about the eggs: ‘Is that pesto? Is that pesto in your omelet? Oh, it’s asparagus?’’ You just want to flip the whole fucking table over.”
On Statistics
“Let me ask you a question: Why the hell do people keep getting married? Isn’t anybody looking at the stats? I mean, one out of two marriages goes right down the shitter. If you were going skydiving, and they told you half the parachutes weren’t gonna open, you’d be like, ‘Yo, fuck that! I’m not going! I don’t like those odds. I have a 50-percent chance of splatting on the ground? I’m not doing it!’ But there’s something about getting married, people just have to do it. They’re like, ‘Is this the line to losing half my shit? Awesome! This is gonna be great! I can’t wait to lose my car and my money!’”
On Heaven
“The way I was brought up is like, you can make it to heaven, but some of your family members possibly couldn’t, or some of your friends. Doesn’t even make sense. Like, how am I supposed to enjoy heaven if that’s the deal? Just sitting here, waiting for my friends to show up: ‘Jesus Christ, where the hell are they? It’s been 150 years! They must’ve ate a lot of Brussels sprouts or some shit! Doing some yoga, right?’ Then, one day, it settles in that they didn’t make it. Then what? Jesus coming walking over: ‘Hey, how is it going, everybody? Isn’t this great?’ ‘Yeah, dude, it’d be even better if all my family members and friends weren’t burning for fucking ever. Kind of hard to enjoy heaven when you just keep thinking of that there.’”
On Robots
“You know what I’m afraid of? Robots. I saw one get interviewed on 60 Minutes, and he’s sitting there, not nervous at all, just rattling off all the fucking answers. Not smoking, not leaking oil or whatever you would do as a nervous robot. And the reporter’s asking him questions. In the end, he goes, ‘So, tell us, what are your goals?’ I’m alone in a hotel room, and I literally lean toward the TV. I’m like, ‘Do these fucking things have goals?’ And the fucking robot answers. He goes, ‘To become smarter than human beings.’ But the reporter just blows by it. He’s like, ‘Okay, and what’s your favorite color?’ Meanwhile, I’m standing on my bed, yelling at the TV, like, ‘Dude, unplug that fucking thing! Take the batteries out! Pull the wires out! Do something! How many sci-fi movies do you have to see before you realize where this is going?’”
On Plastic Surgery
“Why would you get a facelift? Can’t you look at other facelifts and realize they haven’t worked all the bugs out yet? If you’re thinking about getting a facelift, do yourself a favor: Wait it out! Let him practice on other people’s faces. Didn’t we learn anything with hair plugs? Hair plugs don’t look half-bad now. I saw this commercial the other night, and the guy’s like, ‘God, I wish I did this 10 years ago.’ No, you don’t! Ten years ago, when they were stapling ant legs to the top of people’s heads, everybody’s eyes were watering trying not to look at your hairline. You wish you got hair plugs 10 years ago? Do you wish you got polio 60 years ago? Are you even listening to what you’re saying, historically? Why can’t you just be your age? There’s nothing wrong with being 50 and looking 50. What would you rather be: 50 and look 50, or be 50 and look like a 28-year-old lizard?”
The Philadelphia Incident
In 2006, Burr was part of The Traveling Virus Comedy Tour along with Tracy Morgan, Bob Saget, Dom Irrera and Patrice O’Neal. At their stop in Philadelphia, they encountered an audience that relentlessly heckled them throughout the entire show. After Irrera got booed off the stage, it was Burr’s turn. He was scheduled to do a 12-minute set, and he wasn’t about to let the crowd bully him into backing down. He mercilessly insulted and berated the audience, letting them know how much they (and their favorite sports teams) sucked, and even counted down the minutes while he did it. Was it unprofessional? Yes. Was it overkill? Also yes. But was it glorious, too? You bet! Even the audience thought so, seeing as he got a standing ovation afterward.
