Tom Brady Does Standup
Some clickbait pop culture site published a rumor that Tom Brady was considering getting into standup comedy. I did not believe this for a single second, and I’m pretty sure it was already debunked, so don’t get excited. He could not possibly be that dumb.
That said, man, imagine how incredible that would be. It would be the most divorced man thing he could possibly do. A man who has spent the better part of two decades living the life of a complete superstar without any ability to relate to the common man going up there and trying to tell us jokes at age 45 for the first time. It would have been a sight. It’s not like he’s not funny or couldn’t get off any zingers, he has charisma. But that particular field? It would be a massacre. His audience would be made up of 2 kinds of people: Tom Brady fans, who will cheer and laugh at anything he does, and Tom Brady haters, who will boo mercilessly.
It would also be fascinating to see how the move would get received by the standup community. If you’ve ever seen or read stuff by comedians about the behind-the-scenes culture of standup, it is a toxic, depressing place. They are primarily deeply angry, bitter people scraping by because they aren’t well known or incredibly full of themselves because they “made it”. They all band together and support each other, yet also resent anyone who succeeds. I have to imagine the community would not welcomely receive some 45yr old superstar who is already extremely famous suddenly coming in and stealing shows and getting Netflix specials simply off the back of his celebrity status that he did not earn via comedy.
Man, what a world that would have been. He 100% would have done a special with Chappelle and the discourse would have been horrific. Anyway, he’s still get bodied by Eli Manning.
Love the hovertext
Even Tom Brady’s most dedicated fans would have booed him off the stage.
Stand up comedy is one of those things where the gulf between the difficulty of doing the thing and the perceived difficulty is huge. Just being witty doesn’t really translate. You need to be an absolutely fearless public speaker with an innate feel for group psychology. And the only way to work on your craft is to practice in front of a live audience. An audience that feels they have a god given right to heckle you mercilessly if you stumble.
Add on the travel requirements and the fact that humor is (for whatever reason) not respected as a serious art form, and it is no wonder that successful stand ups often transition into being C-List supporting actors. It’s a neccessary quality of life change.
That’s a good point. There’s a tough grind for anyone really trying to get into it. They are an insular community they don’t seem bitter, even the ones who never made it out of performing in their home area. This comic seems like it was just made to disparage standup comedy. The offseason is tough, I wonder if we’ll see more XFL/USFL comics?
Tom is going to let himself get roasted! He’s not going to do comedy!@‘
I barely hear anything about stand up nowadays. Might just be my lack of hobbies showing though.
The need for stand up comedy has been supplanted by dril tweets
Sirius XM has a few stand up comedy channels with no commercials. It’s always a fun listen and I cycle through different channels when one of them plays a female comic for the sake of equality that nobody asked for.
That’s pretty cool at least.
I still miss Mitch Hedberg.
RIP Mitch
There’s a term stand up comics use called “walking the room”, usually its when they’re bombing by an unappreciating crowd so the comic just says “fuck it” and start taking their frustrations out on the audience. Most times it’s sad, but in the hands of a gifted comedian it becomes a greatness that few could match at their peak. Bill Hicks was the undisputed master at walking the room, usually because his average audience were southern/midwestern rubes expecting Tim Allen or Jeff Foxworthy level bullshit, Bill Burr takes the silver though. Watch his Netflix special “Walk Your Way Out” if you want to see a masterclass at walking the room, the best part is when he’s talking about how Koko the Gorilla had a cat he loved, then the cat got run over one night, and the crowd boos him, so Burr is just like “Yeah that cat you never knew died. I’m sorry for your loss, you fuckin’ knew it for all of 20 seconds, I don’t know if it was dead instantly, like it drove right over it’s head and it was like *raspberry* it was over instantly, or maybe it hit the back legs and it tried to crawl away and it was like stuck to the road, and it was meowing out and you could see it’s breath, and right before it lost consciousness the rats came in, and it was just screaming and… it’s cute little paws, it was like socks it was just, I see you’re more concerned by the kitten than all the Hitler shit I said earlier.” That’s the kind of mentality you have to have as a stand up to survive.
Anyway, there’s already a has-been over the hill athlete doing dogshit level standup, a former UFC fighter/Joe Rogan pube hair rider named Brendan Schaub, and I don’t think he’d appreciate Brady honing in on his schtick.
“joe rogan pube hair rider” fucking perfect