Animal Furnace

While the transformation from comedy writer to standup comedian isn’t easy for most folks, Chicago-born and Brooklyn-based Hannibal Buress handles it well. Where his 2010 debut album, My Name Is Hannibal, garnered him comparisons to the late, great Mitch Hedberg, 2012’s Animal Furnace finds a slightly surlier Buress hilariously railing against security guards, college journalism, jaywalking, New York City cabs, drunk people, and scatting. With a name like Hannibal Buress, you can forgive him for recycling the bit about people’s reactions to the fact that he shares a first name with a celluloid cannibal—especially since he precedes this with a rant against young men in his Williamsburg neighborhood with handlebar mustaches. He believes that these gentlemen shouldn’t even bother trying to talk to him unless the subject matter pertains to carnivals. “It’s cool if you want to have a handlebar mustache,” he says. “But don’t try to have a conversation with me like you don’t have a handlebar moustache.”