Latest news with #BillBurr:DropDeadYears


Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Emmy Awards: Stream these 2025 nominees with Boston ties this weekend
From left: Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri in "The Bear." Chuck Hodes 'The Bear' A perennial awards-season darling, FX's anxiety-inducing dramedy 'The Bear' scored 13 nominations this year. Star and Dorchester native Meanwhile, costar Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who grew up in Amherst, was nominated for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for the third straight year, having previously won in the category at the 2023 and Available on Hulu Advertisement "Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years" is the latest one-hour special from the Canton comic. Koury Angelo/Disney 'Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years' Need a laugh this weekend? Stream Available on Hulu Jenny Slate as Nikki in "Dying for Sex." Sarah Shatz/FX 'Dying for Sex' The FX miniseries Available on Hulu Advertisement Julianne Nicholson in "Paradise." Brian Roedel/Disney 'Paradise' Hulu's post-apocalyptic drama 'Paradise' scored four nominations this year, including a nod for outstanding drama series. Star and Medford native Available on Hulu Uzo Aduba in "The Residence." Jessica Brooks/Netflix/JESSICA BROOKS/NETFLIX 'The Residence' Netflix's White House-set detective mystery 'The Residence' picked up four nominations, one of which went to Available on Netflix From left: Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock in "Sirens." Macall Polay/Netflix/MACALL POLAY/NETFLIX 'Sirens' Netflix's star-studded limited series Available on Netflix Matt Juul is the assistant digital editor for the Living Arts team at the Boston Globe, with over a decade of experience covering arts and entertainment. Advertisement Matt Juul can be reached at


Al Etihad
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Etihad
Bill Burr headlines jam-packed Abu Dhabi Comedy Season weekend line-up
11 July 2025 01:26 ABU DHABI (ALETIHAD)The Abu Dhabi Comedy season is heating up with some of the hottest regional and international acts performing in town this weekend. Bill Burr LiveAll eyes will be on headliner Bill Burr, live at the Etihad Arena on Saturday, July 12. The world-renowned comedian and podcaster recently released his eighth stand-up special, "Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years". The American funny man is known for his "Monday Morning Podcast" and several "Saturday Night Live" hosting was the first comedian to perform at the 5,000-seat ancient Roman amphitheatre, The Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, Greece, and in 2022 he made history as the first comedian to perform at Fenway 2022 Netflix special, "Bill Burr: Live at Red Rocks", was shot at the legendary 2023, Burr's film, "Old Dads", which he directed, co-wrote and starred in, premiered as the most-watched film on Netflix in its first and second week of portrayed JFK in Jerry Seinfeld's Netflix film, "Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story".Burr made his Broadway debut starring alongside Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk in David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" running through is currently touring arenas and theatres around the world with his "Bill Burr Live" show. The Laughter FactoryThe world-class comedy crew at The Laughter Factory are on the road again this week, playing venues in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Catch them at Mezz, The Agenda, Dubai Media City (July 11); Studio One Hotel, Dubai (July 12); The Club, Abu Dhabi (July 17); Radisson Hotel DAMAC Hills, Dubai (July 18); and at Dukes, The Palm, Dubai (July 19).Headlining the show is Steven Briggs, a high-energy stand-up comedian and actor, known for his dynamic performances that blend hilarious storytelling, sound effects and character skits.A winner of the acclaimed Moth storytelling competition, comedy fans will also remember him from Netflix's "Unbelievable" and HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm".Joining him is rising comedy sensation Kelsey De Almeida, sure to leave you and your friends in stitches with his fresh material and irresistible stage returning to the stage is local crowd favourite Maher Barwany. Over his 12-year comedy career, he has performed at the Dubai Comedy Festival and venues including the Annex, Up and Below rooftop lounge, American University of Sharjah, The Warehouse lounge, Flashback Speakeasy, and Kickers Sports has also performed across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Oman with the "Funbassadors of Comedy". Exit 8 in Abu DhabiGet ready for sharp, observational humour from some of Saudi Arabia's top comics - Abdulaziz Al Hedian, Osama Bazid, Abdullah Al Rowis, Osama Alyahya, Azzam Alwabel, and Ahmad Attar. Catch these jolly jokers at the Broadway Brasserie & Bar at the Emirates Palace Mandarin on Friday, July 11.


Vox
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
How should a man be? Bill Burr, of all people, has thoughts.
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. What does a contrarian, grievance-happy comedian do when contrarianism and grievance become the norm? Bill Burr, long the poster child for a type of angry white male misanthrope, may be the last person you'd expect to embrace empathy in response to, well, everything — but that seems to be the case. Burr recently told NPR's Terry Gross that 'there's also a part of me that really hates the fact that I have been so angry.' His new Hulu comedy special, Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years, leans all the way into that remorse, with jokes that — for the most part — sidestep giving into anger and remonstrance in favor of self-reflection. It's a far cry from his old persona, which often reveled in jokes about lesbians, fat people, trans athletes, and other marginalized groups who seemed to draw his ire. Burr discusses things that he previously would likely have been the first to ridicule: his experiences with therapy, learning how to be a kinder partner, and the real effects of toxic masculinity on men. He even opens up briefly about experiencing intense depression and childhood sexual abuse. It's pretty weighty stuff, treated with surprising and studious care. Well, no, not exactly. But there is something new to the way Burr is positioning himself as a man in 2025 America. 'He is giving voice to a feeling that the rules or acceptable strategies for climbing the masculinity ladder feel opaque, contradictory, and changing,' Northwestern sociologist Rebecca Ewert told Vox, referring to the status hierarchies men have to navigate in a patriarchal society. 'There have been rules — they have never been consistent. Black men need different strategies than white men. There are different ways of proving dominance in a weightlifting gym than on the floor of Congress. Burr is explaining that they feel more contradictory than ever.' As a 56-year-old white guy, Burr embodies the much-discussed masculinity crisis — yet while griping about his losses, he's also noticing that even his advantages can be shortcomings in disguise. 'He's articulating ways the system doesn't serve him,' Ewert said, 'but he's also so afraid to lose that system he's been seeing his whole life. And we're seeing that throughout the culture.' You might think that anxiety over his perceived loss of status would produce even angrier comedy. Yet counter to prevailing cultural narratives about angry white men getting older and more cantankerous, Burr seems to feel liberated by aging. He's happy to be getting along better with his wife, relieved to finally be able to say out loud that he's sad. 'Men aren't allowed to be sad,' he says, in a self-deprecating moment describing how he opened up to his wife about experiencing emotion. 'We're allowed to be one of two things. We're allowed to be mad or fine.' It's far from an earth-shattering revelation, but it feels significant when it's coming from someone like Burr, who previously seemed defiant and even proud of his limited emotional range. He was far from alone; if anything, he was part of a cultural moment that seems geared toward rewarding emotional repression and regressive forms of masculinity. University of Birmingham sociologist Yuchen Yang points out that Burr's sudden interest in chilling out is self-serving on an existential level. He has for many years served as the poster child for a kind of masculinity that, as Yang put it, 'is not only harmful to women, queer, and people of color, but also detrimental to [men]'s own existence.' 'Dominant cultural beliefs about manhood often lead men into an unhealthy lifestyle,' Yang said. 'Yet at the same time, the stigma around vulnerability also makes it difficult for men to seek help when needed,' he explains, pointing to therapy, medical invention, and simple wellness tactics as preferable alternatives to doubling down. The real issue, Yang says, is that men are 'chasing a cultural ideal that is far from realistic.' As he points out, 'Very few men can actually achieve this ideal, and those who do get close to it can hardly embody it all the time.' In other words, even as men want to embody a patriarchal masculinity, they're just as trapped by its societal expectations as everyone else. Over the last decade, the 'manosphere' — internet spaces focused on the lives and status of men, dominated by influencers and podcasters like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and a coterie of their peers — emerged as both a reaction to and worsening agent for this problem. Yang suggests its existence 'is an attempt to resolve the inherent contradictions of patriarchy without overthrowing patriarchy.' 'Those in the manosphere want to recover men's 'natural' masculinity,' he said, 'but there is nothing 'natural' about the kind of masculinity they are invested in.' While these online spaces give men a sense of community, they also foster growing misogyny, extremism, and disgruntlement. Men now are more isolated than ever, and compared to women, they're dying younger and are more likely to die by causes including suicide, overdose, or complications from alcohol or drug abuse. Throughout Drop Dead Years, Burr discusses his own struggle with alcohol addiction as well as the broader epidemic of sad men. ('The number one place to see sad men?' he jokes. 'Guitar Center.') Yet he seems to have not only recognized all of this, but decided to evolve in response. Burr makes the point that all of that repression of emotion takes a real toll on men's health — notable in a special that references his awareness of dying throughout. 'You start thinking about your life, you know?' he confesses. 'You take stock in it. I start thinking about how fast my life's going by, how quick my kids are growing up.' None of this is quite as simple as 'man realizes he wants to be a better person as he gets older.' What stands out to Ewert is his deep ambivalence about all of this. She notes that Burr often swings from serious discussion about his deepest fears and hopes to jabs about women — as if his gut reaction is to punch down in order to remind himself and others that he's not on the bottom. 'I don't see him making a coherent argument. I see a lot of reactions,' she says. 'That's relatable — I think that's what a lot of men are going through.' There's a sense that Burr has been working out not only how to get in touch with his softer emotions, but how to do softer, less confrontational comedy in a way that still feels nuanced — comedy that we might think of as punching sideways instead of either of the expected directions. At one point, he roasts his audience members for laughing at a joke he sets up about Joe Biden and dementia. 'Not 30 seconds ago, when I said someone in my family got diagnosed [with dementia], you guys were all — you could hear a pin drop. And you had empathy,' he points out. 'Second you put a blue or a red tie on it — 'Fuck that old man! Fuck him! I'm glad he's gonna die!'' In recent years, comedy has been treated to a litany of comics, from Dave Chappelle to Louis C.K., who, when called out for various offenses, have doubled down on their commitment to disgruntlement. Burr, too, isn't over the idea; he's still frustrated that the rules about who gets canceled and who doesn't are so inconsistent, still talking about how the social phenomenon has rendered him unable to insult someone who deserves it. 'Even if he took my last slice of pizza and is denying it with pepperoni on his breath,' Burr says, 'I can't be like, 'You fat, man-titted c**t.'' But whatever Bill Burr might say about 'cancel culture' as a corrective, in his case, he's managed to do the one thing that the liberal backlash was seeking all along: listening and trying to be a little better. It's the thing that none of those other comics got around to. 'I think he has been seeing the real rewards of emotional connection in his life,' Ewert said. Yelling on stage is one thing, she notes, 'but at your house you realize that not yelling makes you feel better.' 'I think there's hope in this message,' she continued. 'If more of us could talk about men's issues, about men's mental health, as the result of a patriarchal system that puts all of us in a hierarchy, then that helps all of us.'


Vox
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
How should a man be? Bill Burr, of all people, has thoughts
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. What does a contrarian, grievance-happy comedian do when contrarianism and grievance become the norm? Bill Burr, long the poster child for a type of angry white male misanthrope, may be the last person you'd expect to embrace empathy in response to, well, everything — but that seems to be the case. Burr recently told NPR's Terry Gross that 'there's also a part of me that really hates the fact that I have been so angry.' His new Hulu comedy special, Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years, leans all the way into that remorse, with jokes that — for the most part — sidestep giving into anger and remonstrance in favor of self-reflection. It's a far cry from his old persona, which often reveled in jokes about lesbians, fat people, trans athletes, and other marginalized groups who seemed to draw his ire. Burr discusses things that he previously would likely have been the first to ridicule: his experiences with therapy, learning how to be a kinder partner, and the real effects of toxic masculinity on men. He even opens up briefly about experiencing intense depression and childhood sexual abuse. It's pretty weighty stuff, treated with surprising and studious care. Well, no, not exactly. But there is something new to the way Burr is positioning himself as a man in 2025 America. 'He is giving voice to a feeling that the rules or acceptable strategies for climbing the masculinity ladder feel opaque, contradictory, and changing,' Northwestern sociologist Rebecca Ewert told Vox, referring to the status hierarchies men have to navigate in a patriarchal society. 'There have been rules — they have never been consistent. Black men need different strategies than white men. There are different ways of proving dominance in a weightlifting gym than on the floor of Congress. Burr is explaining that they feel more contradictory than ever.' As a 56-year-old white guy, Burr embodies the much-discussed masculinity crisis — yet while griping about his losses, he's also noticing that even his advantages can be shortcomings in disguise. 'He's articulating ways the system doesn't serve him,' Ewert said, 'but he's also so afraid to lose that system he's been seeing his whole life. And we're seeing that throughout the culture.' You might think that anxiety over his perceived loss of status would produce even angrier comedy. Yet counter to prevailing cultural narratives about angry white men getting older and more cantankerous, Burr seems to feel liberated by aging. He's happy to be getting along better with his wife, relieved to finally be able to say out loud that he's sad. 'Men aren't allowed to be sad,' he says, in a self-deprecating moment describing how he opened up to his wife about experiencing emotion. 'We're allowed to be one of two things. We're allowed to be mad or fine.' It's far from an earth-shattering revelation, but it feels significant when it's coming from someone like Burr, who previously seemed defiant and even proud of his limited emotional range. He was far from alone; if anything, he was part of a cultural moment that seems geared toward rewarding emotional repression and regressive forms of masculinity. University of Birmingham sociologist Yuchen Yang points out that Burr's sudden interest in chilling out is self-serving on an existential level. He has for many years served as the poster child for a kind of masculinity that, as Yang put it, 'is not only harmful to women, queer, and people of color, but also detrimental to [men]'s own existence.' 'Dominant cultural beliefs about manhood often lead men into an unhealthy lifestyle,' Yang said. 'Yet at the same time, the stigma around vulnerability also makes it difficult for men to seek help when needed,' he explains, pointing to therapy, medical invention, and simple wellness tactics as preferable alternatives to doubling down. The real issue, Yang says, is that men are 'chasing a cultural ideal that is far from realistic.' As he points out, 'Very few men can actually achieve this ideal, and those who do get close to it can hardly embody it all the time.' In other words, even as men want to embody a patriarchal masculinity, they're just as trapped by its societal expectations as everyone else. Over the last decade, the 'manosphere' — internet spaces focused on the lives and status of men, dominated by influencers and podcasters like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and a coterie of their peers — emerged as both a reaction to and worsening agent for this problem. Yang suggests its existence 'is an attempt to resolve the inherent contradictions of patriarchy without overthrowing patriarchy.' 'Those in the manosphere want to recover men's 'natural' masculinity,' he said, 'but there is nothing 'natural' about the kind of masculinity they are invested in.' While these online spaces give men a sense of community, they also foster growing misogyny, extremism, and disgruntlement. Men now are more isolated than ever, and compared to women, they're dying younger and are more likely to die by causes including suicide, overdose, or complications from alcohol or drug abuse. Throughout Drop Dead Years, Burr discusses his own struggle with alcohol addiction as well as the broader epidemic of sad men. ('The number one place to see sad men?' he jokes. 'Guitar Center.') Yet he seems to have not only recognized all of this, but decided to evolve in response. Burr makes the point that all of that repression of emotion takes a real toll on men's health — notable in a special that references his awareness of dying throughout. 'You start thinking about your life, you know?' he confesses. 'You take stock in it. I start thinking about how fast my life's going by, how quick my kids are growing up.' None of this is quite as simple as 'man realizes he wants to be a better person as he gets older.' What stands out to Ewert is his deep ambivalence about all of this. She notes that Burr often swings from serious discussion about his deepest fears and hopes to jabs about women — as if his gut reaction is to punch down in order to remind himself and others that he's not on the bottom. 'I don't see him making a coherent argument. I see a lot of reactions,' she says. 'That's relatable — I think that's what a lot of men are going through.' There's a sense that Burr has been working out not only how to get in touch with his softer emotions, but how to do softer, less confrontational comedy in a way that still feels nuanced — comedy that we might think of as punching sideways instead of either of the expected directions. At one point, he roasts his audience members for laughing at a joke he sets up about Joe Biden and dementia. 'Not 30 seconds ago, when I said someone in my family got diagnosed [with dementia], you guys were all — you could hear a pin drop. And you had empathy,' he points out. 'Second you put a blue or a red tie on it — 'Fuck that old man! Fuck him! I'm glad he's gonna die!'' In recent years, comedy has been treated to a litany of comics, from Dave Chappelle to Louis C.K., who, when called out for various offenses, have doubled down on their commitment to disgruntlement. Burr, too, isn't over the idea; he's still frustrated that the rules about who gets canceled and who doesn't are so inconsistent, still talking about how the social phenomenon has rendered him unable to insult someone who deserves it. 'Even if he took my last slice of pizza and is denying it with pepperoni on his breath,' Burr says, 'I can't be like, 'You fat, man-titted c**t.'' But whatever Bill Burr might say about 'cancel culture' as a corrective, in his case, he's managed to do the one thing that the liberal backlash was seeking all along: listening and trying to be a little better. It's the thing that none of those other comics got around to. 'I think he has been seeing the real rewards of emotional connection in his life,' Ewert said. Yelling on stage is one thing, she notes, 'but at your house you realize that not yelling makes you feel better.' 'I think there's hope in this message,' she continued. 'If more of us could talk about men's issues, about men's mental health, as the result of a patriarchal system that puts all of us in a hierarchy, then that helps all of us.'