TVSquad

Tonight, Bill Burr will be the first stand-up comedian to do a performance spot on Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show. If you don't know him, you will soon be one of the few. Burr has been on a roll for the past few years, getting stronger and stronger and playing bigger and bigger venues, culminating in last year's special, Why do I Do This?, which premiered last August on Comedy Central and is now on CD and DVD.

I've seen Burr live for years, playing shows like Denis Leary's annual Comics Come Home in Boston and Opie and Anthony's Traveling Virus tour. I have never seen him fail (the closest I came was last year in Los Angeles in front of a mostly indifferent crowd, working really hard for every laugh - for some perspective, Dave Attell and a lot of other good comics bombed that night). He became infamous for a decidedly NSFW YouTube video showing him at an O&A show in Philadelphia, the only time I can think of that a single comedian took on a crowd of hecklers and won.