Brad Williams is a funny little fucker. For 16 years the indisputably hilarious comic has been taking the stage, culminating with kick-ass specials on Showtime—Fun Size in 2015, Daddy Issues in 2016—and a rocking set on Netflix last year: The Degenerates. He’s long been a regular guest on KROQ radio’s Kevin & Bean Show and is the co-host of the popular podcast About Last Night. Williams recently rang us up from the road—where he’s polishing material for his next special—to talk about comic feuds, Chuckle Fuckers and Midgets on Scooters.
HUSTLER: Are you familiar with the HUSTLER oeuvre?
BRAD WILLIAMS: I’m 35, so I think like many people I came of age with a HUSTLER. A friend of mine, who will remain nameless, got one. No one knows where he got one, but he got one. And that’s how you came of age in those days: You found a HUSTLER Magazine somewhere, somehow, and you got to see things you hadn’t seen before—“Oh, that exists?”
Back in those heady pre-internet days, right?
Yeah, remember there was a time you needed a fake ID to get porn? Or you needed to steal something from your dad or an uncle, or maybe the first kid who turned 18 went to the liquor store and bought magazines for everyone. Maybe you watched scrambled porn on TV, and then every now and then a boob would come very clearly into frame, and that’s when you had to do your work, right then. With scrambled porn, you would be masturbating and be like, “I think that’s a butt!” And then briefly it would unscramble, and you’d go, “Oh, nope, that was a dude,” but still, whatever, cool….
Tell me your origin story, how you went from being a guy masturbating to scrambled porn to being a guy taking the stage to make jokes about masturbation.
