Eugene Mirman<\/a>\u2019s Pretty Good Friends label and is available on YouTube. Mirman has known McNamara for years, and appreciates her frankness onstage, and her skills as a writer. \u201cShe is an incredible jokesmith,\u201d he said. \u201cEach sentence is so well structured with the last. And yes, it has this very Boston-y, acerbic quality. But at the same time, it is very perfectly structured.\u201d<\/p>\nThe DNA of McNamara\u2019s act has been the same from the beginning \u2014 the joke writing ability, the unflinching self-examination. But something has clicked for her in the past couple of years. True to form, when this improvement is mentioned, her first instinct is to challenge it. \u201cIn my opinion, I\u2019ve always been good,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople just had to jump on the wagon.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she does acknowledge that after the COVID-19 lockdown, she came out strong. Part of this was a shuffling of the scene, as some of the more established bookers departed and a new generation took over at the various comedy venues. \u201cBoston has a thing where you kind of have to wait in line a little bit, and when COVID ended, the line kind of went away, in that it was a whole new set of bookers, a whole new set of gatekeepers,\u201d McNamara said. \u201cIt only mattered where you were in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the clubs opened up again, McNamara pushed harder, and found she was getting booked more, and started headlining more. She had already changed her stance, leaving the mic in the stand and keeping her right foot in front of her left foot, which she says she got from watching local comic Mike Whitman. \u201cThat actually made a difference. When I say a punch line, I lean forward,\u201d she said. \u201cAs a comic that just stands there, it\u2019s hard to show energy when you just stand there with the mic in your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also found herself naturally tightening up bits onstage after the clubs had closed for lockdown just because she had to try to remember it all over again. Many of the jokes and premises are the same, but are streamlined. \u201cI fine-tuned a lot when I had to rewrite my entire set because I forgot most of it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Part of what has stayed the same is McNamara\u2019s willingness to talk about uncomfortable and deeply personal subjects: her father\u2019s death, the fact she has been tested for autism twice without being diagnosed, and that people keep telling her they think she might be autistic. She has found she can share these things and still protect herself. \u201cIt\u2019s a balance of not being so vulnerable that I regret it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She says the routines are 99 percent true, if a bit condensed for the sake of the joke. But the toughest issues are far enough in her past to allow her the distance and perspective to address them with a lighter touch through stand-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard, because time plus tragedy equals funny,\u201d she said, \u201cand you can\u2019t really write a joke about something until you\u2019re no longer emotionally vulnerable about it, or at least I can\u2019t. It took me close to 10 years to write a joke about my dad dying. It took me 10 years to write a joke about having a diagnosis. It takes a long time, at least for me, because it\u2019s hard, because if you\u2019re talking about something that\u2019s very vulnerable, the last thing you want is the audience to be scared for you, or the audience to feel bad for you. You have to be completely 100 percent OK with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are changes afoot for McNamara, something she views with some trepidation. She has a job as an accountant that she likes (she says it\u2019s like getting to do a puzzle every day). She has lived in the same apartment for 20 years, the first apartment she moved into after leaving home in Randolph. This summer, she plans to move to New York or Los Angeles and go full time as a comedian. She is hoping the special and the album provide her some momentum as she makes the commitment to comedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt got to the point where I\u2019m like, I\u2019m 40,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat am I doing with my life? I can sit in a cubicle all day and headline local shows and open for local headliners. But at some point, you just kind of had to pull the trigger and do something.\u201d<\/p>\n
A peek at \u201cNot Smart Enough\u201d<\/h3>\n
While the full special is available on YouTube, here\u2019s a look at a couple of jokes from McNamara\u2019s routine:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandmother told me I was beautiful the other day. She was sweet. She was like, \u2018Janet, you\u2019re so beautiful, imagine what would happen if you wore makeup and you didn\u2019t dress so homely.\u2019 I was like, \u2018I think I\u2019m going to stick with being beautiful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy favorite thing in the world, is I love stopping for people at crosswalks. I like the power of being like, \u2018I could kill you.\u2019 And if they were jaywalking, I\u2019d get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad died a couple of years ago. Which is sad, I guess. I still like to text him. Or at least, I like to text the guy who has his number now. And I\u2019ll be like, \u2018Hey, dad.\u2019 And the guy\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019m not your dad.\u2019 And that\u2019s just what my dad used to say. So it\u2019s like he\u2019s here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m over trying to look hot. It\u2019s easy. You just have to have a skin care routine. I\u2019m done. It\u2019s like, my whole life, being attractive, you make more money, you\u2019re more successful if you\u2019re attractive. And there was this study in the \u201990s with babies where babies, they smile more if it\u2019s an attractive person in front of them. And it\u2019s supposed to show that being attractive is important. And I\u2019m like, why are we listening to babies? Why are we getting our social values from babies? That\u2019s stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n
NOT SMART ENOUGH: Janet McNamara and Friends<\/strong><\/p>\nWith Janet McNamara, Eugene Mirman, Jocelyn Bailey, Ryan Howe, Emily Ruskowski, Isabel Thurston, and Katie Arroyo. Jan. 29, 7:30 p.m. at Goofs Comedy Club. Tickets: $28-$34. www.goofscomedy.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The comedian just released a new special, \u2018Not Smart Enough\u2019 By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent Published Jan. 28, 2026 Janet McNamara is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzainofreelance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}