STAND-UP COMEDIAN SHAUN ELI LAUNCHES IVY LEAGUE COMEDY SHOWCASE

New York City-based Stand-up Comedian Arranges Showcase of Clean, Smart, Funny Comics

[ClickPress, Sun May 21 2006] Stand-up comedian Shaun Eli put his Wharton marketing degree to good use-- by listening to his customers. Like most stand-up comedians he started out performing in comedy clubs but unlike many comics his material is intellectual and free of adult topics and profanity. So when audience members repeatedly told him “You were the only comic who didn’t curse” or “Your material was a little bit smarter” he realized what to do. Get together with other Ivy-educated comics and put on a clean, smart and funny show, one free from the vulgar topics that sometimes permeate a comedy club’s walls.

Plenty of comics do smart jokes but Shaun Eli may be among the first to admit it, even brag about it, in his marketing materials. He confesses that he’s not doing jokes about Voltaire. Or even euro-dollar interest rate derivatives despite his background in international finance. But still, his material takes a bit of thinking. Who else opens with a vocabulary joke? “I can’t think of even one single other word in the English language that means... synonym” he starts. “Doesn’t seem fair that synonym doesn’t get to have one but antonym has an antonym.” Even his website name, www.BrainChampagne.com, hints that his material might be at least a tad smarter.

“It is more difficult,” he admits, doing intellectual material. “It may take an audience two or three seconds to get the joke, and when you’re on stage, two seconds of silence is an eternity.” Just until the laughs build, of course.

Even if he were to tell dirty jokes, which he doesn’t, they’d be different. He asks “Why joke about sex with porn stars when you can joke about sex with the Attorney General?” Aside from which, he explains, corporate work pays much better than comedy club shows, and corporations don’t want to hear dirty jokes. Although he confesses that if Playboy hired him for a show and requested dirty humor, he would probably make an exception.

Shaun Eli, in addition to writing and performing his own material, sells jokes to Jay Leno for his Tonight Show monologue. In an interview in Fortune Magazine Jay cited one of Shaun’s jokes as an example of the type of smart comedy he likes to put in his opening monologue (though Jay did go on to explain that he has to populate his show with all types of jokes in order to please a mass audience).

Outside of the world of comedy Shaun is a former world-class athlete in both rowing and dragon-boat racing, has trained lifeguards, and is an instrument-rated pilot. Shaun is an award-winning economic forecaster who once sold his car to a hitchhiker. If you ever do this, he suggests, drive home before surrendering the keys, because not all hitchhikers are equally generous once they become car owners.

Shaun recently spoke at a CBS Radio Small Business Breakfast on the topic of overcoming misperceptions in marketing. He used as an example that some people think that stand-up comedians are vulgar, and what he did to overcome that misperception, including setting up the Ivy League Comedy Showcase.

The next Ivy League Comedy Showcase is being held at the NYC Penn Club, the alumni club for the University of Pennsylvania, on September 12th. More information is available at www.IvyLeagueComedy.com.


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If you’d like more information on stand-up comedy, comedian Shaun Eli or the Ivy League Comedy Showcase, or to schedule an interview, please feel free to call Shaun Eli at (212) 252-2888 or via email at Shaun@BrainChampagne.com.

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