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The geekier the audience the better for comedian Don McMillan, whose bits have bite.
Don McMillan beta-tests his jokes.
He uses PowerPoint in his act.
His repertoire includes gags about DRAM, SSL and ASCII. The more obscure the reference, the better McMillan likes it. The 44-year-old former chip designer has carved out a successful comedy career that includes both high-tech comedy and a somewhat more mainstream act. But get McMillan in front of a bunch of geeks, and he's in his element.
"I tell jokes nobody can even get near, jokes about error correction, jokes that have never been told before," he says. "My big thing was physics. So I tell jokes about pi mesons [subatomic particles]."
McMillan is one of a small band of high-tech comedians others include Wayne Cotter and Dan St. Paul - who use their knowledge of IT to delve into the lighter side of technology McMillan, with a master's degree in engineering from Stanford University and a resume that includes Bell Labs and VLSI Technology, certainly has the tech credentials.
He has some pretty impressive comedy credits as well - he won the $100,000 grand championship on Star Search in 1993 and has appeared on television, in movies and in comedy clubs across the country. You also might recognize him as the "skunky beer" guy from that series of Budweiser commercials.
He concedes that making a corporate audience laugh these days is tougher than it was before the Internet boom went bust.
"My task has changed. From 1995 to 1999, I was brought in to help celebrate. The shows were like walking on air, people...