It was the shot seen ’round the internet. During her set at New Jersey comedy club Uncle Vinny's in 2022, comedian
Ariel Elias incurred the wrath of a Donald Trump supporter.
"I could tell by your jokes you voted for Biden," a woman can be heard heckling Elias in the video of the incident.
"I can tell by the fact that you're still talking when no one wants you to, that you voted for Trump," Elias fired back from the stage.
A few seconds later, the heckler's husband hurled a nearly full can of beer at the comedian. It hit the wall behind Elias, missing her head by inches and drawing an audible gasp from the crowd.
Seemingly unfazed, Elias picked the beer up and proceeded the chug the rest of the can to wild applause as the hecklers fled the club. That simple act of defiance and poise drew the attention of her peers as the video went viral.
Comedians
Patton Oswalt and
Whitney Cummings reached out on social media to praise Elias. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was so impressed that he booked Elias to appear on his show,
"Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
"Look, I'd much rather have gone viral for a well-crafted joke I wrote than having a beer thrown at me," Elias said in a video interview with
Seven Days. "I don't do a ton of political comedy, so I think it may have given people a different idea of the kind of comic I am. But at the end of the day, the goal is to have eyes on you, gain followers and sell tickets, so I am grateful, even if it was vaguely traumatic."
With a bigger spotlight on her thanks to the red-pilled beer hurler, Elias is gearing up to tape her first standup special. And she's chosen to record it at
Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, where she'll perform this Friday, August 2, and Saturday, August 3.
"Well, I've never headlined in Burlington, so I haven't burned an audience yet," the New York City-based comic joked when asked why she chose the Queen City to tape her special.
Elias played VCC earlier this year, opening for former "Saturday Night Live" cast member
Melissa Villaseñor. She came away from the experience with plenty of admiration for the club.
"When I was up here in the winter, I just loved the audience," she said. "They were smart and fun, and overall the vibe was a room full of people who care about comedy."
Burlington's proximity to NYC might help, too.
"And after the CrowdStrike stuff, I might choose all my taping locations based on whether or not I can drive to the venue," she joked, referring to the cybersecurity firm's historic global IT outage last month.
courtesy of artist
Ariel Elias
While Elias feels confident she won't see another beverage hurled her way in Burlington, she has a new fear to face once the special is taped: what to do next.
"This is my first special, so I'm not sure what the process is supposed to be like," she admitted. "But I'm pretty sure what comes next is an editing process where I stare at myself and try not to critique my voice and my whole body endlessly, then start to beg everyone I know with a podcast to have me on to promote it, followed by asking my manager a 1,000 times a day what I'm doing wrong."
Elias plans to shop her special to streaming services and networks. If she doesn't find any takers, she'll upload it to YouTube, which has become a viable outlet for comedians in a crowded field.
"There's no doubt the market is crazy oversaturated now," Elias said. "Having a special isn't the big thing it used to be; you're not looking for it to change your life as a comedian."
And if she comes across another Trump supporter during one of her sets, she hopes for a better interaction than what went down that fateful night in New Jersey.
"I don't think polarization is good for comedy or humanity in general," Elias said. "I grew up Jewish in Kentucky, so I'm very used to explaining things to people who grew up differently than me."
"Honestly, Kentucky and Vermont are really similar," she continued. "Kentucky is like Vermont if Kentucky had a social safety net... and better dentistry."
For more information and tickets, visit
vermontcomedyclub.com.