Comedian Iliza Shlesinger reveals secrets of millenial generation

Iliza Shlesinger made her mark when she became the youngest competitor, and the first woman, to win “Last Comic Standing” in 2008. She won over the crowd with snarky comments about the partying lifestyle: “The only (sports) event I participated in was beer pong,” she said in one appearance. “Why are all drinking games disgusting? It’s like, ‘Dude, don’t worry about it, I washed off the ball.’ ”

Ten years later, age and gender issues still play a role in her comedy, which she’s taken to new heights.

Her smart-aleck remarks have landed her hosting gigs for two game shows — you know that’s big time when Snoop Dogg and Ellen DeGeneres are doing it — but those were so long ago that she calls it “ancient history.”

She’s also been one of the most prolific contributors to Netflix; late in July, Netflix released another comedy special, “Elder Millennial Tour,” a kind of follow-up to her book, 2017’s “Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity,” in which she deconstructs the minds of young women.

Shlesinger brings her “Elder Millennial Tour” to The Republik for two shows on Saturday. Even if you’ve seen it on Netflix already, she recommends coming to see it — or even seeing twice if you can match her energy, which seems boundless.

“There’s tons of material that I didn’t get into the show,” she said in a phone call from another tour stop.

“The cool thing about the special is that I sort of feel like I have the right now, at 35, to look back,” said Shlesinger, who as a 2001 high school graduate qualifies as a millennial. “There’s certain moments in life where you kind of realize, ‘Hey! I’ve lived a little!’ and I can look at that with perspective and say from a ‘wizened,’ elder perspective, ‘Man, man, was life sh—ty in your 20s’ — and laugh about it, because we all live through it.”

Expect plenty of commentary about the club scene and the games young people play to get attention at this tour stop. Shlesinger enjoys demystifying such matters, assuming the persona of both men and women, then taking a step back to explain their behavior.

“I think it’s important that the audience comes away from this hour feeling like somebody crawled inside their brain and took all their secrets,” she said. “That’s exactly what I, as an elderly millennial, intend to do.”

So those seemingly spontaneous poses, the casual glances thrown across the darkened room?

“Guys think, ‘Oh, I saw a girl and just walked up to her,’ but chances are that girl saw you first and made it so that you saw her,” she said. “Women, we are always on the prowl. You think you met your girlfriend this way, gentlemen? Well actually, she’s going to tell it differently.”

Shlesinger has her “straight” moments during her shows too, stopping the laughs to touch on issues like sexual harassment.

“I think the best way to ‘educate’ people and to get them to listen to you, whether they disagree with you or not, is to kind of sugarcoat things and wrap them in comedy. … The way I deliver my message is you get your jokes in, say something serious, and then you have a punchline right after. The idea is that everyone is uplifted.”

SHLESINGER GREW up as an outsider in many ways. She’s Jewish, and her parents are from New York originally, but the family moved to what was then a rural area north of Dallas, where she was raised.

“There was always the religious aspect, which people tend to frown on when you’re a little different,” she said, “but New Yorkers don’t take any sh—t, and they call things like they are. I kind of have that attitude a little bit, which clashes a little bit with the Texas ‘yes ma’am, bless your heart.’”

She was destined for show business early on, participating on her high school’s improvisation team, studying film in college and immediately moving to Los Angeles afterward to do stand-up. She caught on at the famous Improv comedy club, propelling her to a series of cable and online comedy shows and “Last Comic Standing.”

She approaches the job with the hand of a seasoned veteran. For her latest special, her fourth for Netflix, she worked out the material for about a year in comedy clubs, fine-tuning it so that she knew “exactly where each laugh would come from.”

“You only have only one chance to put it on film,” she said. “I can perform it however I want the rest of my life, but people will forever have that snapshot, so it was very important to me to have it right and make it a lean, trim hour.”

Life promises change for her future. She is recently married, to a Los Angeles-based chef, and she is pondering the possibility of family. “Maybe there will be a chubby baby leg to squeeze in the future,” she said, referring to a bit from her special, “but regardless, there will be more specials.”

Though Hawaii is one of the wedding capitals of the world, this trip will be no honeymoon. Her husband won’t be making the trip, nor will her dog, Blanche, who often makes an appearance at the beginning of her performances, dressed nattily and trotting across the stage. Shlesinger calls Blanche her “smudge stick” who “cleanses the stage” before she goes on, but the logistics of long distance travel precluded her from bring the rescue dog along.

“When I take her to Canada, they always want to see the rabies form, but she doesn’t have any teeth, so can you transfer rabies if you can’t puncture the skin? Who knows?”