An Open Letter to the Students of Palo Alto High School:

First of all, I want to thank you all for a most wonderful show, truly one of the most memorable I’ve ever been involved in. To be quite frank with you, I’d never performed for high school students and I wasn’t certain if you guys would dig my material.

Second, I want to apologize profusely to anyone who was offended. I’ve entertained Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean and this fall, will be performing for the president of the United States. I have performed at Intel, Applied Materials, AOL and at the United Nations. I’ve entertained Intel CEO Andy Grove, Mrs. Tony Blair, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Yoko Ono, Felicia Rashad, Sabeer Bhatia (the guy who started Hotmail), venture capitalists, ministers from the Canadian and British governments, Coach Bobby Knight, and many other luminaries. I’ve featured with Robert Schimmel and had Bob Saget specifically ask for me. And of course, I’ve toured with the great Russell Peters. Last year I was in 14 countries. My videos have been viewed on the Internet over 300,000 times. After my show at the United Nations, Mrs. Tony Blair came up to me and told me she loved my act and insisted on a photograph with me. I’ve never had anybody tell me they were offended by my act, ever!

What’s really bizarre is that I freely perform at both East Asian and South Asian shows (Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Pakistani) all over the world, and! In fact, I do mostly Indian shows and Indians are really, really good about laughing at themselves.

I find it somewhat ironic that with all the comedians out there talking about nothing but sex and making fun of midgets and people in wheelchairs, that my 100% clean comedy would be considered to be offensive. In addition, my comment is nothing compared to the profanity, sexuality and violence that you see daily on network television.

Principal Laurence states that he “talked to a large number of students and staff and the educational leadership at the school. A large number of them also felt uncomfortable at the end of the assembly.” I take issue with this statement. I believe that this statement is carefully worded to make it seem as if the majority of students were upset about my act. I think the truth is that the staff was offended but that you students loved it. It sure seemed to me as if the large majority if not all of the students loved it. I’ve watched the videotape and to be quite frank with you, I’ve never had to pause so long for laughs at any show in my whole career.

If you have the time, I’d like to hear from each and everyone of you about what you thought of my act. If you hated it, if you were offended, please don’t hold back, please be honest – I won’t hold it against you. If you enjoyed it, I’d love to hear from you also. My e-mail is [email protected] and I will personally answer every e-mail. If you’d like to add me to Myspace, you can do so at

http://www.myspace.com/nainan

And finally, here is my video clip using almost the exact same jokes, performing in front of 1800 Indian folks.

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2709639

Yours most sincerely,

Dan

http://www.nainan.com