Laughter is serious business for Eric Shorts.

As general manager and one of the owners of Morty's Comedy Joint, the stand-up comedian works seven days a week making sure his audience is smiling.

A year into running the new club in the former location of the Funny Bone on the Northside, he's beginning to grin a little himself.

Shorts, a New Jersey native, came to Indianapolis 10 years ago after his mother's job transfer brought her to the city. The plan was for him to split time between Indy and California, where he could be "chasing the dream."

A few weeks after moving to Indianapolis, he met the woman who would be his wife, Betty Jo, and began honing his skills at Indianapolis clubs, occasionally touring with extended stops in California.

But Shorts, 40, continued to find his big break elusive. "Talent is only one-third of the solution," said the comedian, who pokes fun at everything from relationships to politics. "The rest is knowing the right people and the luck of the draw."

Are they funny?

While his stand-up dreams live on, he now focuses on applying what he knows about comedy at the club he opened with his best friend since high school, Andrew Pincus, and Pincus' father.

The club is named for Andrew Pincus' pug dog, Morty.

"We looked at New Jersey, New York and San Diego," Shorts said. "But we kept coming back to this spot. It was already a comedy club, and we thought that would help."

While things were slow at first, the buzz is growing about Morty's, Shorts said. "People say they're surprised the shows are so funny throughout. We work hard to book the best comedians we can find," he said. "We get the question 'Are they funny?' less and less. People just know."

Shorts takes the stage twice a week in the club, hosting the amateur and professional night each Monday and usually filling another guest spot.

"It's so rewarding to be out there on the stage," he said. "You get immediate feedback for the work you do. That's unusual. And it motivates you to keep doing better."

As much as he enjoys performing, Shorts plans to focus on the club business for five more years -- possibly opening others in different cities -- before relaunching his stand-up career, this time with the benefit of connections he's made as a comedy-club owner.

"I get a lot of people on the phone now who I would never have been able to talk to as Eric Shorts the comedian," he said.

Shorts is confident he'll stick with stand-up. "Once I discovered the ability to make people laugh and the joy behind that, I knew there was no greater job," he said. "But I don't even look at it as a job. It's not work. It's artwork."

A sample from Eric Shorts' stand-up routine:

"Every time I walk into a nightclub I see some 21-year-old girl wearing a T-shirt that says 'Sexy' or 'Princess.' That is tacky and conceited. If a young woman wants to attract a man, she should wear a T-shirt that says 'no kids' . . . 'I can actually cook' . . . or 'I shave my legs all year-round.' That will get a man's attention."