Jimmy Yang - How to American

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Standup comic, actor and fan favorite from the popular HBO series
shares his memoir of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in California and making it in Hollywood.
Jimmy O. Yang is about to have his moment. You've likely seen the standup comic and actor starring as a series regular, the fan favorite character Jian Yang in Mike Judge's Emmy-nominated HBO comedy
. Or you may have caught his first dramatic turn in director Peter Berg's acclaimed film
. Next up is a major role opposite Melissa McCarthy in the comedy
. Beyond his burgeoning career in Hollywood, Yang's star status is only a small piece of his story. His family emigrated from Hong Kong to Los Angeles when he was 13. Can you think of a worse time for a young adolescent who didn't speak English to be thrown into the Los Angeles School District with its notorious income gap, mean girls, and children of Hollywood elite?
In his…

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LOWBALL JIM

“What made you get into stand-up comedy?” Many people have asked me that question, and I can never give them a rosy answer that’d satisfy them. I’ve heard other comedians answer that question with a beautiful life story. “I used to sneak into the movie theater and watch Eddie Murphy’s RAW with my brother and it changed my life. From that day on, my only goal in life was to become a stand-up comedian.” And “The day my brother passed away with a congenital heart disease, I went onstage to my very first open mic.” Beautiful, but who gives a shit? I’m not afraid to disappoint people and answer the question with the simple truth.

“So what made you get into stand-up comedy?”

“I was fucking desperate.”

I was twenty-one years old when I did my first open mic. Twenty-one was supposed to be the prime of my life where I partied every night, did Ecstasy and had unadulterated sex with hot strangers. Instead, I was stewing away in my dad’s apartment playing Madden with Phil during my last summer vacation from college. I couldn’t accept this as my reality, especially after coming back from Florence. Phil’s an awesome dude but the thought of playing PlayStation in my dad’s apartment for the rest of my life gave me an anxiety attack. I wanted to party like Mike “The Situation” on Jersey Shore. I wanted to live!

I needed to expand my horizon and find a community of friends. So I decided to sign up for a Brazilian jujitsu class because I was a fan of the UFC, but I totally forgot people actively try to break each other’s arms in this sport. In my very first jujitsu class, the Brazilian instructor mounted on top of me and demonstrated a guillotine choke in front of the class. Before I could tap out in submission, the front of my esophagus was pressed against the back of my spine and I almost passed out. I thought he had cracked my windpipe; luckily I only had a sore throat for two weeks. People always tell you, “Never give up. Don’t be a quitter.” Those people have never gotten choked by a Brazilian jujitsu black belt. I should have quit halfway through day one, but like a good idiot who believed in old idioms, I stuck with it for three painful months.

They would always team me up with the girls during sparring exercises because I was the smallest guy in class. What’s the fun in this? I thought. I’d have to take it easy on the girls, but I soon realized that the girls were actually much stronger than I was, and they twisted me up like the kid working at Wetzel’s Pretzel. Once I was paired with a really attractive blond girl. It sounded awesome on paper, but it turned out to be my most embarrassing jujitsu experience yet. Before I could even think about flirting with her, she tucked my head under her shoulders and put me in the familiar guillotine choke. The rest of the class looked on as my face turned blue. I barely managed to tap out before I passed out. Then we’d start again and I’d get caught in another submission. Five minutes into this utter humiliation, things got even worse. I got a boner. This rare physical contact with the opposite sex was more action than I’d gotten in a year. Instead of looking like a pervert with a BDSM fetish, I immediately tapped out before she could notice my boner. I was TKO’d by my own dick. I rushed over and grabbed my gym bag to cover my boner and then sidestepped out of the gym. I never went back ever again.

The only female contact I’d gotten lately was getting my ass handed to me in jujitsu. I was destined to be unemployed and play Madden with Phil at my dad’s for the rest of my life. And that’s when I googled “local open mics.” When people google “local open mics,” they are one step away from googling “What’s the least painful way to kill myself?” It’s the last frontier before giving up on life.

My search results led me to the HaHa Cafe Comedy Club in North Hollywood. It was the only legitimate comedy club in LA that had an open mic every night at six before their real shows. The catch was I had to pay five dollars to get five minutes of stage time, only to perform in front of five other open-mic comics who were impatiently waiting their turn. Sounds terrible? It totally was. But as bad as it was, it was still better than wasting my life away. My life was so lame at that point that paying money to embarrass myself at an open mic was somehow an improvement. Almost every comedian I’ve met started doing stand-up after some kind of crisis in his or her life. Sometimes it’s a bad divorce, a bankruptcy or a third DUI arrest. For me, it was getting a boner at jujitsu class. The next day, I drove to the Haha Comedy Club and paid my five dollars to get onstage for the very first time. I wasn’t nervous at all. I mean, what did I have to lose? My dignity? That was left behind on the jujitsu mat.

So many of my favorite urban comedians and all of my favorite rappers went by stage names: Cedric the Entertainer, Bruce Bruce, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z. I thought I needed my own catchy stage name. So I signed up on my first open mic as “Lowball Jim.” I had seen that name in a Texas hold ’em instruction guide online, where there were two players facing off, Highball Phil and Lowball Jim. I thought it’d be funny to get introduced as a shady-sounding Lowball Jim and this little innocent-looking Asian kid would pop up.

“Our next comedian, Lowball Jim!”

I jumped up onstage and got my first chuckles.

“What’s up, North Hollywood!” I learned that from BET Comicview : always start by shouting the city you’re in. The crowd responded with a few mechanical claps, and by crowd I mean the five other comedians who were waiting their turn to get onstage.

I then rambled on with five minutes of masturbation jokes, the gold standard for all new comics who haven’t learned the meaning of the word hack . And my closer was yet another masturbation bit:

“I was jerking off to porn on my computer and watching ESPN at the same time. And right when I was about to finish, Michael Vick scores a touchdown and I turned around to the TV and came. So basically, I jacked off to Michael Vick.” With a few pity chuckles, the legend of Lowball Jim was born.

All the comedians hung out at the bar after the shows and talked about our sets. Everyone was giving each other tips for their bits; it reminded me of writing rhymes at Chris’s house.

A fellow open-miker came up to me. “Yo, that Michael Vick bit was funny. Can I give you a tag?”

I didn’t know what tag meant but, “Sure.” Apparently, tags are additional funny lines tagged after the punch line.

“At the end of the bit you can say, ‘So now every time Michael Vick scores a touchdown, I cum a little.’”

I laughed. This was brilliant. I didn’t think anyone would care for the stupid Michael Vick jerk-off joke. But this guy was actually analyzing it and helping me improve on it. I felt like I was welcomed into a secret society of comedians. This new world where jerking off to Michael Vick was considered an art form was exactly what I was looking for.

Even though stand-up was a one-man sport, it was a community of hilarious people. There were comedians from every background: black, white, Asian, Latino, twenties, fifties, rich, poor, single, divorced, red-blooded Americans and immigrants. Comedy doesn’t care about where you are from; it cares about how funny you are. Comedians are some of the most cynical and judgmental people, but we judge each other on the content of our jokes, not the color of our skin. Martin Luther King would be proud of the stand-up community. As long as you’re funny, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, Nigerian or Chinese, skinny or fat. Funny is funny. Stand-up comedy is one of the only places where all the outsiders truly fit in. It is like a secret society for the disenfranchised. It’s the only place where the weirder you are, the more interesting you become. Stand-up comedy was one of the only places I felt like I truly belonged.

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