Jimmy Yang - How to American

A week later, I got an email from a talent agency that wanted to meet with me and potentially sign me as a client. Huzzah! Someone has finally discovered my talent! The gamble paid off and I AM destined to be a star! I went down to the local printer and printed out ten copies of my eight-by-ten headshot, and I was on my way to meet with my first Hollywood agent. I was nervous. I knew this could make or break my career.

I pulled up to the agency’s address in my Celica and it was an apartment building in Santa Monica. I double-checked my email hoping I had the wrong zip code, but this was it, a two-story apartment building. I took a peek inside and I saw a clipboard that said “Commercial Agency, sign in here.” Maybe this is a personal interview at the agent’s home! I put down my name and I sat quietly in the empty lobby. I waited anxiously for twenty minutes; my legs were shaking as I wiped the sweat from my palms on my pants. Then I heard a lady call out, “Jimmy?” I perked up. “Yes, that’s me!” She gave me a warm smile and said, “Follow me, please.” She led me down the hallway and we walked right past the elevators. Every step we took away from the elevators, I became more concerned that I was going to be sold to a human trafficking ring. When we reached the end of the hallway, she opened a door in front of me and said, “Welcome.” And there I was. The agency was inside of a fucking rental office.

It was a small room filled with Ikea office furniture. There was an adjustable desk in the middle of the space; it was $69.99 from Ikea. I knew this because I had taken note of the wooden top with metal legs when I went there last week looking for the cheapest desk I could find. Sitting behind the desk was a stern bald man with glasses. He flatly greeted me without making any eye contact. “Hello.” And before I could reply, he handed me a small piece of paper and said, “Can you read this for me?” I looked down and I started reading:

“Staples, where everything you need for back to school is in one—”

“Can you read that to the camera?” the man behind the Ikea desk cut me off.

I looked up and the lady who led me in was now holding a small Toshiba home video camcorder. She said:

“Slate your name please.”

“What?”

“Just slate your name to the camera.”

I had no idea what that meant. I froze. And she looked at me exactly how the “What’s up?” girl from middle school looked at me. She wasn’t sure if I was deaf or dumb or both. She kept her patience and explained, “Slating your name means saying your name to the camera; just introduce yourself.” Why the fuck didn’t you just say that then? What the fuck is a slate? I concealed my rage and followed her instructions like a good boy.

“Hi, my name is Jimmy, I am originally from Hong Kong, now I live—”

“Just your name is fine,” the Ikea desk man cut me off again. “Now read your sides.”

I had no idea what sides were either, but instead of freezing up again, I assumed it was the generic Staples commercial he handed me, so I started:

“Staples, where everything you need for back to school is in one store. Staples, make more happen.”

“Okay, thanks.”

And that was it. The lady put the camcorder down and ushered me out of the rental office/agency. Well, I blew it. I blew my shot in Hollywood because I didn’t know what slate meant. My barrier with the English language had come back to knock me down in the most important interview of my life. All my English training and watching BET Rap City meant nothing. I sucked so bad I was rejected by a commercial agency in an apartment rental office. Time to call it quits and move back to my dad’s. It was stupid of me to think that I could make it as anything in Hollywood; I was obviously destined to be a quiet financial adviser like the nice Asian boy my dad wanted me to be.

I wallowed under the covers on my twin-size mattress for the next few days as my self-loathing took over. I got a call to do a stand-up gig in Paso Robles, a desert wine town in the middle of nowhere in California. It was four hours away for a fifty-dollar paycheck. So I hopped into my Celica and journeyed to briefly escape from my grim reality in LA. The show was in a bar converted from a barn; it smelled like whiskey and cow shit. I was asked to do twenty-five minutes but I really only had fifteen minutes of material at the time. Ten extra minutes onstage doesn’t sound that long, but that’s a lifetime when you run out of material. It’s like being on a first date and completely running out of things to say, so you sit there twiddling your thumbs wanting to kill yourself, except instead of one girl judging you, it’s a hundred drunk people judging you on a brightly lit stage. But hey, I needed those fifty bucks to upload a couple more headshots on LACasting.com.

I went onstage and the drunken crowd wasn’t very interested in seeing what this no-name comedian had to say. They just wanted to drink and they’d honestly prefer some music from the jukebox than a live comedian. I got some chuckles here and there, but none of the jokes really hit; half of the crowd was talking over me and the other half was busy ordering drinks from the bar. I got through all of my material in twenty minutes, and now I had to attempt to do some crowd work for another five.

“So how long have you guys been together?” I asked a couple in the front row.

Silence.

“Where did you guys meet?”

Nothing.

“Was it the grocery store? You guys look like a grocery store couple.”

“No.”

It was bad, but I got through it without anyone throwing a glass or screaming racial slurs at me. Luckily, I got my pay in cash and the bar manager was sympathetic enough to offer me a free meal. I accepted a nine-dollar cheeseburger, so my payments came out to a total of $59.88, if you include the tax on the cheeseburger. After spending thirty dollars on gas, I got out of Dodge with twenty dollars in my pocket and nine dollars in my stomach. All that just to live another day in LA; maybe I should quit comedy and start doing what Nathaniel did to that old man.

The next morning, I had another agency appointment from LACasting.com. I was exhausted from the eight-hour round trip from the night before, and I didn’t know if my body could physically take any more shaming. I would have stabbed myself with a samurai sword and ritually seppukued myself if I was rejected by another apartment rental office agency. This agency was all the way in Torrance, about an hour south of Hollywood. My appointment was at 10:00 a.m. and I didn’t even bother setting an alarm to wake up for it. I was woken up by Nathaniel and his hot Latin lover friend making coffee at eight, and as much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. I rolled around in my mattress for a while and Nathaniel asked:

“What you got going today?”

“Nothing, I have another stupid agency meeting, but I don’t think I’m gonna go. It’s all the way in fucking Torrance.”

“You should go. What do you have to lose?”

Nathaniel was probably trying to get me out of the house so he could get some alone time with his hot Latin lover, but he was right. I just drove four hours for a fifty-dollar gig in a barn and I think I’m too good to meet with an agent? I pulled myself together and headed for Torrance.

I wanted to turn around during every minute of that hour-long drive. The whole time I was praying I wouldn’t pull up to another apartment complex. I would have cried and crashed my car into the rental office. Luckily, I found myself at a nicely gated office building with a legitimate security guard. Instead of a sign-up sheet in the apartment lobby, I had to show my driver’s license to get into the building.