Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 487 - Can You Be Funny Without Being Bullied As A Kid? - Tree Vo

Transcript

487 - Can You Be Funny Without Being Bullied As A Kid? - Tree Vo · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I have Tree Va here with me today, and we are at a park, lovely, beautiful, LA day.
0:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Tree, thanks for driving all the way to join us.
0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course.
0:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I came a little late, because I was just so I dove in, opened up next to my house, and I got a marble drift this morning, and that was marble drip in through me.
0:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I needed to make a stop to let out the crack-in, cause,
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you would, all right, you have nothing to do with it.
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got here.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We just started.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we're starting off strong.
0:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to be doing jumping jacks to like work off the nerves.
0:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you're just fine.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a good.
0:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just nervous because I mean, I follow his work.
0:41
[SPEAKER_00]: He's doing such great things.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was just nervous coming on today.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I think it's going to be fun.
0:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
0:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for the kind words.
0:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Have you always been this funny?
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: No, honestly, I feel like most of the time I'm not funny.
0:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just saying it.
0:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it comes out like a defense mechanism a little bit when I'm nervous.
0:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that makes sense.
1:01
[SPEAKER_04]: That makes a lot of sense.
1:03
[SPEAKER_04]: When you started making content, how did you know if it would work?
1:12
[SPEAKER_04]: This funny business.
1:13
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you know that this was going to be something that, you know, has legs?
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly, I didn't, it kind of just happened.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started my TikTok during COVID.
1:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we were all going through, we're all going through it during COVID.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I told myself prior to COVID, I would never download TikTok as everyone's saying they're addicted to it.
1:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just didn't want to fall in that trap.
1:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But during COVID, we weren't doing anything.
1:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like, let's go.
1:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me download TikTok.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me try this out and I started posting videos on TikTok that I've been posting on my Snapchat actually like just for my close friends but I started putting it out there.
1:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It started getting traction and I realized there's like a huge Vietnamese community online and I started connecting with everyone and it just kept going from there but I did
2:04
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a very recent thing, but did you have like acting or did you have any singing or show it as experience prior going into that TikTok venture?
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so in high school I was a huge theater kid.
2:17
[SPEAKER_00]: If you couldn't tell I did plays and I didn't musicals and growing up there was a part of me that always thought, I wanted to be an actor.
2:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I wanted to make people laugh.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be an entertainer.
2:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was always that part of me.
2:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And leaving high school, actually,
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Dreams where I'm going to move to New York and I'm going to be on Broadway, but of course being in a Vietnamese immigrant family I feel like being in the entertainment business is not something that's encouraged So I was kind of talked out of that a little bit.
2:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to college and I did fall in love with business And I went to get my master's I worked in Silicon Valley for a couple years and then COVID hit
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, something just didn't feel aligned anymore.
2:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I mean, I love this, but I feel like there's another part of me that I want to explore, and I want to do that now.
3:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So I spent a couple years in corporate that I decided, I think it's time to go and explore other things, especially when my TikTok started getting some traction, and I realized there is a community that wants entertainment, especially picking fun at their own
3:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of just took it from there and I moved down to LA, I started taking gigs, I started leaning into the content creation a little bit more.
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm just doing everything creative and I feel like I'm living my best life.
3:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you completely off the corporate grid?
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Not completely.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I do come into the office like once a week.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I do have an office job that allows me to come in once a week.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still get to do HR, which I actually do really love.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So I appreciate that I have jobs that are kind of flexible and allows me to be creative on the side.
3:50
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the way to go, I think.
3:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
3:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It's to have like a a remote job that you love and that you can continue to do the the real work.
3:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:01
[SPEAKER_04]: What did you grow up?
4:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up in San Jose, California.
4:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, but I don't talk about that too much because I barely, I don't have any recollection of Georgia, but spent most of my life in San Jose.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your parents in Japan, Georgia?
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So my biological dad was in Georgia.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was born over there and my parents got divorced and my mom moved here to California where my grandparents were in San Jose.
4:26
[SPEAKER_04]: OK, and then did you go around a lot of Vietnamese people?
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So funny enough, up until maybe middle school, high school, there weren't a lot of Vietnamese people in my life outside of my family.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, I grew up in a nominally Mexican community, like a elementary school.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So in elementary school, I was like one of three Asian kids.
4:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got a lot of bullying for that, was called All the Slurs Under the Sun, but I think it builds character.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think that's where comedy comes from.
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: darkness.
5:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, calm on comedy comes from trauma.
5:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Princeton trauma.
5:04
[SPEAKER_04]: If you were not traumatized as a kid, Exactly.
5:07
[SPEAKER_04]: You're coming.
5:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're then you're boring.
5:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's getting more and more.
5:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
5:12
[SPEAKER_04]: But your Vietnamese pronunciation and your understanding of idiomatic contextual movements within the words is like flawless.
5:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
5:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Where did you get that from?
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
5:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I don't think I'm as fluent in Vietnamese as people think I am.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it all come on now.
5:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes off that way.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But honestly, I like to say I'm half fluent in all the languages I know.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what did they say?
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They say bilingual, but like, B-Y-E, because you don't, you're not actually bilingual.
5:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, no, it's crazy how precise you are with your language.
5:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it.
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I try.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm still a learner.
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Vietnamese is hard.
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And especially since I moved away from my family, I feel like I don't get to practice my Vietnamese as much.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm appreciative that I get to use Vietnamese as my content to practice myself.
6:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It's hard, but it's harder to do what you do, which is like bringing words together and then going in and out of it.
6:15
[SPEAKER_04]: the framing of what you do is what's mind blowing.
6:18
[SPEAKER_04]: When you sit and you analyze like what is being said in the flow, I have so much appreciation for the way your brain works in that context.
6:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody can study it like a neuroscientist can study how your brain is going back and forth.
6:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's as if it's one language.
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:39
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're born in Georgia.
6:40
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like mumbling.
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was born here.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my mom kind of talks that way.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a little instinctive to me.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I just like inhale and English.
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And it exhales and beat me sometimes.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It flows.
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes out of me a little naturally, just like the marble drip this morning.
7:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So you let's do a resort now?
7:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
7:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I think that Marvel drip comment is very visual, very graphic.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, cuts commercial actually.
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this cut this out.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: No kidding.
7:12
[SPEAKER_04]: You can keep it.
7:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, okay, so now are you doing acting classes or any of that stuff?
7:17
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm not.
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We were just talking about this right before, but I want to start doing more classes, just the whole my acting skills, and it's been so long since I've done it.
7:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, let's talk about that.
7:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So you brought up UCB, which is United Citizens Brigade, right?
7:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So UCB is it's a place in L.A. sort of like the place where you kind of work out improv.
7:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And you said to me, well, we shared that we both, because we talked to a little pepper and Fred Lay, I talked to all these guys at one point about me doing stand-up comedy, right?
7:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think you'd make an amazing stand-up comic.
7:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it'd be fun.
7:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I'd be good at it, because I feel like I tense up sometimes, but I think it'd be a lot of fun.
8:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if I don't end up being a stand-up comedian, I think it's skills that I can use in content creation,
8:12
[SPEAKER_04]: I brought up this example of like, you know, athletes if they're a basketball player, football player, they crush train in other sports.
8:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
8:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's like, you know, running or whatever.
8:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's conditioning us to kind of like, be quicker on our feet when we're making content.
8:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Or like, I don't, you'll eventually get probably get MC gigs or, you know,
8:35
[SPEAKER_04]: hosting or whatever.
8:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think when you do, and I say this because I know a lot of content creator is listening and you know, sometimes, uh, you know, you know, sometimes, uh, you
8:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The experience of talking to people like you will inspire young people to kind of understand like, okay, this is us in April, 2026, right?
8:54
[SPEAKER_04]: But in four years from now, after UCB, we do that one six week thing, people are like, oh, shit, like they actually talked about it today.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we're on tour together, going worldwide.
9:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll be in my stores.
9:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, she for the stars, but I'll be like with the walking cane at that point because it takes 10 years.
9:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll talk about, I mean, the guys were talking at dinner last thing.
9:16
[SPEAKER_04]: We're talking about how long it actually takes to like lock in.
9:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Three years minimum, five years on average, 10 years, if you're not that great.
9:25
[SPEAKER_04]: To be a stand up comedian or just to tour and make that money.
9:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but I think I don't want to do it to be a stand up
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:36
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so I can get better like if I'm on stage talking as a host.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Just having that kind of that ability to kind of do it.
9:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do it.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Very classes.
9:46
[SPEAKER_04]: There we go.
9:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's do it.
9:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's do it.
9:48
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna do it.
9:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna do it.
9:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to do it.
9:50
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to do it because we're not editing this.
9:53
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not editing this.
9:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, man.
9:56
[SPEAKER_04]: What, you know, you talked about a little bit about those bullying in this trauma.
10:06
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, my kids go to school here in South Pasadena.
10:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And I asked them all the time, are you, is there any bullying?
10:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you guys bully like, what's the deal?
10:15
[SPEAKER_04]: They're like, no, there's no bullying at all.
10:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if that's a great thing.
10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, bring back bullying.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that what you're saying?
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We need more comedians in the future, bring back bullying.
10:30
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, because I think about how hard I had it as a Vietnamese-American kid, and I'm like, oh, well, it has informed all of the identity things that I talked about today, and I'm like, maybe I'd be a corporate person working on a five, and there would be no interesting thing to really address in society today.
10:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And I asked this question on a very simple basis all the time.
10:53
[SPEAKER_04]: You probably can't answer, wouldn't be better for your life if you didn't have trouble.
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, because I feel like most of my artistic content comes from trauma.
11:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And the reason I bring that up sometimes is because I think about how we are product of war.
11:17
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're the product of like the Vietnam War.
11:20
[SPEAKER_04]: But when I think about somebody like you, I'm like,
11:24
[SPEAKER_04]: You can see it in the way your mother talks, right?
11:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That there's trauma in her probably wartime experiences a young girl.
11:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And that yelling, you get a hearing coming through you.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like people ask me all the time, why are you always yelling?
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I don't know, that's just the only way I've heard Vietnamese.
11:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know there was another volume for Vietnamese.
11:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's just if you feel it, it's all, but like meeting you in person so many times, it's like, you're such a chill person.
11:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
11:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I, I don't know.
11:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
11:56
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you're totally chill.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm glad.
11:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've seen you.
11:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like you're totally chill.
12:00
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not, not, there's not this, same, on our personality.
12:06
[SPEAKER_04]: This flow state that I witnessed and I talk about that, then you show up.
12:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you realize like you're in flow state when you're doing it?
12:17
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what that is?
12:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what flow state is?
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like when I'm just locked in, I'm in the zone.
12:21
[SPEAKER_04]: If you don't, you don't.
12:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like, there's no, you can't track time.
12:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Hour has gone by, you're just in flow state.
12:29
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like a, it's a term, coined by this, like, writer, Schumerinsky.
12:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And he wrote a book called Flow State.
12:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you could see it in you when you're really delivering, yeah.
12:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I never thought about it that way.
12:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's cool.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: That is showing up, showing up that way.
12:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So does it mean that you have
12:45
[SPEAKER_04]: that you record many times on a clip like what's the process because it can't be where you like hit record and you do this shot you do this like you do this stick in one shot.
12:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like having trouble with it.
13:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I find it impossible for you to like turn and hit record and then go for it and then you're just like in flow state right away like what's the process?
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a flow.
13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So I keep a list of things on my phone that just triggers need throughout the day.
13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, this is really annoying.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I feel like this is a good basis for content, a good foundation for it.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then,
13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm frustrated enough, I will rant about it on the spot.
13:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just like, I just hit record.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I start doing it.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a one take thing, though.
13:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I rant about it a little bit.
13:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as I'm, I'm brand new, like a joke comes up.
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, let's do that again and add that joke.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do it again.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I add another joke.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And then another joke comes up.
13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just keeps going and going until I make myself giggle.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, that's good.
13:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna post that.
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So my process is a little chaotic.
13:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really have a, it's different every time.
13:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow.
13:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I do the skits.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how my content first started.
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like picking fun of my mom a lot.
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So whenever she says something that triggers me, I'm like, I'm so frustrated right now.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to make a skit about this.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do, I say exactly what she said to me, but I put a comedic twist on it.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I exaggerated a little bit more just for comedic intentions.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that one I do have to plan out a little bit more.
14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like writing down things she says.
14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I form a bit of a script.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But same process, like whenever I'm filming, I think of a joke, and then I do it again, and I just added it.
14:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's crazy.
14:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a cool process.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a little chaotic, but it works.
14:29
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, how have you been receiving, how have you been receiving the
14:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I don't know, I think I'm grateful enough that I don't receive hate comments or anything.
14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's generally been positive.
14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what the consensus is in Vietnam specifically, but for the most part, feedback's been positive.
14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope I like to think people are enjoying it everywhere.
14:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I can imagine, because there's a lot of young people in Vietnam as speaking for speaking-lish.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:58
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot.
14:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been in Vietnam.
15:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I like once when I was really young.
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to go back though.
15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to eat Vietnamese street foods so bad.
15:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And have Marvel drip?
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But over there.
15:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And experience the squat toilets?
15:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
15:20
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
15:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember that?
15:21
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're hold where you went to Vietnam.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: How does it like 10 or something?
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I visited Hui, which is where my grandpa grew up.
15:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And we didn't live in a very great area.
15:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're, you know, we're pooping in the holes on the ground.
15:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Or yeah.
15:36
[SPEAKER_04]: At 10.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: By me, you're a very flexible at 10.
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It was no problem.
15:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I couldn't do that 10.
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't?
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
15:44
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I can't even do it now.
15:46
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm older, so I can't.
15:47
[SPEAKER_04]: But even at 10, there's no way.
15:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Like my brain wouldn't let me do it.
15:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd hold it in for weeks if I, yeah.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
15:54
[SPEAKER_04]: It could not do it.
15:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't even use a public bathroom.
15:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?
15:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you get poop shy?
16:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just so gross to me.
16:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fair.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's poop shyness.
16:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like going to a mental thing.
16:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like, is it a physical thing for you?
16:08
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, look, I've never said this on air, but since I'm sitting with the comedian, I guess I'm going to have to go there.
16:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we have to go to the poop stories.
16:16
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to go there, okay?
16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
16:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's too much.
16:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I think America has it wrong.
16:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Think about this.
16:25
[SPEAKER_04]: If you put poop on your hand and you take toilet paper and you wipe it down three or four times, is it really clean?
16:32
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to wash it off with water, tree.
16:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Think about this, this bidet thing.
16:38
[SPEAKER_04]: You're a bidet guy.
16:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I have to do bidet or shower.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have to, okay, I did it.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but about it.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to get too graphic.
16:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You can cut this out of it's too much.
16:47
[SPEAKER_04]: But I feel like, yeah, we cut this out.
16:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't get enough of that.
16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: When you poop, there's like a natural lubrication that allows the wipe to be cleaner.
16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, it's not like.
16:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Wait, what's the natural lubrication?
17:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
17:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone is spending these half an hour talking about, okay.
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a doctor.
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know exactly what I'm talking about, but it feels like there's a lubrication because there has to be for it to come out of you.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like poop on your hand, your hands ashy.
17:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You, you know, so there would be streaks of you just wipe it off your hand.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like there's some moisture right after you poop.
17:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's cut to commercial.
17:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That was too much.
17:24
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, it's not too much.
17:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, we're going to go deeper.
17:27
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we've got to get.
17:31
[SPEAKER_04]: no button intended for sure, but think about this.
17:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
17:33
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
17:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I was going to bring up the whole coffee and colonoscopy and cancer all in one.
17:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
17:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing it.
17:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
17:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It's weird that the universe is brought us here today, actually.
17:44
[SPEAKER_04]: To talk about poop.
17:46
[SPEAKER_04]: My theory on cancer, colon cancer.
17:49
[SPEAKER_04]: You do coffee, right?
17:51
[SPEAKER_04]: You do regular coffee where it's like acidity going into your body, right?
17:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So you do espresso, you do all this hot drip, face it out, and all this stuff.
18:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's tearing up the lining inside of your stomach and your gut.
18:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So by the time you, you poop.
18:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It's inflaming your colon or your adopters, if you're listening, please help me out here because I'm like some ignorant guy talking about this.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon in, we're just a bunch of comedians.
18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know what we're talking about.
18:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
18:17
[SPEAKER_04]: That's about to sound to UCB.
18:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I think that when you ingest all this acidity and you inflame yourself and everything gets inflammed and then you use toilet paper to wipe,
18:30
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're doing this for 20, 30 years, and it's causing all kinds of like lining damage to your like open extremities, you're gonna have some molecular cell changes down there that it's gonna create cancer down there.
18:45
[SPEAKER_04]: That is my theory.
18:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see that.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Our zone, are you anti-toylet paper?
18:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that what I'm getting?
18:50
[SPEAKER_04]: 100% anti-toylet paper and I'm anti- Coffee going through expresso drips and machines.
18:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, because the two of those things in my brain come but, and I'll talk about this.
19:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, hemorrhoids was a problem for me when I was on toilet paper and I said it, express so.
19:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Once all that went away, perfect poop.
19:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Perfect poop.
19:21
[SPEAKER_04]: No issues.
19:23
[SPEAKER_04]: no issues at all, no pain.
19:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So I can't imagine.
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't pain, no gain, you.
19:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you should try it, you should try it.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think we're ready to go no toilet paper yet.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe one day.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I like my, I like my Sherman Ultra Soft.
19:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I gotta say, well, I, you know,
19:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not fighting for this, like this is not a hot take from me or anything, but I'm just saying this is just some logical thing that I've thought about throughout the years.
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
19:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, water is the answer to all of it.
19:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think Europe, Asia, like the day countries.
20:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
20:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think a lot more Americans are now adapting to this idea of like water.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
20:07
[SPEAKER_04]: When everybody was like short and toilet paper during the pandemic.
20:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of bad days, have you thought about how gay in Vietnamese is bad day to all the time?
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a coincidence?
20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: What's a history there?
20:24
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, no.
20:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
20:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, thank you for asking.
20:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to deliver this thing.
20:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
20:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm about to get educated.
20:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
20:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So, be day is different from bad day.
20:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
20:33
[SPEAKER_04]: So, the spellings are actually different.
20:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
20:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Be day is the water coming out of a toilet, right?
20:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
20:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Bet, Bet eight comes from the root word, uh, pedophile, pedophile.
20:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, so that makes us very darker.
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a floor.
20:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a floor.
20:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Bet eight is definitely a floor.
20:52
[SPEAKER_04]: You should never be using Bet eight.
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You should not allow people to use Bet eight.
20:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
20:57
[SPEAKER_04]: This is what I've like been told by the gay community many, many years ago.
21:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
21:01
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a, you know, like you're calling somebody basically a pedophile.
21:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I never thought about it like that.
21:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that term was used so loosely in my family, but my family's also, you know, we're having conversations about it.
21:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was difficult for me when I came out to my family like a couple years ago.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can see how maybe some of these slurs were kind of just normalized in my family.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did not know Bay Day was a slur.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I also learned recently that Chinky is a slur.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I didn't know that.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was just a descriptive word, like... Slanted as a descriptive word.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Slanted?
21:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Slanted?
21:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, did you ever get called that?
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all the time.
21:45
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's a slower, right?
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was heard by it because it was coming from someone not in my community and it was to make fun of me.
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so I thought Chinky was just, like, I call myself Chinky sometimes.
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know it was a slur until I was taking a photo with one of my white friends.
22:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I was smizing in it, you know, when do you like smile by clothes or ice little?
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I look kind of chinky in this and she said, no, Theresa, don't say that about yourself.
22:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, what do you mean?
22:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's a descriptive word.
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I do look chinky in this.
22:14
[SPEAKER_04]: But we can use that word on ourself, right?
22:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
22:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't think it's when we use it, it's a slower for ourself.
22:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
22:21
[SPEAKER_04]: But I guess other people, it's definitely a slower.
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
22:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Just learning all these terms or slurs, I guess.
22:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I just grew up hearing it.
22:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I wonder, look, I think words matter.
22:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But, um,
22:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sometimes, you know, friends at love us and they bust out with these slurs, I think, and if they don't know it, is it okay for them to continue using it or do we call them out?
22:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you should definitely call them out if you know.
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, none of my friends are saying, chinky around me, but I was just thinking.
22:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it was okay.
22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
23:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, she gives definitely a slur.
23:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And biday is definitely a slur.
23:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, what's the options to biday?
23:06
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you say?
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
23:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you feel like the term biday has been reclaimed by the gay community?
23:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Not that it's a good way or bad way.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: In a good way?
23:17
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
23:18
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
23:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think it's ever.
23:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not OK.
23:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's one of those things that they don't know.
23:24
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't know.
23:25
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you do know the history of it,
23:27
[SPEAKER_04]: But then this is what I've heard.
23:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I probably need to call him John Fam over at Columbia.
23:33
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a linguist, it's professor.
23:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's a young professor that specializes in his words.
23:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And he happens to be gay.
23:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So I should probably ask John if he knows this.
23:45
[SPEAKER_04]: But what I've heard throughout the years is bidet is the root word for pedophile or it comes to work.
23:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, knowing that I can definitely see how that's a slur and disrespectful.
23:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Bad day means child.
24:00
[SPEAKER_04]: File, filet means love of.
24:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So pedophile means the love of a child, like Philadelphia means brother.
24:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And filet means the love, the brotherly love.
24:12
[SPEAKER_04]: So pedophile means the love of a child.
24:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So, if you say bidet, it doesn't mean child, but it means all of those guys who love little boys.
24:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm.
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was a doubt, it was a doubt that maybe I think during the French times.
24:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, I don't know what the real root cause root root word.
24:33
[SPEAKER_04]: The etymology behind it is, but that's what I've been told throughout the year.
24:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't know.
24:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think this is worth actually looking into.
24:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, totally.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know the term for lesbian in Vietnamese is, is it omoi, I think?
24:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's perfect.
24:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I try omoi.
24:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Omoi, yeah.
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a slur?
24:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
24:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And we'll only know if we can figure out where it comes from.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
25:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we need to look into this.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Omoi.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That'll be my homework after this.
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to look into this.
25:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I do know, though, like, I've been gay my whole life.
25:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I've like known since I was little.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did feel something when I heard my family refer to a gay person and they would say, like, they'd be, maybe, or be, oh, my, like, it was something that happened to them.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of implicated that it was a choice.
25:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do remember feeling like, I don't know why but that doesn't sit right with me.
25:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're saying it's something be to something like it's a disease you call it.
25:37
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, 1,000 percent on the mark, yeah, 1,000 percent right.
25:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And I have to correct my mom all the time and older people around me, but it means bad happening to you.
25:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, look, it means good happening to you.
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
25:52
[SPEAKER_04]: So when you say,
25:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Combine, you never hear that.
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: No, she gets the privilege to be in your being gay.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
26:01
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll never hear that in Vietnamese, like, the cons.
26:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
26:03
[SPEAKER_04]: But you hear, babe, babe, babe, babe.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like, like, it's like a bad thing.
26:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's no different.
26:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
26:09
[SPEAKER_04]: So this idea, I mean, you're saying no more.
26:12
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you got it right.
26:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
26:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's up to us to, like,
26:19
[SPEAKER_04]: adjust the language, that these people have.
26:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And I always, and I always correct older people.
26:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, oh, oh, let's back up here.
26:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Back nine, seven, seven, seven, eight, eight, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight.
26:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And if they're like, very progressive, they're like, oh, oh, Max and Logan, you know, I don't mean it that way.
26:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
26:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, but then watch your words, right?
26:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Check your stuff, right?
26:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But if they're, you know, super religious and they're anti-gay, then I'm like, let's break this down and move into this debate.
26:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, you should not be using that word that way.
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I wish I could tell my family that sometimes.
26:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like your Vietnamese goes a lot deeper than mine, like I
26:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say I'm fluent in most casual Vietnamese conversations, but when it comes to politics, when it comes to explaining how I'm offended, I have a hard time with that.
27:08
[SPEAKER_04]: But you have a good sense of it, and that's what matters most is that you have a sense of, like you couldn't even really understand why it was like you're feeling it, but you just explained it to me, why you were feeling like this is wrong.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you get the breakdown, the literal word breakdown.
27:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that our job with being born to our families in America were rebels.
27:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Americans are rebels.
27:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Vietnamese Americans have this rebellion kind of like program into our DNA.
27:44
[SPEAKER_04]: It's our job to like inform.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll give a fuck.
27:50
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
27:51
[SPEAKER_04]: What do people think?
27:53
[SPEAKER_04]: You brought us here, and you didn't know that you were going to have rubbles in your family, but this is the result of being Americans, this is the beauty of being an American, is having this rebellious streak to really call out the things that are wrong.
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And you got it.
28:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It gets kind of hard with your immigrant family sometimes because you want to honor their traditional values.
28:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's, I think they had to hold it so close coming to America because that's all they had.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I challenged their ideas on
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: the gay community when it comes to the entertainment industry too.
28:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to push back a lot because it's what I'm doing now and sometimes I feel like I don't really have their respect.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I try to explain to them like, you know, you brought me here for opportunities and this is the opportunity.
28:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I have the luxury of picking what I want to do and really looking deep and seeing what makes me happy, which I feel like they didn't have the opportunity to do.
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I try to
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on the side of, I want to respect you, I want to honor what you did to bring me here, but at the same time, I'm my own person.
29:05
[SPEAKER_04]: You know?
29:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I have to ask him, what are they, why are they getting involved first of all?
29:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Because we all go to this as artists that think our parents are, but what are they fearing?
29:16
[SPEAKER_04]: They give you a fine financially.
29:18
[SPEAKER_04]: What is it?
29:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Like,
29:23
[SPEAKER_04]: What are they really afraid of?
29:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's the instability.
29:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you think about Vietnamese artists, like in Vietnam, I think they notoriously struggled.
29:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't know if you heard the term like... Sinka Voloit.
29:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't heard of that, actually.
29:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But it probably means the same thing like, no, go, like, Gassie is always cold.
29:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's, I always hear that.
29:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or just any artists in general.
29:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think they have that idea that if you're an artist, you're, you're kind of bound to be struggling.
29:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think if you're in a home, that's fair.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, even here.
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've been here.
29:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, yeah, it's.
30:00
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think,
30:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Here, there are artists that get it and lock in on the business side.
30:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Because once you can figure out the business side of the model, then you can actually make a lot of money.
30:13
[SPEAKER_04]: You just have to figure out what the steps are.
30:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And I talk a lot about these steps with like, like, we'll pepper, right?
30:21
[SPEAKER_04]: The last time he was on, we talked about like, how long it takes, how much money you should expect.
30:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we didn't talk about like, those kind of breakdowns, but there are actual steps.
30:30
[SPEAKER_04]: there's actual layers to all of the things.
30:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Like as a film director and actor, some people make it some people don't.
30:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And you gotta kinda know like if you have been doing this for a few years and you're not making traction and you look around and like everybody's hitting their milestones but you then you need to drop out.
30:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Right?
30:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not fighting that.
30:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:50
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think in Vietnam, back in the day, they didn't have structure.
30:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And there were no infrastructure in place to pay out.
30:58
[SPEAKER_04]: But we're in America.
30:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's like, you see a whole class of Vietnamese artists in America, whether it's Instagram people or actual film directors or whatever, they're making money.
31:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Making a lot of money.
31:11
[SPEAKER_04]: But if they're making money, why can't we make money?
31:13
[SPEAKER_04]: The only difference is if you know better, or you don't know better.
31:17
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
31:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this Mike okay, by the way?
31:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you might have been covering.
31:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's good.
31:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
31:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
31:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think talking about that, they always worry about like these things that are really not concrete fears.
31:36
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just like these abstract fears that they, you know, have history coming from the old country, but like
31:43
[SPEAKER_04]: There are people that make so much money in the entertainment industry.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
31:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Granted, it is a small percentage.
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So I understand the fear that it's coming from.
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just that it's an unknown space for them.
31:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is unstable sometimes.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And they tell me all the time, like, oh, you're only doing this because you're young, but what happens when you're old?
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I think,
32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: getting olds would exist regardless of what industry I'm in.
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And they talk about how it's own.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So unstable, because I am a gig worker, like I work from gig to gig.
32:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But when they look at my nine to five, it seemed to more stable.
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had a place to go to every day.
32:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And they think that that's secure.
32:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But when it comes down to people and still can value get laid off all the time.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not any more maybe a little bit, but not much more
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: industry that we're in.
32:40
[SPEAKER_04]: When I put a line in the pros and cons boxes, and I list the pros and cons list, I put a line, and I write the pros and the cons, I think about all the money that could buy me opportunities to travel and to eat at amazing restaurants, and then I write out on the pros for being a content creator, being the list of pros for me, far outweigh the list of cons.
33:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I think about me as a corporate or a business person back in the day, the list of pros are big, but the cons are even like her.
33:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
33:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that not everybody has trauma as artists, I think whatever that trauma is or the experience that we go through provides this sort of like this,
33:34
[SPEAKER_04]: this material, and if it doesn't get out, you become very dead and unhappy.
33:39
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the problem.
33:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And so like not everybody are artists because they don't have these like weird backgrounds that they being gay or, and I usually were weird, you know, having identity being weird to the normal person, we have weird baggage.
33:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And if it can't get out, we become,
33:57
[SPEAKER_04]: You become stuck.
33:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I am.
34:00
[SPEAKER_04]: My brain is functioning constantly on so many different, you know, emotional issues and regulating sexuality, regulating identity and existential shit and it just, it can't, it never comes down.
34:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So as a corporate person or as a business person, it's an unhappy existence.
34:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, what were you doing before in corporate?
34:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a factory that wasn't a corporate job.
34:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I owned a factory with my mom and dad and my brother.
34:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow, for 20 something years.
34:33
[SPEAKER_04]: It still exists in Vietnam.
34:35
[SPEAKER_04]: We still, we still weave out of it.
34:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But I was so unhappy.
34:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was in Hollywood for, you know, the first five years after college, 95, work at the agencies or production companies for film.
34:52
[SPEAKER_04]: But I was so unhappy.
34:55
[SPEAKER_00]: What about it?
34:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it the routine or no?
34:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like I was looking at all these actors and writers and stuff Then they were expressing yeah, and you would read it on the page and you're just like I could be doing that But I didn't I just didn't know that it was open to me.
35:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know that there were steps and layers to like to doing all these things.
35:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah I'm looking you know
35:17
[SPEAKER_04]: 50, I should have been doing this at 25, you know?
35:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're here now, that's one of those.
35:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Which I'm grateful for, I'm not complaining.
35:26
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're right.
35:27
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're young enough to still like, cement your artistry.
35:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And then even as a much older person, you could still be doing the same things that you do.
35:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I hope so.
35:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I love what I'm doing.
35:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think as AI and
35:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I think as AI and all of these technologies take over the entertainment space, comedians who can show up in real-time in real life is priceless.
35:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
35:59
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't, you cannot do AI cannot do what a comedian can do.
36:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever tried to ask like chat GPT to tell you a joke?
36:11
[SPEAKER_04]: No, have you?
36:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Always so bad.
36:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like knocking off jokes.
36:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
36:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah, so it gives me a little confidence that comedy is not going anywhere.
36:20
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no way.
36:21
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no way.
36:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't, I mean, we've already seen AI taking over some space of the entertainment industry, but I think there's some parts that's so human about the entertainment industry that AI can ever take over.
36:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It won't for comedians, especially.
36:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think so.
36:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I was into this one AI.
36:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know it was AI at the time, but this solsinger is a black voice, that voice, singing like these really disturbing.
36:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like, he was like this reform player going to church.
36:58
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of like it was an AI singer who's it I didn't find out too much later.
37:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but I was hooked on the song because all of the taboo of what black men go through as a player and then as a reformed player going to church and wreaking a booze and like womanizing and
37:20
[SPEAKER_04]: it was amazing, but I started letting my friends listen to it and I thought it was like entertaining to like have them comment on it, but they began to tell me, there's something like off about this, all of it sounded the same.
37:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And I began to like really study it.
37:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And then at the beginning of the last year, it was like he had like five songs.
37:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Like whoever did it had five, only five songs.
37:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like, all right, this is cool.
37:46
[SPEAKER_04]: They're all like, they sound like great hits.
37:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And then by the end of the year, there were like 50 tracks.
37:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like, you can't write that many, that's true.
37:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I looked into it.
37:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like a programmer, like writing AI music.
38:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's crazy.
38:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And I always sound the same.
38:02
[SPEAKER_04]: They all sound like chalk, chalk topping hits.
38:08
[SPEAKER_04]: you get bored of that, so you can't go to it and feel the soul and the imperfection of that.
38:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think as we become more entertained with movies or whatever that are coming out of AI, I think there will be a limit to how we respond to it.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.
38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I hear a lot of people getting catfish by AI songs.
38:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, listen to the song.
38:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so good.
38:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you look at them.
38:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You go to the Spotify profile.
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That too.
38:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just a little off.
38:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the photo looks a little too perfect.
38:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Her skin's a little too airbrushed.
38:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, way to minute.
38:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep.
38:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
38:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep.
38:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And they can't really ever dig into this um wealth of like,
38:49
[SPEAKER_04]: information that you are dealing with with your mom like how are they ever going to get to that right yeah don't see it
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I joke around about how, you know, there's been these scam calls where I don't know how they've been like imitating your parents' voice to call you and say like, they're holding me hostage.
39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to send me $100,000 right now and I was like, there's no way they can get my mom's voice right because there's no way they can perfect a Vietnamese accent, but just enough to sound exactly like my mom and the way she does the Vietnamese, I'm like, I really hope they can't imitate that because then if so, then I'm screwed.
39:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I find it difficult.
39:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And even if they could replicate it, the actual words that they use will not have that like, it'll ring hollow.
39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So now we have to find more trauma that we can ingest to create more.
39:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But do you have a worry about that?
39:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have a worry that you run out of material to write about?
39:51
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean, I take inspirations from everyday inconveniences.
39:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I go online and I rant about random stuff all the time.
39:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talk about my experiences interacting with other Vietnamese people.
40:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, recently, I did a rant, not really a rant, but just something I noticed when I was interacting with the Vietnamese baker.
40:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I was buying something at a bakery.
40:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I said, yeah, Bound you, no, what was it?
40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, yeah, and I bang you thing, no, it wasn't that.
40:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We blend some words together and like you know I just notice little things like that in our language that I comment on and people seem to be like oh yeah, I never noticed that before and we bond over that so it's just every day stuff I don't think it always has to rely on trauma it started off that way and it goes back to that a lot but we do have you ever expanded beyond the Vietnamese do you think that your material will let itself be on the Vietnamese borders of language.
40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I get a lot of non Vietnamese people saying like my mom acts the same way and I think most of the time it's just immigrants in general, like their moms kind of inhabit the same overbearing a little protective of their kids telling them what not to do.
41:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's grown beyond the Vietnamese community a little bit, but I think at its core it's mostly relatable to kids of immigrants.
41:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you ever look at your performance numbers and question yourself?
41:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I go through this and I always think about this.
41:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, for people who do what we do, how do you get beyond the numbers?
41:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Some clips in the episode you put out, rocks kicks ass and then some do below par.
41:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I wonder how that affects your content creation.
41:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard as a performer and especially when it's like your it could be your main avenue of income because you don't want to look at the numbers because you don't want it to affect your creativity and you don't want to perform based on the numbers but when it the numbers is kind of all you have to
42:05
[SPEAKER_00]: numeralizer success, I guess, I try not to look at it too much, because sometimes when I put stuff out there and I'm like, I feel like this is funny and it's not performing well, I don't want to, I don't want to impair myself from doing like being experimental or trying that same bit the next time, you know, so it's hard, but I try not to look at it and I'm like, if it does well, then it does well and if it doesn't then, oh well,
42:30
[SPEAKER_04]: That is definitely one of the hardest things I think about putting our content.
42:34
[SPEAKER_04]: You know?
42:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that naval gazing and you're thinking about God, this is like good to me.
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and as an entertainer, I feel like we have people pleasing tendencies because we are doing it for the people.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the people's not enjoying it, I'm like, oh, man, I suck.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't like me, but at the same time, you need it.
42:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Lake.
42:54
[SPEAKER_00]: just keep true to what you think it's common comedy because I think when you get lost in what other people think it's comedy, then it becomes something else and then you're making stuff that you don't resonate with and it's different.
43:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, rings hollow.
43:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
43:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't wait for you to go back to Vietnam one day and perform on stage as a stand-up comedian with an
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds intimidating, but it sounds really fun.
43:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm open to trying it.
43:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe one day, maybe 10 years from now.
43:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll refer back to this podcast.
43:30
[SPEAKER_04]: 10 years from now, we're going to refer back to this podcast and look back at the last five years of, like, where we are.
43:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I don't think it takes that long for you to go from UCB and then picking up, like, a few years of, you know, doing stand-up.
43:49
[SPEAKER_04]: and the platform that you have will inform each other, right?
43:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, the setup and then, you know, Steve, Steven, how is?
43:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've been seeing his stuff around.
44:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we'll just toured with him, right?
44:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not sure if I don't know.
44:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Correcting if I'm wrong.
44:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think, yes.
44:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think I've seen his stuff around too.
44:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he was like this ER nurse.
44:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, yeah.
44:11
[SPEAKER_04]: For many years.
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have someone else to guess.
44:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and any of you who's doing Instagram like you.
44:15
[SPEAKER_04]: doing all these bits, and then he just blew up, and then he just like really honed in, and he studied acting too, and honed in on stand-up.
44:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Million followers on Instagram.
44:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So once you put it out there, you're just like, I'm going on tour, put tour dates out.
44:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that sounds fun.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It does.
44:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I love being on stage.
44:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember I have such fun memories of doing theater because it's like you're up there, it's the adrenaline, you have one shot of doing this right and you had months and months of rehearsal and this is like your one moment and you get to do it and people love it and it's such a thrilling feeling.
44:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't get that as much with film.
44:54
[SPEAKER_00]: but I love it in different ways, because you get to perfect it, you get to retake it, you get to try different things.
45:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But something about being on stage and performing and receiving that comedy or that laughter on the spot, that hits different.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:09
[SPEAKER_04]: that's talked about like this film and acting journey that you are embarking on.
45:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a relatively recent thing or have you been doing it for us five years since the pandemic?
45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, definitely not for five years.
45:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I only moved down to SoCal maybe three years ago now.
45:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
45:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's fairly new to me.
45:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I mostly do in commercials now.
45:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing short films here and there, but I enjoy it a lot.
45:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting a lot of onset experience and it's a lot of fun.
45:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
45:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, and three years, you're getting commercials and you're getting short film.
45:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun.
45:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to take the next steps and dive into film a little bit more, but I think that industry's a little bit harder to break into, but I think my goals in life is to be like a comedic sidekick in a featured film, like whenever Aquafina's in a movie, for example.
45:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's yours.
45:58
[SPEAKER_00]: She plays that comedic sidekick and everything she's in, you're like, this is gonna be so funny.
46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: because she's in there.
46:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So I love being like the second person, the second funny person.
46:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, right, right.
46:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It relieves the pressure of being the funny person.
46:11
[SPEAKER_00]: A little bit, yeah.
46:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
46:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I could see that.
46:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I could see your Aquafino vibes and not entirely, but I could see, I could see what you mean by the second person.
46:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, she's so funny.
46:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I love her.
46:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: What's, let's put it here.
46:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Hopefully we see you on the big screen soon.
46:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll see.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a long journey, but yeah.
46:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's a journey we're taking.
46:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's a journey that requires a thousand more steps that every step feels good.
46:42
[SPEAKER_04]: It feels like moving towards something.
46:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it does feel good.
46:46
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not empty steps.
46:47
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
46:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
46:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Sweet, thank you so much for coming on today.
46:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
46:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, is there anything else you want to bring up that I didn't bring up?
46:56
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think we covered everything.
46:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We covered poop, we covered being gay, we covered trauma.
47:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes up me.
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I hope to have you on again soon.
47:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I mean soon, it's like every time you have something new, hit me up and you know, sit and we all have a conversation.
47:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It must be back.
47:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That's such a nice day out.
47:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Tree.
47:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course.
47:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
47:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.