Jimmy O. Yang (performing a bit)
speaker
225 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Jimmy O. Yang (performing a bit)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
My Beverly Hills certificate? I don't think so. But yeah, you know, it was culture shock because Hong Kong is a big metropolitan, very vertical city, much like New York. You can walk anywhere. There's life on the streets. There's subways. You don't need a car. Whereas LA is the opposite. Everything is six lanes wide. Everything is concrete, strip malls. You can't walk.
Absolutely. The one thing that I really loved was hip hop when I first came to this country. It was so foreign to me in a way, but I was like, wow, this is the most American thing ever. And in high school, I really got into hip hop. I got into rap. I started making beats. I thought that would like make me instead of like the weird foreign kid into like the cool kind of hip hop kid.
But of course, it's weird, you know, for me to try to rap like, you know, but I really kind of dove into that. And then in college, I went to UC San Diego. It was a big Asian population. But there's also like a stoner surfer culture. So I remember I was like, I really got into like the stoner culture thinking that was mainstream America college kid that I want to get behind.
And even now, I think... Inadvertently? Sorry, English is my fourth language.
You're fourth or fifth. Inadvertently, I'm still doing that where I am the commissioner of my fantasy football league. I watch every single NFL game. I love drinking a Coors Light on the weekend with my buddies or five or six, you know, just to be like really American. You know, I love very American things.
Like I went to shop for like a Yeti cooler the other day and it made me felt like I fit in, man. Yes.
A lot of the American movies, growing up in the 90s, it was a lot of action movies. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bloodsport. That was the go-to Hong Kong movie because they shot part of that in Hong Kong. Still one of my favorites. And of course, the big movies like Forrest Gump. And my dad was kind of a cinephile, an American cinephile.
I remember him watching Shawshank Redemption, and that had a lasting effect on me. But it's also a lot of local films. For me, it was the comedy of Stephen Chow, Zhao Shengqi. who later found a lot of international fame with Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer. But I grew up watching him. And he had a deadpan kind of delivery. And it's just so, so funny.
I think on TV, I really gravitated towards comedies at first. The Chappelle Show was a must-watch. You know, if you don't watch it Wednesday, you got nothing to talk about in high school on Thursday. And I think through Chappelle, I got into stand-up comedy.
No. I didn't even think that was a possibility. I just thought these are what these funny people do on TV. I will probably just go on to be an engineer, a doctor, something like that. You know, the roles that the society has assigned you. But I've always had... an inkling, like an artistic drive to me.
I remember when I was a kid, I would go to restaurants and like with chopstick wrappers or like disposable spoons, I would like build little art pieces. You know, it sounds really silly now. And then my mom would be like, you're messing up the table. Look at how messy your table is compared to everyone else. But then now looking back, I'm like, I'm trying to make something.
I always want to create something. Whether it's with chopstick wrappers or a pen drawing on my arm. And then when I went to college, I studied economics. Well, first I studied mechanical engineering. And then I switched to economics, which was much easier. I just wanted to graduate.
Yeah, that was still appeasing Asian parents. Yeah, that was the joke in my first stand-up, which is true. I couldn't do, I don't know, archaeology. I don't know. I don't know what is communications. I don't think my dad would like that. Economics, at least, it sounded real. Not to disparage any communication majors out there. So I did economics, but I secretly had a minor in theater and music.
It never came to fruition. I think you need seven classes, but I took like six classes on each of those. And I remember those are the things I got A's at and those were the things I did the best at because I was passionate about it.
And then later on, you know, after I graduated, when I was like trying to figure myself out, stand-up was just one of many things that I've tried and it just spoke to me. You know, you can literally create something out of thin air without anyone's permission. And I thought that was very liberating.
It was interesting because in the book and also in the script of the pilot, Willis is supposed to have trained in Kung Fu all his life, but he's not supposed to be very good. So how do you play that?
So then I wasn't sure if the producer was going to have me train in Kung Fu, but I'm like, guys, in order for me to look bad in Kung Fu, I have to be pretty good to at least understand the language of Kung Fu. It's like learning a new language in a way, right? I've never done martial arts before. In my life. So I had a trainer, Danny. He was Danny Ma. He was awesome.
And I trained with him two, three times a week in Wing Chun, hitting the dummy, doing the basics. So at least I can look right in the form. And also martial arts is a language, is a culture in itself. You want to get in that mentality. It's like driving the Toyota Corolla. I want to get into Willis's mentality, somebody who is trained in martial arts all his life.
And then I can still not be very good when it comes to the fight, you know? So that was how I was able to make it real. But it was also very interesting. Growing up in Hong Kong, Kung Fu was so prevalent and such a thing that you see on TV in real life. And of course, being Asian-American. You know, people almost expect you to know how to do Kung Fu and I don't know how to do any of it.
So this kind of filled up a big void in my life and in my culture. Now, at least I can say I can hit a wooden dummy Wing Chun style and I'm pretty okay. Finally, finally, you know, in middle school, kids who used to like make fun of me when I first came to the country and they like, like, you know, bully me and like talk trash, whatever. But that's how I learned to defend myself with comedy.
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