How to American

by Jimmy O. Yang

  Then I received a call from Sean Kelly the next day. It was a bit odd for him to call me out of the blue during the day. Usually, we would just chat in person whenever I ran into him at the Comedy Palace. There was a sense of urgency to this call. I picked up the phone, and before I could say hi, Sean said:

  “You need to get out of that strip club.”

  It was those words that gave me the ultimatum I needed. He had overheard the strip club Christmas brawl story from Tarrell, and he was very concerned. Sean said, “Jimmy, you are young, you are funny, move to LA and focus on your comedy. You need to get out of that strip club before it’s too late.” That was the wake-up call I so desperately needed.

  I went to work at the strip club that night, but I knew it would be my last; it had to be. It was a quiet night. I was off my game. I wasn’t playing the right songs and I was messing up stripper names. I called Milan “Paris,” and she was not happy about that.

  I was on edge all night, waiting for Shooter to come in for his nightly checkup. Shooter finally came in around midnight. For some reason he looked more intimidating than usual, or at least that’s how I felt. I waited until he had greeted all the strippers and I went up to him and said, “Shooter, I’m moving up to LA. I am quitting the strip club.”

  He didn’t flinch. In a very matter-of-fact way, he said, “I was going to open up a new club for you and let you run it. You should stay.”

  Although flattered, I knew I had to stand my ground. I said, “I have to go to LA to pursue my comedy career.”

  As much as he wanted me to stay, he knew comedy was my passion and he respected that. So he simply said, “Okay” and he walked away. He understood. As much as Shooter wanted me to be his protégé, he knew I was destined for something bigger than his strip club. He let me go.

  That was the last time I ever stepped foot into Fantasy Showgirls, or any strip club for that matter. After I moved to LA, Shooter kept in touch with me with a monthly phone call from a different number. I always had a feeling it was Shooter when I got a call from a random number with a 619 area code.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, kid, everything good?” He never introduced himself, but I always recognized his voice.

  “Hey, Shooter! Yeah, everything is great.”

  “Okay, just want to make sure you are all right,” and he hung up. That was all he said, every time. He just wanted to know if I was okay, and nobody was fucking with me. It felt good to know a gangster had my back. I knew if anything were to happen to me, Shooter would take care of it. Shooter might have been a hard-nosed criminal, but he treated me like his son.

  The calls eventually faded away. A year ago, I ran into a fellow stripper DJ/comedian friend named Polo the Cholo. Polo delivered the news that Shooter had passed away. I felt genuinely sad. I felt like I lost a guardian angel.

  Every kid who listened to gangster rap and watched Scarface had a fantasy of becoming a glorified gangster. I was stupid enough to actually try to become one. At least now I can tell people I gave up a life of crime to become a noble comedian.

  What did my parents think about me working at a strip club? I guess I’ll find out after they read this book and hear about it for the first time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HOW TO

  MAKE IT

  Shooter still owed me some back strip club DJ wages when I left San Diego, but I was willing to forgo four hundred bucks to not confront a notorious gangster. I packed all of my worthless possessions into my two-door, four-cylinder Toyota Celica and headed back to LA. I didn’t want to crawl back to my dad’s apartment as a failure, and I definitely didn’t want to live in that Chinese retirement community again. I’d rather try to survive on my own with the two thousand dollars I had in my college checking account. So I went on the most trusted site on the Internet, Craigslist, and found a living room for rent for three hundred bucks a month from a random dude in Hollywood. I had no idea how I was going to make it, but I was determined to never live with a bunch of old ladies talking about their periods ever again.

  A couple of my comedian friends in LA told me they struck gold in the commercial acting game. My friend Will said he had done an Absolut Vodka commercial two years ago. One day of work on that commercial had made him sixty grand in residuals. Sixty grand?! If I can just book one commercial a year, I’ll be rich! Sixty grand sounded like a million dollars to this retired strip club DJ. I made it my goal in Hollywood to become a filthy rich commercial actor. I just needed to survive on ramen noodles for six months until I booked my first commercial. It seemed like a flawlessly sound financial plan. Pssttt, I can do this, easy! Then I quickly realized I had to deal with the age-old question in Hollywood: Where do I start?

  Will told me he started as an extra in that Absolut commercial, then the actor who was supposed to play the security guard in the commercial didn’t show up, so the director picked the biggest (possibly fattest) extra on set and bumped him up to play the security guard as a featured actor. And boom! Sixty grand. Will told me about the infamous Central Casting office in Burbank. It’s the first stop for everyone who comes off the Greyhound bus to Hollywood, where they sign up to be an extra. He also told me that if I collected three union vouchers for being an extra, then I’d be eligible to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild, the SAG union. Everyone who has ever been on-screen, from Audrey Hepburn to Brad Pitt to vodka commercial Will, is in SAG. Wow, so you’re telling me one day, if I sign up to be an extra, I can be part of SAG and go down in history with Bobby De Niro in Hollywood? That would be beyond my wildest dreams. Little did I know that there were 160,000 members in SAG and 95 percent of them were unemployed on any given day. But my ignorance outweighed my doubts, and I scurried to the Central Casting office to sign up to be a star.

  Central Casting is like the open mic for actors; there’s zero barrier of entry and it was filled with desperate people. Every day there are packs of people lined up to “register” to be an actor. Everyone had to grab a number and wait in a folding chair, inside of a cold gray building, just like the DMV. It was more like herding sheep than becoming an actor. You fill out some paperwork, wait for them to call your name, take a passport photo, then off you go to be a star in Hollywood. They compile a database of people who are willing to work on set for minimum wage and then they call you if they need a person to blend into the background of a commercial, TV show or movie. There are many words for extras: background actors, background artists and, my favorite, atmosphere. I quickly realized this isn’t where dreams come true; it’s where people sign up to be warm flesh bags that are as unnoticeable as the air in the atmosphere.

  There was every type of person waiting to sign up in Central Casting, from a midwestern mom, to an authentic Montana lumberjack, to the super-good-looking dude who truly believed he was destined to be a star. It was kind of beautiful in its own way, to have a place where people who would never hang out with each other came together to pursue the same dream. But as beautiful as that might sound, realistically, only one out of a hundred thousand of us flesh bags would ever make it in this town. I’m sure this was the point where many of these people who left their lives behind for their big Hollywood dream realized, Fuck, what am I doing here? At least that’s how I felt that day at Central Casting. I started to second-guess myself for not taking the job at Smith Barney. Maybe I am delusional. And just then, a dude snapped a picture of me, perfectly capturing all of my regrets in that moment. That was my first headshot in Hollywood. I was now officially signed up to be a star. Shit. I went home, and by home, I mean a random Craigslist guy’s living room with my twin-size mattress.

  Random Craigslist guy was a twenty-year-old black dude named Nathan, but he insisted people call him Nathaniel. He was smaller than me but had twice the pizzazz, a gay man having the time of his life in Hollywood. I never figured out what he did for a living, but he somehow managed to rent this apartment and throw the occasional party. One night he invited his buddies, five gay Latino du
des to be exact, to the apartment for a little get-together. They seemed like nice, friendly dudes, and I mostly kept myself occupied playing Halo on the Xbox. What Nathaniel didn’t tell me was that all five of his fabulous Latino hunks planned on crashing in the apartment that night, and he could only accommodate one of them in his room, because, well, Nathaniel believed in monogamy. The other four dudes would crash in the living room with me. Whatever. I guess I’d finally have my first all-American slumber party.

  It was three in the morning, I lay down on my bed, but all of them were still taking tequila shots. Then two of them started making out right next to my head, and the other two were egging them on. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Then I kept hearing one dude repeatedly say, “Hey, Pablo, you’re a power bottom, huh?” For people who don’t know what a power bottom is, I’m not going to explain it in this book; just google it on UrbanDictionary.com. Look, I love gay people, but if anyone, gay or straight, starts talking about taking it up the ass next to me when I sleep, I’m right to feel a little uncomfortable. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen beyond this point, so I kept my eyes closed, put on my headphones and started blasting Jay-Z at max volume. Till today, I have no idea what exactly happened that night. All I know is there were four dudes with perfectly trimmed eyebrows next to me and one of them was a power bottom. By the time I woke up, nobody was there anymore. Maybe it was all a dream? It was definitely all a dream. Right?

  There were a lot of things I chose to not understand when I lived with Nathaniel. The second month I was there, he had trouble coming up with his eight-hundred-dollar share of the rent. I had already given him my precious three hundred dollars, so this was beyond frustrating. What if he takes my three hundred bucks and we still both get evicted? That’s bullshit! When I asked him, “Hey, are you going to be able to come up with your rent?” he would just brush me off and say, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it.” I tried my best to not worry about getting evicted and prayed that Pablo or his four friends would loan him some money.

  It was now the twentieth of the month, the landlord had already come and knocked on our door twice and I was sure the third time was going to be the end. I was about to either be homeless or institutionalized in the old Chinese people community. I was stressing out so badly, no amount of Halo or Jay-Z could distract me. And Nathaniel was just chilling in his room without a care in the world. Then around four o’clock in the afternoon there was a knock on the door. I turned off the TV and jumped under my covers, pretending nobody was home.

  “Coming!” said Nathaniel, as he casually cruised out of his room.

  “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t answer that!” I whispered.

  “It’s okay, it’s my friend.”

  Nathaniel opened the door. It wasn’t the landlord. On the other side of the door was a sheepish seventy-year-old gray-haired man wearing a cashmere cardigan sweater. They didn’t greet each other or even shake hands. Nathaniel led him to his room without saying a word. He shut the door behind him and locked it. And once again, I chose to remain ignorant and put on my headphones to Jay-Z’s Black Album. Ten minutes later, the old man strolled out of Nathaniel’s room and left without ever making eye contact with me. I had no idea what happened in that room that day. All I know is Nathaniel had the rent money after that and I wasn’t evicted.

  I couldn’t even land a job as an extra. I’d call in to the Central Casting system every day, where there was a prerecorded message for available extra work. If there was something that fit your look, you would call another number to put your name and headshot in for approval. I called in for “college background kids” and “Chinatown teenagers” several times, but for some reason I’d never get a response. Maybe they saw the deep regret in my headshot OR maybe I was too good looking to blend in with the atmosphere. I’m sure they thought if I was in a background of a TV show, the audience would be so distracted by my beauty, they couldn’t concentrate on the show. “Oh my God, who is that kid in the background eating a sandwich? He’s way too hot, I can’t even pay attention to the show!” Well, at least that’s the story I tried to tell myself of in order to preserve what little ego I had left.

  A few months went by and I’d made zero dollars and no progress in LA. I was just hanging out at open mics with zero prospects and my strip club savings were running thin. A friend who worked at the Comedy Store suggested I sign up on the casting websites. Casting websites such as LACasting.com and ActorsAccess.com give actors opportunities to submit for acting jobs themselves, without representation. Usually, these jobs are shabby nonunion reenactment gigs like America’s Most Wanted that pay a hundred dollars to play a serial murderer on the loose. I didn’t mind working those jobs and I desperately needed that hundred bucks, but the problem was none of them ever really fit my description. I mean, when was the last time you saw an Asian murderer on America’s Most Wanted? But what the hell, I didn’t have anything else going on, so I gave it a shot. I signed up for a membership on all the casting websites. It was as desperate as a divorcée signing up for all the dating websites on the Internet in search of a new lover. None of these casting sites was free. They were all part of a racket to make money off of people’s dreams in Hollywood. It cost fifteen dollars a month to be a member, thirty dollars to upload a headshot and forty dollars to upload an acting reel on each website. I couldn’t afford new headshots, which would have cost a cool five hundred dollars, so I had my friend take some amateur headshots of my hair blowing in the wind. I didn’t have an acting reel. How was I supposed to have an acting reel if I’d never acted before? So I just put up two minutes of my stand-up comedy video. I checked off all the special skills on the websites’ digital résumés. I thought if someone was willing to pay me, I could always learn to ride a unicycle and wrangle some ferrets. On LACasting.com, there’s an “additional skill set” comment box, and I wrote “New in town, good comedic timing, looking for representation.” It was a desperate cry for help.

  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.