0:00 [Music] welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of the careful boys well we got walter in the hot seat today hi see walter welcome to our game of thrones hot seat where you know we like to put our special guests in a very very very very warm and hot seat and okay ask you some really really fun questions where we start off a little bit cool sorry for a little cool and we'll get a little warm and we'll heat it up at the end okay okay i like to start it off real sterile bart do i okay um what was your favorite subject in high school oh ████ dude you're so good at that that's a sterile ass question nobody gives a ████ but let's just start that that's like let's waste some time kind of quickly warm up you know like looking back i actually remember all my teachers in high school and i i'll say history i wasn't good at
0:50 it but i like to teach her a lot yeah mr reed i got a question so like for the people who just tuned in who don't know who you are this thing like how did you get passionate about stand-up content that's true especially back then it was during a time when asians had no representation and you know it was still a time where there was no people that you can look up to and you just had to just do it for me so i have three stints in stand up one was when i was 22 right out of college uh one was like when i was i think 23 24 and then this is the longest one it's been probably close to like maybe 15 16 17 years i'm bad at time this one just started this stint just
1:40 started as a hobby i just wanted to just do it just for fun but for most people getting on stage is like the most frightening thing in the world though yeah for me i'm not wired that way so for me getting on stage is that was like i didn't it wasn't a concern of mine even the first show you didn't have like the butterflies like oh my god i can't believe i'm doing this ████ i think i was more concerned with like the very first time i did i just stand up was at laugh factory waiting outside for like 12 hours um that was when i was 22 my main concern was is uh are they gonna find me funny that was like my main concern i wasn't like getting on stage or anything like that but wait so you had to wait 20 hours for your turn well back then you had to be there at seven in the morning and then you went all day and then uh they take your they take names at like around like 5 30 or whatever wow and you had to wait there and hold your spot because if you left someone will come
2:30 across your name out and put their own name in all other comics that's ruthless it was bad back then now i heard you can go like at four or five in the afternoon and they just take the first 25 that's it like no one waits they're just checking online now yeah virtual cue back then yeah you had to wait what is back then like in the 90s or like so i i just graduated so this was 96. damn that's when tupac died man damn that means i gotta owe it to pk because every time i had a spot he just hooked me up i never waited or anything oh yeah yeah yeah i mean they're they're people that don't give spots to because obviously notoriety and all that stuff but pk i will give it up to pika he waited so basically when you go you do it and then the owner will say okay he'll evaluate you and he'll say okay come back in two weeks so you can only go once every two weeks pk went once every two weeks i think two years damn i went once like i
3:21 didn't want to be a stand-up at the time i was just doing trying it i went once and he goes you're gonna be a star in two years come back in two weeks coming back in two weeks wait outside for 12 hours i'm not doing that i never went back because i didn't want to be a stand-up when they say come back in two weeks you still have to get in line if they don't like stuff to get in line yeah so that's it's always been a casual thing for you like oh this is a fun life experience let me try it like you didn't have this massive dream to being the stand-up comedian no until i decided to do it professionally which was about i want to say like eight nine ten years ago i decided i want to do this professionally so you did years of it just like for fun as a hobby yeah i didn't write too much material i had like 20 to 30 minutes of material but then once i decided i want to do this professionally then i started really writing you had a job at the same time yeah i was working in tv development um at john walls productions like our company produced er west wing third
4:11 watch yeah so i had i was working there but yeah i just did it as a hot i just did this as a hobby and then when i decided i'm gonna do this professionally then i really just started like well what was the most glorious moment of your professional career so far the the things that come into mind i don't know if they're glorious uh per se but like uh neil brennan co-creator of chappelle show yeah i got off stages that ain't good stuff and give me a fist bump and then damon wayans uh i came off stage like hey man that was some funny stuff so that to me was like it was cool but like um glorious moment honestly like i'm really shallow so glorious moment for me would be like if like a hot chick after the show was like oh my god you're so funny it's like david wayne's yeah but this hot girl like that like yeah if she goes like oh my god you're so funny can we go grab a drink can i grab your balls yeah oh that i well i don't even know what the drink
5:01 feels like balls i would probably just die it would explode but yeah like if like a hot after ████ was like oh my god i think you're so funny can we go grab a drink i'd probably be in a situation where i wouldn't know what to do you know like i'm sure like you know my mind's like you say yes say yes yes but then like my heart's like but what if she hurts me were you single you were single throughout what if we get married and then she divorces me you're already thinking about that one of my parents don't approve far so during that stint you were a single dude oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean when girls say they like funny guys that's not what they mean they like i don't wanna they don't want like a hunk when girls say they want a funny guy when girls say they want a nice guy and they say they want a smart guy that's not what they mean like when they want a funny guy they just want a guy that here
5:51 and there make some jokes that makes them laugh like what you know like like a make-a-wish foundation clown when they when they want a nice guy pull my finger and then like nice guy they just want a guy that's only nice to them they don't want a guy that's nice to everybody yeah when they when they want a smart guy they just want a guy that that that's code four that listens to them because if you watch them with dogs they're like oh my god my dog's so smart look he does everything i say that's what they mean by smart guy they don't want a smart guy you know what like when bart says like you know his mom said that black people have that extra third lung they don't want a guy that gives you the biological like anatomy i'm like no that's not possible because of this they want the guy that just goes honey what do you think oh i agree with you that's a smart
6:42 guy my guy's so smart you know he wears exactly what i tell him to wear and he just listens he's amazing he's so smart that is a smart guy so smart so like it's a misnomer what they say they're trying to they're trying to trick us yeah you know so guys like oh i'm funny i'm smart yeah what about the potentially the least glorious moment of your career so far the least is not getting booked it's like that's probably like the least i mean because for comics the main thing is getting booked i'm obviously getting fortune and famous you know up there but like getting booked is like the stepping stone to get to the next gig and what's the definition of getting booked like doing the local shows is that considering a book or like doing the ones where you get to travel anywhere yeah anywhere getting booked i think is like key because if we don't get booked then we can't perform and we can't get
7:32 fans we can't you know get out there so getting booked is key so like not getting booked it sucks like in being yellow if they if a club has one yellow comic already like i got beef with him well he's a job taking that minority is what he is it's like yo dude what he did coming back because he he wasn't doing comic comedy for a while then he came back and it's like oh we got ken so we don't need anyone else can't you just see where he's at on instagram and you just go to the other cities yeah but they'll say like oh we got ken coming so oh either way ken yeah i mean and uh that's awesome for ken he should be getting booked left and right he's awesome but
8:22 as a comic it's like yo you could like not do comedy anymore like have you tried that yeah that's a comic you could just give up yeah you kind of like made a lot of money and like hey you could go back to being a doctor yeah you're a doctor dude be a doctor you have a lot of career choices bro hot seat style who's the comic that you hate the most in the game bam yeah ken jones i love them but i ████ hate them like like this shock hates you like real hate or how about this which i think is overrated oh yeah oh dude that's a little safer let's talk some ████ log into netflix log into netflix they're giving those away huh they're giving away specials everybody log into netflix um so you're talking about brandon's shop yeah i don't know who that is i think makes the point though oh no but but it makes it makes a point though do you think
9:12 there's a difference in prestige between hbo and netflix when you get hbo special and a netflix spec right now netflix is higher oh because of dave chappelle though huh well all the comments that they signed like you know amy even amy schumer like the big deals they're getting um to me i think it's great that they the guys that the guys and gals that got netflix specials awesome but i think it also hurts stan comedy because then people they're already paying for netflix so when they're at home they're oh this is for free yeah would you want me to go to a comedy club and pay 60 to 80 they don't appreciate it yeah and then the comics like they're not even the good yeah because they don't recognize them recognition is oh it helps a lot so when they're at home that this is for free i could posit whenever i want and i get the best people so it's ████ the comedy economy i think so i think so personally i mean you're gonna have a lot of like comedians that are like fake intelligent that's not me i'm like actually
10:03 intelligent today's video is brought to you by upstart tis the season of gift giving but you shouldn't forget about yourself why not give yourself the gift of financial freedom with upstart upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your personal debt with a loan all online whether it's paying off credit cards or consolidating high interest debt or funding personal expenses over one million people have used upstart to get one fixed monthly payment with a payoff date rather than looking at your credit score alone upstart considers other factors like your income current employment and credit history to find you a smarter rate for your loan you can check your rate without impacting your credit score in minutes for loans between 1 000 to 50 000 you can even receive funds as fast as
10:55 one business day after being accepted for your loan find out how upstart can lower your monthly payment today by going to upstart.com off the record that's upstart u-p-s-t-a-r-t dot com slash o-f-f-t-h-e-r-e-c-o-r-d don't forget to use the url so they know that we sent you guys loan amounts will be determined by your credit income and other information provided on your loan application go to upstart.com off the record has anyone ever stolen your jokes um i i can i can say maybe a couple like two or three but ken jong jong i won't say the guy's name but i'll give you the initials like the cm the like no ken's never stole anything he's never stole anything he's not a joke yeah he's not he's not a
11:46 joke um it'd be difficult for me to argue that they stole the joke but i'm of the school of thought this is a personal thing if i hear like a comedian do a joke that's similar to mine i won't say anything to them i'll just stop doing the joke because for me i'm confident enough i can write another joke yeah that's just that's just my own personal thing so i don't like if someone if we have a similar joke i'll just stop doing it like i don't care um but i need to smash their wife yeah yeah that's if she likes me which is rare you know she doesn't break my heart yeah because she probably wants a smart guy that's funny [Laughter] and then she'll break my heart and get we'll get divorced you know which comedy club in la has the nicest owner oh you know i gotta say um there are comedy club owners where if you don't know them yeah they're not
12:37 nice and i don't that doesn't mean they're mean they're just they you have to understand that they run into thousands of people who are all trying to kiss their butts yeah so there's a bouncer at the front of the club exactly so there's a wall to begin with but having said that once you get to know them honestly like i think uh jamie at la factory is really nice really sweet person um the owners of haha cafe terry and uh jack is that in glendale uh no it's a studio north hollywood studio city they're really sweet people um and most of like the managers and bookers they're they're nice people most of them not all of them but most of them are nice um and so it's just a matter of getting past the wall because and you understand why there is a wall you know it'd be like when you guys were doing just kidding films and all these asian actors and actresses were like oh i'm so funny i'm a comedian too i want to do sketches you probably heard that
13:27 so many times it's like you do have to put up a certain amount of walls because chances are they're not funny chances are they suck but they're you know but you don't know but you do know it's okay now you know because you have to you have to pretend you don't know and be like oh yeah yeah i know i'm sure you're great yeah like you know hit us up but inside you're like i hope they don't hit us up it's stressful saying no like to say notice all the time all the time yeah how do you deal with bombing on stage i don't know what that's like what's your worst bombing story so when i started earlier what i used to do is i used to rush through my material because was it the anxiety of being on stage or like what was what do you think well like so at one point my second stint i used to do my character was a guy that owned um
14:17 a fast food egg roll and wonton place and i had all these different so you would play a persona i played a character i played a chinese guy like you know like i got fried egg roll and fried wonton and then not so fried egg roll not so fried one time and then i would play all the characters that came in i like a southern guy come in a black guy come in english people come in the crowd was all british wait so you played i played all the characters i played everybody okay everybody the crowd was british they just didn't get it because is it an american joke i don't know i guess americans were got it but like the british people just did not get it or they didn't like me i don't know what it was but there was like there's a small crowd like 30 people like 20 of them were british no one was laughing so i so what should have been 15 minutes i rushed through in about five to seven minutes i just rushed through because like i because where they're supposed to laugh they weren't laughing so i just kept
15:07 going like i just it was basically i was just reading off like a like a playlist you know i was just reading that's probably like the worst that i ever bought and the whole time was our heart pumping and yeah like i was just like i need to get off stage were you sweating a lot uh i don't i don't sweat like that like that doesn't make me sweat that's not your fault that's like british people's fault that's of course you like while i was doing it i was like yeah i was like you guys are so dumb like why don't you understand this you should have said that but yeah but see back then though i was so like like basically what happens when you well at least when i bomb and you the anxiety level goes up it's your vision starts closing in it's like when you're drunk and your vision starts closing you have no peripheral vision it's just closing and all you see is this that's kind of like what was going on with me but like now if a joke doesn't i want to close in or just look at the exit side
16:01 that's basically like you know what i wanted it to do but like now like if the joke doesn't work i just kind of like i'll give it some like a couple seconds to see like maybe they're not getting it but now like i call them out like like oh like so like i lost you on that one or like you know you guys are dumb because this is an awesome joke i know it's awesome because it's work yeah you guys are but like so now like if a joke doesn't work it doesn't affect me like it did before like before like i remember when jokes didn't work i'd be like really down like i go through this emotional low and be like oh man i don't even know why i'm alive yeah you know stuff like that yeah um but like now it's like you know i i don't i don't really go through all that do you think like that's pretty normal after like 10 years of doing whatever i think each comic is different like the best way i could describe comedians is this like let's say you work at an office job in accounting
16:52 you're going to have a variety of personalities even though you're all accountants some are going to be outgoing some are going to want to stay home some are going to be jerk some are going to be awesome that's kind of like with comedians too even though we're all doing an extroverted activity we all run the gamut there's guys that get so nervous their hands are sweating like crazy like it's just you can't you have to wipe your hands after you shake their hand that's how nervous they get and there's some guys that are like jerks some guys are nice i've heard of guys in canada that are racist they want to fight you to asian comedians yeah in canada the nicest ████ place yes wow um and there's some guys that want to be your friends and some guys that don't want to be your friends so it's it just runs the like regular human people regular human people yeah pretty much but i think people don't look at us that way because like oh because they're doing something that most people can't do which is talking in front of other people yeah so they think
17:42 like oh you guys are all wired the same but that's not the case like we're all we're all a little you know we're all different we all have our nuances there's guys that you become close with immediately there's guys that you'll never get close with just because for whatever reason um and so yeah it runs the gamut on all that so we all react differently like bombing or things don't work um some guys you can tell get nervous before they go on stage some guys aren't it's just kind of you know so we reached the 16 minute 52 second mark of this episode where we usually like to turn up the heat a little okay get a little bit more serious about what's going on yeah right at that 16.52 what would you consider is the most challenging thing that you've ever experienced in in the game for yourself honestly it's it's getting booked that's like the most challenging because for us that's the gateway is getting booked um whose job is is it
18:32 yours or the managers or like who's the club it's everybody it's on it's on everybody type like for like me personally like i'd have it's me reaching out to comedy clubs and like getting no responses you're just cold calling him yeah keep reaching it's basically like hopefully it's nerve-wracking because you're just it's like a gamble and you're like i hope they choose me yeah i hope they but it's almost like a job interview every ████ week yeah without talking to them oh man and then you just get picked one oh you're just like leaving a message they may not click your uh your link because they're getting they're getting probably hundreds of emails from people and then they're gonna see the ones that they know so this is gonna be a super naive question but like let's say for like a dancer right like getting booked maybe is like going out to audition maybe getting booked because you're casted for something maybe choreographing for something maybe dancing for an artist or a car commercial like there's just different types of things for like comics
19:22 is there a multitude of different things that getting booked like can cover whether it be even like screenwriting for a tv show as a comic or like or is it just really like the avenue of first like stand-up like getting popular through that only yeah it's just like when you're like so basically we don't it's rare that there'll be an audition for stand-up unless it's like america's got talent or like some tv show there's auditions for that but as far as like for clubs there's no audition process it's either like you know somebody that like um referred you and they they book you or you email them like call email them and then hope and pray that they click on your link and they like you and then they'll book you and it's only for stand-up now if you want to write you know you've got to just write on your own and then you have to go through a different avenue to get and let's say you get like successful let's say you're like getting a lot of momentum and getting booked for like standing like what's is there like a a next what's the next step concept for somebody like you
20:13 at least um you'll know when i could when there's like things that you like to do i guess yeah like you'll know if i get to the next level because i'll talk to none of you that's what usually happens on this show when people big-time us you know you'll know you'll everyone would know no uh yeah for me the next level would be like like big money big money i feel like i mean at the end of the day for entertainment no matter what anyone says i'm too cynical to believe that money is not involved like when people want to be actors and you ask why do you want me to oh i love acting i'm so passionate about acting then be a ████ theater play in a small town you know what they'll say there's no money there so you want money you want money but with acting less than one percent of the screen actors guild union makes all the money and that goes with pretty much everything in entertainment it's like one percent make the money and so for
21:03 comedians it's about getting booked and it's about money and so if someone comedian says no i love it for the passion i i believe you i believe you do love telling jokes for the passion i love telling jokes i love making people laugh i'm passionate about it however if there was no future of like a big payout or big payday i think like 80 70 to 80 percent of comedians would stop being comedians unless they really have a day job that they crush it professionally yeah and then like a hobby like for you most of your years was like a hobby thing right yeah yeah yeah but yeah it's if money wasn't involved um i think a lot of people wouldn't do it because why because there's a lot of pressure in joke writing um if it doesn't work because you you pull your heart into it if it doesn't work you get sad and you know and the people and then people talk like oh yeah i've seen walter dude he sucks man but it may have
21:54 been one bad show yeah but they're gonna use that one bad show and kind of like pretty much like assume yeah well i suck but then they but what they don't realize is like some shows we're just trying stuff out yeah you know we're just we're just like saying i'm gonna see if there was sticks and then they they came to that show they're like i saw walter dude like no one was laughing that guy sucks is it like everyone's kind of work shopping on the weekly at these clubs and then when they get a special that's when they all the ones that they worked out that's like the feature film like that's like the writer's room the comedy club is some material that for sure is going to make them laugh but then their working material they mix in yeah like so okay this is the funny part with comedians is that we're working towards technically we're working towards nothing if you think about it we're just we're we're doing shows and we're making
22:44 people laugh but a lot of comedians have this and like do every time i go to show like you describe joe i'm working towards my special and then if you ask them oh you have a special you know coming along oh no i'm just being prepared i'm preparing myself so basically when you look at it technically we're working towards nothing they're working for imaginary space imaginary special like we're working towards nothing unless you're like a big name and you've got a three special deal then yeah when you're at the club that guy's literally like dave chappelle will literally be doing material to see what to put into a special and to work it out but like someone like me or like i call ourselves the mid-level like the working community working communities where there's we have no special in the pipeline in the in the works and so when when a comic like in the middle of says oh i'm working towards my special it's like oh you got a special coming out well yeah i'm gonna shoot it myself okay well that's a little bit different than like getting a traditional special so
23:35 you know to me i don't i don't i guess it's a personal thing i don't work i don't write jokes or like perform towards a special because i don't nothing in the works i'm just working for well tonight i'm going to make people laugh hopefully and that's my enjoyment from it but like there's a lot of comics it's very business oriented like i'm working towards i'm like i'm gonna try these jokes i'm gonna put in my special like what what's special are you doing bro and like you know and so and if that but for them that's what motivates them then cool that's the thing but yeah basically you know i i do jokes you know we want to get a certain amount like 30 minutes an hour like we want that but i don't do it to be like oh i it's for my hour special i'm gonna do i do it just so like i know like depending on the show if these jokes aren't working i know like okay well i can hit him with like something else you know like because like i do a lot of jokes being
24:26 single and if it's all like people that don't care about being single like older people i gotta do something else because for them they don't care about being single if they're like reading the room is the mastery huh yeah but it's it's the mastery and also being having the material like a wide range of material to connect with people that's um also key too um so there's a lot involved um with it wow man well kudos to you because stand-up comedy is yeah it's brutal hard it's one of those i think it's one of the hardest things in entertainment to be good at yeah just like dancing you know like because like the play out is like i don't expect you to be good bro i think that sucks yeah i was testing material on abdc you know how'd that go [Music]
25:23 do
// end of tape