Watch or listen to the stand-up comedy special 'Guess How Much?' (2023) by Jimmy O. Yang on Comedy Buff. Transcript available.

Jimmy O. Yang

Guess How Much?

Give it up for Jimmy Oh Look at you beautiful people. Oh my God. Look at you guys. It's good to be back. It's good to be back seeing all your beautiful faces. Give it up for yourselves, man, for being here tonight. Thank you. I love you guys. I appreciate you guys. And Asian people, where we at? Asian people. Look at this. Look at you guys. This is great. I'm so proud of my Asian people. There's so much excellence out there going on.
A lot of people representing. It's never been a better time to be Asian. I say this every year. I know. But truly, this is our time. I mean, come on. We got BTS now. Come on. That's us. That's our people. They're doing it. I'm so proud of them. Biggest band in the world. Probably ever since the Backstreet Boys. And they don't even have to speak English. I love my BTS, man. Even white people know BTS now.
That's progress. That's progress. I had a 15-year-old white kid come up to me trying to explain to me the different members of BTS. He was like, oh, this is Jungkook. He's kind of like the lead singer. And that's Jimin. He's really cool. And he also raps. I'm like, dude, they look the same to me. I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to say it. I couldn't say it as an Asian person. But they all just look like me.
With pink hair. I can turn the whole show to a BTS concert right now. All right? Yeah. This is Jimmy. This is Jimin. Right here. You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. Smoke like butter. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I love my people, man. I love BTS. You guys probably heard in the news. They got to go to mandatory Korean army.
Right? The most popular people in the world. They got to go sign up for Korean military. That's some gangster shit. Imagine how scared you'll be when you encounter BTS on the battlefield. You're in battle. You're already kind of shook. You're in a field of grass. And a little puff of pink hair just pops up. You're like, yo, what the fuck was that? Is that a unicorn? And then six more pink hair pop up.
You're like, we're surrounded. And the last thing you see is just this. That's some gangster shit. I'm proud of my people, man. I'm proud of my people. You know, a lot of great representation out there. I see some of you guys still wearing your masks. I still wear my mask. No shame in that, right? It's all good. It's all good. I wear my mask not because I think I'm going to get sick, but because I just don't want to talk to anybody anymore.
But I'm still surprised. When people come up to me, they're like, oh my God, Jimmy? I'm like, how did you know? How did you know? How many other Asian guys did you go up to before it happened to be me? You don't know. You don't know. Underneath this mask, I could be Awkwafina. You don't know. And look, I'm not saying that all Asian people look alike, okay? I'm just saying that me and Awkwafina look alike.
And we both look like we should be in BTS. Love all the representation out there, man. But it's not just celebrities. I'm very proud of the everyday people out there representing. That's the important part. You know what I mean? No, no, no. I'm very happy for this one particular person. I'm really happy for that old Chinese lady in Chinatown who's been wearing a mask since 1995. Her life just suddenly made sense.
Before the mask mandate, everybody looked at her and was like, eww, why is she wearing a mask? That's so random. She's not random. She's a fucking trailblazer, okay? She started wearing a mask. Now everybody has to wear a mask. She's like the Kendall Jenner of Chinatown. She must have been so happy when this mask mandate happened, just laughing at everyone. It's like, ha ha, look at you, idiots. I told you to put on a mask.
Now the CDC follows me. She was prepared. She didn't just have a mask. She had gloves on from when she's driving. She had the full face shield that comes down, looking like Daft Punk. That's my girl right there, man. Asian people, we're ready for this shit. Social distancing. We've been doing that for centuries. We don't like all that hugging and touching and all that. You know, when we see each other, just a nice bow.
That is socially distanced. If you're really Asian, you ever see two really Asian people, it turns into a bowing contest to see who's more respectful, to see who can bow lower and more away from each other until you just fold it in half and you go home. That's social distancing, people. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's everybody should be a little more Asian. A lot of people in this country, Americans, you know, like, we're not ready for this.
All the rules, we're rebels, man. We don't like following rules. People are, like, freaking out. They're like, mask mandate. No! I'm like, dude, it's just a mask. Just put on a mask. They're like, it's not just a mask. It's the government. Yeah, it's the government. Fear-mongering. I'm like, what is that? They're like, yeah, it's fear-mongering. They want you to be scared of everything so you're obedient and you're scared and you follow the rules.
I'm like, oh, that's called fear-mongering? Then my mom must have invented fear-mongering. I didn't know that's what it's called. Ever since I was five years old, my mom had me believe that anything I do would make me sick. You go outside without a jacket, you get the flu. You go to bed with the fan on, pneumonia! God forbid you fall asleep with wet hair. You don't even wake up. That's it. You're dead.
That's it. You're dead. That's fear-mongering, man. I'm not scared of anything anymore. I don't think I have any fear anymore. I used to watch that show, Fear Factor. You guys remember that show? Joe Rogan hosted Fear Factor to make you face your fears like jump off a helicopter, eat crazy shit like pig intestines and sentry egg. I ate that shit for breakfast. This is nothing to me. Fear is not a factor.
I do remember when I was like 10 years old. Little boy. I was very scared because there was this one kid, pretty sad story, in my class he had childhood leukemia. and then he lost all his hair to chemo and everything, looking real frail. And I was really scared. I was like, oh my God, is he going to be okay? And my mom, she's a great mother, she saw how scared I was, so she came up to console me. She was like, Jimmy, Jimmy, you see, this is what happens when you play too much video games.
That's fear-mongering, okay? I never played a game of FIFA after that. My mom was like the original fake news. It's good to see everyone here, man. I think collectively as people, we all been through a lot in the last few years, man. You know? And we made it out. We made it out. We're better for it, you know? I feel like I mentally aged like 20 years. Like the first day I walked outside, for some reason, I just walked out like an old Chinese man.
I just came out of my house like this. I was wearing flip-flops and a puffer vest. My outfit made no sense. My feet were cold, chest sweat. My posture looked like shit, but I was still judging everyone. I was just like... I'm an old man now. I don't even like going outside anymore. All my friends, they're back to normal, right? They're like, oh, Jimmy, you want to go to Coachella? I'm like, nah. No seats.
Don't even look fun to me. Six hours standing in the desert? Fuck that. You see all these kids like with their Instagram posts, you know, it's always like people just like jumping around, dancing, and then all these buff dudes got like girls on their shoulder. I'm like, dude, you're not even going to a concert, you're doing CrossFit. How's that fun? The only concert I've been to this year, I took my girlfriend to a Don McLean concert.
Yeah. You guys know who that is? Yeah. Couple people, thank you. Thank you. Tom McLean, for you guys that don't know, sang the song Bye Bye Miss American Pie. Yeah, he's old as shit, dude. He's 77 years old and so was his audience. It was my favorite concert I've ever been to. On a ticket, it says the show started at 8, started at 7.59. He didn't know how to open it. You know, he just came on stage with a guitar and started singing.
It was awesome. Nobody stood up to like obstruct my view because frankly, everyone had a bad hip. It's great. Still got home in time to watch the 10 o'clock evening news. That's my kind of evening. You know what I mean? I don't like going outside anymore. Too many crazy people, too many weirdos. One time I went to this dive bar in a military town, San Diego. Big military town. I love my military, okay?
But I think sometimes, yeah, yeah, but I think sometimes military people get a little too passionate. You know? Thank you. Thank you. Exactly. My point right there. Thank you. I love military, but they're just too passionate. Like I was at a dive bar. This one military brother came up to me. He was just like, hey man, I want to buy you a drink. I'm like, no, no, thank you. I can buy my own drink. Thank you.
He's like, no, I want to buy your drink. So at this point, I thought either he wanted to take a selfie or he wanted to fuck me. So I'm like, no, sir, I think I can buy my own drink. And then he started telling me his whole life story. He's like, you don't understand. I want to buy you a drink because I was stationed in Okinawa for four years and you guys have been nothing but nice to me. I'm like, you guys, you guys, Okinawa's in Japan.
I'm Chinese, sir. And he's like, it doesn't matter, man. It doesn't even matter. I'm like, sir, I think it does matter, right? I'm pretty sure the only reason you were stationed in Japan was to keep an eye out on Chinese people like me. It does matter. He was like, it doesn't even matter, man. I still love Pad Thai, okay? Maybe that guy run into BTS on his next tour. Who knows? My point of saying all of this is Asian people, we don't all look alike.
We don't all sound alike. You know, we don't even, we don't even do anything alike. We're just people. You know? Right? Like, everybody's different. Thank you, white lady. Thank you. Thank you, one white lady. Appreciate it. Thank you. She teaches Magna School down the street. A lot of Asian students. Okay? So tonight, I want to offer you guys an advanced lesson on how to tell Asian people apart. Okay?
Yeah, that's right. I'm so good at telling Asian people apart, I don't even need to look at you. I can tell you what kind of Asian somebody is by the sound they make when they're disappointed. Because disappointment is our strongest emotion. Whenever you get disappointed, our ancestor just comes out and you can't hide that, you know? Like, for example, I'm Chinese. I know Chinese people very well, okay?
When Chinese people get disappointed, we're just disgusted. We don't want to look at you. When you disappoint a Chinese person, they're just like, oh, shh. Shh. Like, they just walked into a smoky room and they got to clear it. Just like, shh. See, that's Chinese people. Japanese people, when Japanese people get disappointed, they just want to know why. They ask you a question. When a Japanese person gets disappointed, they're just like, eh?
Eh? And that's it. You didn't go to disappoint a Korean person. I wouldn't recommend that. This Korean brother might fuck you up, okay? Korean people are intense, they're ready to fight. But they're my favorite type of people because they're very emotionally honest. A Korean person will let you know when they're disappointed. They're real guttural with it, you know what I mean? when you disappoint when you disappoint a Korean person, they're like, ooh!
Shibai! But they're still very Asian, so they're still real polite. They'll thank you with that. And they're like, oi! Shibai! I don't even speak Korean. But I watch Squid Games. You know what I mean? Love that show. See, that's great representation. Number one TV show in the world, man! And they just spoke their native tongue. That's representation right there, man. I'm proud of it. I'm proud of it.
But I'm most p