 Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou School Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books, Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about inspiration, welcoming adversity, and building a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is our superstar comedian from Hawaii, who is selling out shows many places he goes. He is Tamua Tuenay, and today we are going Beyond Comedy. Hey, Tamua, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hey, what's up, Rusty? Thank you for having me, man. I'm so honored to be here. Tamua, today is my 250th episode, and I am super excited to have you as my guest today. Oh, 250, that's an awesome number. Thank you. Thank you. Now, Tamua, while you attended Punahou School, I was there as the head boys varsity tennis coach, and you were playing football. And I want to ask you, what were some of the things that you enjoyed playing football in high school? That's right. That's true. Yeah, I graduated 2014 at Punahou, and football was my passion. I come from a big football family, so I kind of just went right into it since I was a small kid. I enjoyed Punahou. I've been there from 9th grade on, 9th grade to senior year, and I had Akali Anay as my head coach, and it was just fun, just being around the boys. I learned just a lot of hard work, working ethic, integrity, discipline, and I think I use a lot of those qualities I learned at Punahou in my career today. That's just coming from an athlete's background point of view. But I really enjoyed Punahou. People asked me, was Punahou tough, education-wise, because I came from a public school, elementary and middle school, and then high school, I went to Punahou. But honestly, it wasn't that hard. Maybe because I was taking easy classes, but I really enjoyed it. I hope my kids get to go there, my future kids, and I think it's the best school in the world. Well, Tamua, you know, I applied to Punahou. I didn't get in. I went to Damien. So, you know, just so happened, I was the head coach there for 22 years. But Tamua, after you graduated Punahou, you went to University of Hawaii and you played football there, and your dad and your uncle played in the NFL. Now, did you have hopes of playing in the NFL after playing college football? That was the dream. You know, like I said, so my dad played for the Detroit Lions, you know, my uncle played for the Dallas Cowboys. A lot of people know him more, Mark Tuine, he played like 15 years, won three Super Bowls, two Pro Bowls, and they're giants, you know, they're both like six, five, you know, and then there's me, five, eight, but I'm still waiting for my growth spurt. Hopefully next week, Thursday, it'll come in, but yeah, I went to UH to play football. Actually, I never played football. I just went practice football. I was only on the practice team, but I only got it. I was like fifth string. The only time I got in the game is when we were winning by 45 points, but that never happened in 45 years. So, it was tough, but yeah, I mean, that was always the dream was to become an NFL football player, like my dad, like my uncle, and that's probably one of the main reasons why I went to UH, you know, I could have easily went to a smaller division school, like a D2 or D3. I was getting highly recruited out of high school by them, and I'll probably want to have way more playing time, but I wanted to stay home and follow in my dad's footsteps because he went to a university in Hawaii as well, and he wore number 88, and that's why I wore number 88 in honor of him. But yeah, that was the dream, but it never happened. You know, I never, I never grow. I only grew wide, only grew wider, but that's actually how I found my career today was because I took a stand-up comedy class at UH, and it's funny how, how things happen, you know, and everything happens for a reason. If I didn't go to UH, I don't think I would ever become a comedian, you know, because I don't know any college that offers stand-up comedy classes, and they don't even offer it anymore at UH, but I just so happened to be there at that right time to take that class. It was, it was my favorite class. I mean, I mean, that's the only thing I use now, right, is just from that class, but we only had four people in the class. That's a fun fact. We almost had to cancel the class. We had to beg some people to stay in the class to keep it going. But, but yeah, it was, it was, it was fun. I remember, I'm trying to remember the teacher's name. Nick something was just some, some mainland guy teaching, teaching comedy. And I took the class just to get an easy A and just for fun, you know, and my teammate of mine, Hunter Hughes, I asked him, I was like, Oh, do you want to take this class just to, you know, play around? And we took it and me not expecting, I didn't know that you had to perform at open mics throughout the semester. That was part of the criteria of the class. You have to go to like three open mics. And I was like, as soon as I signed up, I was like, Oh, I don't know if I want to do this. I didn't know I had to perform. I thought we were just watching stand-up comedy specials and maybe learning about joke formulas or, or something. But, but I ended up staying, staying in and I ended up enjoying it. I got an A, got an A plus actually in that class. Thank God. Right. And, and I'll never forget our final exam. We have to perform 10 full minutes in front of a live audience at. It was at Anna O'Brien's, which is a Irish pub bar right by University of Hawaii. Jose Dynamite, if you guys know who he is, he's a local comedian and a comedy promoter here in Hawaii. He was running the event. That's his spot that he has weekly shows. And he saw me there. I did my 10 minutes, absolutely killed. You know, the whole football team showed up. You know, some of my, my family came and he invited me again to come back, Jose, to do like, I think it was open for Paul Ogata, another former comedian that lived in Hawaii. He still, he still does comedy in the mainland. And I was nervous. I was like, okay, I'll do it. And then I just kept going, kept going. And then I started doing some stuff with Ogatae a little bit. And it's been about six years of doing stand up comedy. And if it wasn't for that class, if it wasn't for going to UH, you know, and following my dreams, that's, that's the message I like to give to, to kids and the youth is that it's okay if a door closes, you know, you know, there's going to be another door right down the road, opening up again. And everything happens for a reason. You learn lessons. You know, I take all the stuff that I learned from football, from my dad and my uncle and all the years at Punahou, at UH, you know, and I try to use it in my career today. But yeah, if it wasn't for UH, I don't think it would have been a comedian. See, thank God for UH and Timur since then. Now, I mean, you've been selling out shows on the mainland. I mean, how does that make you feel to be selling out shows now? It, it, it's, it's awesome. It's like, it's like amazing feeling. I don't really like realize it till I look back, like how you're saying now, like, well, I really sold out, you know, six shows and Tacoma, Washington, you know, I never would have thought I would be up there doing comedy because I only started recently touring since last year. I did a little, you know, a little soft tour. I kind of hit like all the local spots that would have a lot of my fans there. I did a little poll on social media and I found out where people are. And it was cool. We had some good shows there, but this year it kind of, I kind of took off even more. I'm also with a, with an agency this year. I'm with a CAA, Creative Artists Agency. They're a big agency in comedy and music. So they're just putting me all over the place. Like they even got me playing in Chicago at the end of the year. And I don't know anybody in Chicago. So I don't, I don't know how it's going to go. So we'll see what happens. But it's definitely a good feeling knowing that I can sell out and do Hawaii comedy in the mainland. People don't realize that us Hawaii people were all over the world. You know, it's crazy. Like even like in the Tacoma, that was the most recent show I did. And there were so many people I would say like, so we sold out six shows that's over like about 1,700 people total. And it's, it's, it's cool to see that. And it's a good strategy too because yes, there's a lot of Hawaii people, but it's not all Hawaii people like they would bring their friends like, Oh, check out this guy. Check people that don't know me, you know, so my fan base is growing and that's the goal is to just grow. And I'm just thankful that I can do that. Well, I'm so proud of you having and I know all of Hawaii is proud of you with your stardom. I mean, in such a relatively short period of time. And what would you say is the funniest thing that you've seen at one of your shows? Um, funniest thing, there's a lot of things that happen. I mean, just. Let's see what I wouldn't say is the funniest, but like the fire alarm went off one time. And I don't know what if someone pulled it or it's just a dud or something, but that was cool to kind of have me riff off of that, you know, because it just er, er, er, er, er, er, er the whole time, you know, for a good like three minutes, you know, so I'd have to just run with that. Just make sure, okay, nobody leave. It's just a fake alarm. You know, so that's, that's like a challenge. I would have to deal with that kind of obstacle. I had like a few fights break out, but just drunk people, you know, in those situations, you try not to, you know, bring more attention to that. So I like to, I love to talk with the crowd, you know, and pick on things and, you know, addressing the elephant in the room. But if something like that, I try to like just let the security handle it. And I don't want to make it escalate even more. Another thing I, I seen someone fall down when they try to sit on a chair. I guess they missed the chair and just, ah, that too. I didn't want to bring attention to that, but just to myself, I'm like, oh, that's, that's pretty funny, you know, but, and also just like talking with people. I mean, you never know like what, what's going to happen at a comedy show. And like the things people say or the things like stories of how these, this couple met or what this guy does for a living. It's just, it's just hilarious. And the way they, the way they say it, it's almost like you can't make that up, you know, like the jokes right itself. And the more shows you do, the more easier it gets. It's called crowd work in, in the comedies, you know, terminology. And yeah, you just, it's just fun to just be with the crowd. And the great, the great thing that I love about comedy is that every show is different. You know, you never know what's going to happen. And yeah, that could either hurt you or make you better, you know, so that's, that's fun. Well, Timoa, it's clear that comedy is your passion. I mean, this is definitely your purpose. I mean, you were meant to do this. I mean, it is so clear to see. And how would you describe or explain your comedy style? I would say it's definitely observational. It's kind of like an exaggerated version of myself of what I go through on the everyday basis. That's what I try to portray on stage is just, I want people to watch me, whether it's my skits on social media or on stage, I want them to watch me. And then I want it to click in their mind and be like, I know who that, I know that guy. You know, that joke, he just did reminded me of my dad, you know, or that skit. Oh, that, that looks like that guy I saw at Home Depot the other day. You know, so I familiarity and relativity. I want everything to be relative. That's the main goal. And I like to just, you know, I'm kind of witty on stage. I like to play around with some word play. And a lot of it is improv to on the spot. Family friendly to clean. I keep it clean made that decision from the beginning. Based on Augie T and Andy boomer tie. They told me if you want to make it big in Hawaii, you got to stay clean and they're definitely local comedy legends that I always looked up to. But yeah, observational, clean, fun. Just going to have overall good time. So to more, I mean, I love it because your audience, like you said, I mean, it's family friendly, you have young people, you got old people. I mean, everybody can go to your shows and to more I like when you talk about your kind of educating all of us about pigeon and the two words the kind and can right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you really that's that actually happened because you know, um, being on the UH football team, we have a lot of people from the mainland, you know, and, and they try to adapt to the local culture. And a lot of them try to speak pigeons. I just got a total. I'm like, yeah, you just just got to say the kind and can and just use it in the correct cadence and whatever you're talking about. Going to make sense. Can rock. Can, you know, so those are fun to talk about. And if no can, no can, right? No can, no can. Can can if no can bottles. Recycle. Recycle. Yeah. I can. To more, I was cracking up watching you do that whole skid. I mean, that is that that is hilarious. And, you know, like you said earlier, I mean, you're you love doing the improv. I mean, you're so you're, you're so gifted. It's such an impressive thing to watch you on stage, doing your impromptu situations. I mean, and you said earlier, it's like sometimes it just writes itself right. It just writes itself. Sometimes it doesn't work to, you know, if you come to my live shows, maybe this person is just, you know, not as entertaining or he's not as interesting or he's not giving me any, any good answers or he's shy or whatever. I'll just, I'll just move on. But I was, I was like, deathly afraid of talking to the crowd at first before I would just, you know, run through my jokes, run through my material, like a robot. And then as the years went on, I got more relaxed, you know, that's the main thing in comedy. You want to feel like it. First of all, it has to be live, you know, I did, I did zoom comedy, like maybe one or two shows during the pandemic and it doesn't it doesn't work. You know, you gotta, you gotta, because you can be talking, talking, talking, you know, I never pay my Wi-Fi frozen. That's why. But, but in comedy, you got to have that live interaction. And it's the only profession where you get instant feedback, you know, comedy videos, comedy movies, you can take multiple takes, multiple shots, you know, you can critique it, but stand up comedy, you know, instantly, if that joke hits or not, it's kind of like jazz. You're just on the floor. And as the years gone by of me doing it a lot, you know, almost every week, I got better at it, you know, and I realize I can be more relaxed on stage, you know, I can I can get involved with the crowd and but not too much to make them take over the show, you know, just just a little bit because they love they love being part of the show. They love they love the me being spontaneous, you know, that's what gets big laughs, even if it's a small joke, they would laugh real hard because they know that I didn't prepare that. And that just happened in the moment. And all of us witness it together. That's what everyone loves about crowd work. And I try to try to do that and sometimes it doesn't work sometimes it does but the more you do it, the more it works. Well, it seems to be working a whole lot when I'm watching your shows and and to more you've been doing a lot of short skit videos and posting it on social media and those are hilarious I mean you're you're expanding your reach through social media I mean that that one where he said, I mean everybody on Kauai knows everybody right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Only thing is I never really was into those Instagram skits or social media skits because I didn't think that was like, you know, a comedian I wanted to be a real comedian just stand up comedy. But when the pandemic hit. That's when my whole, you know, game plan shifted. Everything was closed. You couldn't do any live entertainment. I had a, at that time during the pandemic I had a monthly show at Kauai golf course at honey's restaurant every second Fridays of the month I would have a headlining show. And I would get a good amount of people coming in a lot of family and you know a lot of friends on the east side of the island and I was happy that I got that gig. And that shut down the whole cool golf course shut down because of COVID. And I was just at home thinking like okay what am I, what am I going to do am I just not going to do comedy anymore I don't know how long this whole lockdown is going to last, you know, but then some of my friends said oh you should post some of these stuff on on social media. And I was like nah I don't want to I don't want to do that no one's going to no one's going to watch it. You know, but I did. I never forget I did my first video I put up was this toilet paper drug dealer. I was like dealing acting like a drug dealer but dealing toilet paper because that was a hot topic at the time was the toilet paper. And the day I posted it went on the news, you know all the new stations they reposted it and I was like okay I guess this is what the local people want. And then it was like every week I'll pump out at least one or two videos of like these job profession skits you know whether it's construction or working at lows. You know, being a barber, I'll just pump these out and am I following grew and grew and grew. And when I finally had the green light to do live shows again. I did that blue note, which is this jazz club in town. I put up two shows, and then it instantly sold out. And that never did happen for me. And I was like, Oh, like what do we, what do we do now. People are like, Well, you just just add another show. So we added another show is sold out out of the show sold out. And I ended up selling out like 18 shows at Bruno, which was like three consecutive weekends Friday, Saturday, Sunday, two shows each night for three weeks straight. And, and that was all because of social media and I love because of the skits. So now I just do two and two like I just, there's my stand up side, and my skit side and I try to push everything towards my stand up because nothing can be live shows. But I really enjoy making these Instagram skits and it wouldn't have happened if the pandemic didn't happen. You know, so I'm blessed with that. That's the thing I like to preach to is that people, you know, like you mentioned earlier off camera but like mental health is a big thing. And I think, like the whole over being kind of like triggered a lot of people but you can look at it in a positive or negative way, you know, so I kind of just have a lot of time on my hand so I'm just going to make videos online. You know, and see what happens. So always look at things in a positive way. Well, I mean, you are so creative. I mean, I watched your short video skit of the local TSA agent being so serious. I'm cracking up. Man, how do you come up with all these ideas? A lot of it is just experiences, you know, like, I mean, like the TSA one I travel a lot, you know, so I seen what happens, you know, they're very angry yelling at you, you know, make sure your laptop is out of your bag, you know. So that was fun to shoot and a lot of it is like friends to and family, you know, I would run the idea by them and they'll give me feedback and they'll tell me to maybe use this or you got to talk about that. Or I'll call people that that actually work like in the TSA, you know, I'll call people that actually work in that job profession and say, Okay, what's what's the linglor on here, you know, because I want people to want people to watch it and the general public to laugh at it. But I also want like TSA agents are people who are in that field to be like, Okay, how does he know like this is type of, you know, how does he know that all these terminology but that brings back what I said earlier, everything got to be relative. Everybody got to be relatable. You know, that's the main thing if they can relate to this, it's going to be fun. Well, you're brilliant. And I want to I want to talk with you about some of the concepts in my books. One of the concepts is welcoming adversity, overcoming obstacles. And, you know, it's it's a mindset, you know, we can choose to look at things is in a positive way we can choose to look at things in a negative way. I mean, I always say that life happens for you versus life happens to you. What are your thoughts about that and what are what some obstacles that you have to overcome. That goes back to what I said like everything happens for a reason I take every obstacle that I that comes my way as as a lesson, you know, big one is the pandemic that I just mentioned. It would be I'd say when I so I don't really want to talk about this too much, but I had a previous manager. When I first started, but I ended up getting rid of him. Just so that I can, you know, work on myself more and just just want to go separate ways. And that was kind of tough for me to make that decision. And then when I did that, I kind of got a new agency, which was CA. And now things are a lot better as well. That's one obstacle as well. That's pretty much yeah, I don't know that's the two big big obstacles, but I mean, you also get like maybe some cities like ticket sales are not doing as well, you know, and you always wonder, like, oh, why, you know, why are they not selling? They don't know who I am. Next thing you know, maybe this maybe just because the timing is off where you got to do more advertising. And another thing that I like to tell people is don't compare yourself to others, you know, which is big in the entertainment industry, because you want to if you look at someone like another comedian, you're like, okay, why does this guy have a Netflix special, you know, what why, why not me, you know, but you can't think like that. You got to just kind of say like, yeah, why not me, you know, put the comma somewhere else like why it can be me, you know, can always can. And I try to look at it as motivation. I don't I'm not I'm not jealous of anybody, you know, if someone like another local comedian, you know, surpasses me or makes it bigger than me, I'm going to congratulate him, you know, because it's better do to, you know, work together and bring people up instead of pushing people down. So even younger comics come up to me and they asked me for advice, I try my best to help them out. But yeah, overcoming obstacles, you gotta just, I never read your book, but I'm guessing just just overcome it and just have a you know, strict tunnel vision mindset and try not to let it bother you too much because in the end, the obstacles that you overcome will help you, you know, and it makes you who you are. I definitely believe that another yeah, another big obstacle was realizing that I'm not going to play football. You know, I touched on it earlier because football was my was my life. That's what I did since I was a little kid. And to finally give that up was was tough for me, you know, and then I came into comedy realize that. Oh, yeah, another obstacle. When I first started doing comedy, I was working down at the docs at Hawaii stevedores, and which is a amazing job. If you're from Hawaii, everybody wants that job, you know, so I was working there and I was doing comedy at the same time, and ended up missing work because I'd have to do this gig here. And that's what I was just doing shows here in Hawaii. And then my dad works at the docs too. So we had a long talk and I told him that I'm going to have to just want to just do comedy, you know, and it was tough on him because he got me in in the job and, you know, everybody wants that job and it looks kind of bad that I'm just leaving that job just to do comedy, you know, like what you're going to do comedy. You can make so much money at this job. Why are you doing comedy. I just stuck to my, you know, my roots, what I believed in, and turns out I'm doing great right now. And who knows where else God will take me or where the path will take me but yeah, if you want if you believe in something and you truly work hard, just take it, you know, follow Well, to more. I mean, I, it's amazing how many obstacles just came out all of a sudden, but I'm definitely going to get you the books this week, because you got to you got to have inspiration got to have that mindset and and to more in what ways would you say comedy is similar to sports. I compared to football, definitely stand up comedy. If you ever playing football or even a sport tennis, I guess, as well, you know, you get that pregame jitters, you're nervous. That's kind of like just, you know, being nervous before show, you know, you get stage fright a little bit, and it's good to be nervous. It's actually bad to be not nervous. That's when you're like, you know, to, you know, to cocky and nervous makes you alert, you know, it makes you ready, and it humbles you down. I personally believe that. So you both get that same feeling that adrenaline rush, you know, pregame jitters and football, you get that first play that first hit that first tackle, or that first pass or whatever. And then the, you know, the jitters goes away a little bit, just like in comedy, you're on stage. Once you tell that first joke, you hear that first laugh, you know, it kind of eases away. And then you're just back in that flow, and that Zen or whatever. But yeah, definitely similar. There's a lot of similarities with football and comedy or sports and comedy. I mean, I both sweat, you know, both of them I was sweat. I sweat on stage. I sweat it on the field. Yeah. And you deal with adversity as well. Maybe, you know, maybe this topic is too sensitive for this crowd, you know, just like football, maybe this, you know, game plan, this, this type of defense is not working. Okay, I'm going to change it up. I'm an audible. I'm not going to talk about this topic. I'm going to switch over to something else already. So it's all hand in hand. It's both performing, you know, you're sweating. It's all the same. And that's why I'm grateful that I have an athletic background. And I learned all those qualities in sports and football, and I can use it on stage. Kamua, I want to ask you one more thing before we wrap up. What's a big future goal of yours? A big future goal of mine would probably be to get like this big, a big special, you know, either whether on Netflix or HBO or Showtime. Hopefully it comes soon. That's that's the plan. My big time goal before was to sell out the Blazell Arena and, you know, I already did that already last year, which I'm so grateful for. But yeah, this time I want I want to, you know, get a special definitely grow my audience more, you know, which I feel like I have a pretty strong audience in the main and sorry in Hawaii. And the goal is to just, you know, broaden more in the mainland. There's that I try not to look too far ahead. You know, I'm not like, oh, in five years, I want to be here in 10 years want to be here. I mean, yeah, I had that idea, but I don't really focus on that. I just take it day by day, month by month, year by year, you know, so, but right now I really want to get like a big special in a big. A well known network company, whether it's Netflix or HBO or Showtime or one of those, one of those things and hopefully that happens soon. Well, we definitely need to make that happen and to more you. It's so impressive you've been building this superior culture of excellence for some years now. And it's so great to see you be successful and yeah we got to get all of Hawaii to have that big special to happen and to more really want to thank you for taking time to be on the show today. Thank you so much for having me. I had an awesome time. Yeah, I can't wait to see this when it airs, you know, I'm excited, but yeah, thank you. I'm blessed and honored to be here. Thanks, Tamua. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Tamua and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Thank you.