 are vietnamese americans actually the most interesting asians in america there's a case to make for it and we're here with a vietnamese comedian to talk about it alex young in the building yeah brother big gang yeah what are you doing in new york city because you you live in la right yeah live in la uh i flew out for blue bloods on cbs you know with tom selig donnie walberg the goats household names and i got a bunch of shows around town so hey and i'm glad to stop by hang out with you guys i was just sitting at home trying to finish watching brother son tom selig though that's the name i remember from watching like the staying home from school when i was like in fifth grade watching all the daytime television yeah my mom my mom and my sister was we're watching young and restless and that's the first time i saw a mustache you know i was just like yo that's a mustache that it was crazy you're like yo that's something i'll never get yeah yeah i'm not trying to hype alex too much and i did i just learned how to say your last name today yeah vietnamese i just called you alex duong for your whole life everybody and their mamas right uh well to be fair it is spelled that way yeah but uh the deus off no pun intended you know because i stay hard you know that's funny alex duong you are one of the funniest asian comedians that nobody knows yeah i appreciate that man i appreciate that i'll take it i'll take it yo what do you think about that title hey i'll take it a better than the other way around like oh everybody knows you but you whack you know i'd rather be uh underpaid and overrated you know what i mean but you know what i feel comfortable saying that now because you on the cbs show you're on to come up your name is getting out there you got some viral clips you know through instagram and things like that and you know what i always respect about you man is you never shied away from your via culture like you you have a lot of jokes about the war your dad and stories being via so you are reppin like you're you're not just doing comedy and then just saying your vietnamese you do literal a lot of a good amount of via jokes you you got to because uh i can't afford therapy so i'm just i gotta talk about on stage we're more than the war we got to explore our culture our entire culture doesn't do therapy so i'm gonna give you these vietnamese jokes it's for the people for my vietnamese people it's our way of doing therapy is that we pay for entertainment we get food and everything you can't bring like hot pot into like a therapist's office like you got to eat something i can't be there for an hour not eat something david so i guess what what are we talking about today well first off let's talk about asian-american representation you know we're always talking about in this channel southeast asians need to get more opportunity more windows that they can shoot the gap through when is it gonna happen or is it happening it's happening right now i mean you got ali wong who's you know she represents for southeast asians she's doing her thing just swept award season she's gonna keep sweeping award season one of the nicest people when when did she become southeast asian though you know what i mean right i know i know baby cobra no we we got it because we we when we talk about ali to me yes she is half but i don't know i mean i guess what is so vietnamese about her she speaks vietnamese to me when we when she's at the comedy store oh she does yeah she speaks vietnamese we speak vietnamese to each other i test her because like if you like because you know i'm gonna test you okay because the blur the lines between cantonese and vietnamese get very blurry sometimes for sure that's true right wait i so this is news to me that ali wong speaks conversational or fluent vietnamese fluent yeah all right so i she speaks vietnamese to me when she's at the comedy store she gets that that's a pretty vietnamese thing to do is to speak vietnamese and she's got an amy so you know she's got right is it an emmy or a amy and am amy and me and me and me and me for em yeah yeah yeah um so i guess you know for a long time we we're just in this cycle right people ask that question but you're on the inside and obviously you're gonna benefit from when southeast asians get their chance is it is it come in or is it just you're like gran terino number two i'm waiting i'm waiting for every opportunity i would love to be in the room for every opportunity but that it just can't just because there's only so many amount of seats but a seat at the table i want my own table you know so we're busy making our own table whether it be on social media or whether be wherever else i don't know then maybe it can translate over to the mainstream but i'm you know mainstream that happens to you know be underground as well in the vietnamese community but also i can flip over and do shows like blue bloods i can do all american shows i could be the only uh east asian guy on a comedy show i can do that i mean the opportunities are there is just the money ain't right yet opportunities are there the money ain't right yet and the money needs to be right and it has to be the right show for vietnamese people to represent okay it's really hard to get us out the house let's talk about some of the recent vietnamese projects that did get shined okay there was a pilot that did not get picked up aka guys they filmed one episode and you know nobody decided to pick up but it was called asian bb girl and that was based in the same gabriel valley uh chinese vietnamese you know vietnamese abg's essentially that was the story it didn't get picked up there was also uh who is the uh that one movie with robert downey jr uh the sympathizer sympathizer that was a big production yeah huge production i went in like eight times for that thing oh i didn't i didn't get it but i know the people who did get it and they're well deserved like these guys are like the real deal like like juliar level like trained mother that are vietnamese right they were just waiting they were just waiting for the window of opportunity they were they were ready though they were sharp as a knife did you like those projects how do you feel about those things you just do you think vietnamese deserve more stories yeah absolutely even beyond the war like there's one recent project that i went in for smaller project short film union but it's a vietnamese remake of the the old school movie mannequin where a stay-at-home father loses his mind and slowly uh his wife who's a tailor uh has a mannequin at home for like tailoring needs or whatever he starts to lose his mind and then he starts to like kind of see her as a human being to help with the baby and everything because he's like gone bad my reps are like i don't know i don't know about this it's kind of like almost beneath you the pay is isn't great it's it's a sag ultra low budget agreement short film they're like what are you doing i was like i see vietnamese in the dialogue i want to do it any chance i get to speak vietnamese i'm going to do it because vietnamese speak some right now i'm gonna eat my chow okay i just said what do you want for me oh then it it did make sense right all right yeah for sure hey now we get him we just had a convo that's what's up yeah i'm just yeah hey you got your bit past two now you guys got your bit past i always wanted my v at past yeah ever since i've seen that chucky a ken song from back in the day who you never seen that uh oh you want uh you got beef oh yeah yeah yeah i just didn't know the artist i i would grew up in the same neighborhood as the guys who wrote uh got rice bitch like texas they're from richerson you know them i know you gotta blow this way well hold up hold us because nobody knows these guys wait so i heard they were from la i heard that where are they from and tell us what they're doing now they're from dallas texas these two really skinny tall lanky guys they're from dallas texas they wrote got rice and that's that's their claim to fame but shout them out who are they i don't even remember their names now man it's been in fact it's been since like what are you talking about he did uh asian pride the song asian pride you got rice you got rice got food got soup got spice that one yeah yeah that's them it's not from la it's not from la unless you correct me and correct me if i'm wrong but those guys were the ones that were in the studio writing that song yo i i kind of like how uh this history is so debated about where this song comes from because nobody has seen these people it's always like oh la taste makers oh new york which is fine that it's like rightfully so but there's also all sorts of talent coming from all over the country man there's vietnamese people deep in the south right heavy like not even just houston but like dallas there's like a huge vietnamese population right right right alex i can i tell you that david has had this uh i guess it's a hot take that vietnamese are low-key the most interesting asians in america that because they're because they're such a range and yes there's like people of mixed blood or whether they're chinese or they're viet or whether from the north or the south the winning side it's like they're they're such a recent tumultuous an interesting history you know i mean i mean obviously it's a lot of bad with the interestingness but a lot of struggle but would you agree and would you make the case that vietnamese stories need to be talked about more because they're very very interesting they're incredibly complicated and i think that's what makes for a great story if it's just like beginning middle and okay next uh what else are we watching but vietnamese culture is so insane just even before the war how like how vietnam used to be a part of china then the tribes like broke off because they wanted to do their own thing and then china tried to attack and take it back and they're like no no no no we're like the we're like the 300 of china is that the is that the trunk sisters trunk sisters yeah i know i know i know um stay stable yeah i guess like where do you what do you think are some stories that could get made right now what are some southeast asian stories that need to get told like we said it's unfortunate you know like mong people they only got grand terino as representation like you said a lot of vietnamese stuff does center around the war mm-hmm but i think a lot of stories that can be told is like the the migration and like the integrated into society like all the businesses that get remade and everything of course then you you bring in like the whole hollywood storytelling uh the things like the amount of people who've been killed just migrating over to america and then trying to start a life and then they get killed again into the gang violence like yo we have our own sopranos happening in our backyard yeah that's a real talk yeah it's what it's much more uh almost like a sicilian that sicilian americans yeah no i mean honestly of asia if the sicilians got all these mafia stories i feel like vietz should have their own i mean in a way that every time i talk to my viet friends about their backgrounds and at least what they know of what their parents went through or what their older brothers and sisters went through is some crazy i mean i don't i don't want to downplay obviously cambodians too they got stories too but vietz in the sense that because there's a larger number and they come here and they just set up shop right away they just get into it they're like hey man we come here with the nails boom boom boom yeah what do we have now house of hole oh wow oh shiny houses you already got the cars you already got the girls and now you want to go sober that's the big story of the show god here how did you get here dog how did you get here where are you from let me hear a real f***ing story instead of you driving around in a f***ing mclaren commercial i could give a f*** less about that can we please get some more interesting stories what do you would you give house a whole out of 10 i don't know on a trash scale like a f***ing eight nine it's reality tv it's supposed to be like gaudy and just uh freaking over the top it's fine oh look at all these like sweeping landscapes of a 12 person dinner yo i fine sure wealth porn that's what a lot of people want from asians yeah they just want to see all the louis they just want to see like welcome to my crib type energy like how how you ball and how you live in sure that's fine but that's not all of us that's not the majority of thinking away it's almost like the stories are almost obviously i would like to see him but maybe for hollywood it almost feels too real so for example for brother son they have these like triad story lines but that stuff actually goes down in the via community how it does in the brother son show but they don't want to talk about that they but it's fake you know what i'm saying for the chinese community well i don't want to say it never happened for the chinese community but it definitely nowadays it's a lot less right like but i would say man if you know but you don't say you know what i mean it's like if you know v it's in the urban areas like yeah that's stuff stuff's going down the struggle for power happened like i all throughout my childhood me just seeing like vietnamese gangs my sister used to date like one of the captains of like little saigon hoodlums and he solid fucking dude but also took me on a drive by like my first drive by i was like okay cool uh i'm polishing bullets he's like yeah uses red bandana to clean these bullets real quick we're taking fingerprints off bullets for an uzi and he's he's having us loaded up and we're having fun we're having fun we're like oh we're loading this extend this is cool this is the biggest story i needed to hear today oh we're gonna go hop in the prelude essay drop drop down white body baby blue oh cool yeah we're gonna hop in that oh we're gonna roll around and bang alice what was the license plate again could you recite it uh no comment no comment but uh but yeah no see that's funny uh i mean well that's i guess you could say that's sad but i mean that's something that it's fascinating it's fascinating you know what it is i just thought of the pilot vietnamese jeweler he's like uh got two sides of his family one's more proper one's more street right but he's in the middle he's in the street side yeah but he's in the middle because he sells custom iced out pieces obviously you still have to interface a lot with the streets save the joke david so this is the story of johnny dang or and then yeah one sister goes to yale yeah and his other brother goes to jail and that's the that's that spectrum alice real talk i literally i don't know about the Yale part but i've met families viet families that you will get literally got somebody going to jail you got somebody getting their master's degree yeah in the same family and that is just not that common in other groups because viet's have that range is what i'm saying like like everybody every group first of all has sent people to the ivy leagues right there's ivy league from every but i'm saying within one single family to have like ivy leaguer and then like a jail leaguer like you know what i mean like a prison league i got brothers in prison i got sisters that own nail salon i got a sister that runs a gas shop i'm like i'm in entertainment it's how did this happen we're all supposed to just be we're all supposed to just stay in the same neighborhood and run the same like three to five businesses but then i got a brother in switzerland who works for like the watch industry you got people like and i got people all surrounded all around vietnam like family members that i've never met kind of don't want to at the moment but you know it's just because it's complicated again it's complicated i just i don't want to be seen as a go fund me every time you walk into vietnam as a vietnamese american they look at you as like a go fund me link you're like ah no i don't know i'm i'm good i i think i'm just gonna enjoy the beautiful countryside i think i'm gonna do that so yeah it's it's complicated man i think that's the that's what stories need to be told about you know maybe an americanized uh vietnamese person goes over to vietnam to like about a funeral and then they end up meeting all this family from like north and south crazy layered story exactly those stories are not being told instead we get what house of hoe that's what we get as our entry point our introduction to america but do you think some people they want to see the house of hoes to be like oh i wouldn't have wanted to see that about street life i want to see like the people who own the plaza and little saigon's like you know i'm saying like that's your f***ing fault for not acknowledging the flaws in our community that's what f***ing makes you uh stuff that makes me so mad because a big part of why the vietnamese culture is struggling so much is because we refuse to talk about our flaws like when i'm talking about my s*** on stage people just like people can't even look me in the eye they're uncomfortable they're uncomfortable because you know they're just like oh well we're trying to like clean up and everything i'm like yeah but you haven't talked about what f*** makes you tick you haven't talked about that you're just covering it with degrees and businesses and lexuses you're gonna cover that but the f***ing bottom part is so goddamn fragile that you can't even talk about it and you're drinking like kavace all day just to like drown it out even further so so what would you say is some of the things that typically make the its tick i guess what are you referring to just to be specific i guess it starts i mean it starts at the same place most asian culture started it's the war it's like shame it's the loss of like so many of your friends and foes throughout the life through the migration through people that like through addiction huge addiction problem in the vietnamese community but it's like decorated with parties oh yeah we're having a party oh he just gets wasted no the guy drinks the morning noon and night he's not celebrating anything he's depressed gotta talk about it gotta address it gotta make a movie about it you know gotta talk about addiction why can't we have our shameless shame risk that's funny uh i had it took me a second to get it so i guess when you see like the hennessy memes on ig jackfruit etc etc funny not funny or you're like cool start but we need to get we need to go deeper than yeah i see it as funny but let's talk about the flaws let's talk about why that is our meme why is hennessy like our our biggest freaking flagship alcohol now because it's a it's a french liquor too is the french i think it was uh yeah absolutely because of that and it's like the hardest liquor of all so you know you're a man you better drink henness you grow some hair in your chest little boy too park was talking about hennessy exactly growing hair in your chest you gotta you gotta be a man sorry i keep cursing no it's all good at this point man we go we just got i might have to do the voc vocab search gotta get ai just i mean listen let's just talk about the shows that are out right now brother son what do you give it out of ten oh man about a seven about a seven a solid seven i just think the show is um more the same it's cool you know brothers how many times can you make that improv joke really we're dude that's every every episode we're doing the improv joke oh you do it's improv you're gonna improvize them to death i like i groaned every time i heard it action sequences like oh you got michelle yo on your cast and these are the choreo choreography like uh that's it's weak i mean one of the cool scenes the guys the red ribbon guys coming out of the rocks that was hard as uh that was cool that was really hard episode four i think but honestly casting was all off i didn't like it i i think it could have been a little more gritty wasn't lacking some authenticity in your mind like you just can't believe that these guys are connected to any game no i they all look like like they stay they tutor people at kuman like yeah these are your gangsters they're fine you got a couple like big ball like freaking buff guys i i believe them but when uh what's his name chair leg brought in his boys from taiwan i'm like what fast and furious rejects are these right here they look like a taiwanese boy band these are your gangsters it just wasn't believable and when michelle yo got kidnapped and that little that little non-binary looking kid that she woke up to and i'm like that's your guy that's the guy calling the mood hey i'm not there yet you're rolling in the season for me spoiler alert michelle yo you need to give me all these names and all the people that have had all the tryouts i'm like yo the guy doesn't even have a driver's license that's your guy it was like they tried to portray something because the studio said this is the script and they just try to fit their homies in a roll sure yeah you understand and when you give it out of 10 and he said but all that being said you still gave it a seven i'm surprised you said that i thought it was pretty high considering what you your feedback about it i would i would give it honestly a 7.5 i thought the i think everybody should watch the first episode and then decide if they want to watch the rest of the episodes but i think it's worth watching the first one why can't we get any real abgs to audition for that show abg that i canceled on abc why is that because you know what i want to just say what i want to say yeah here's what i'm starting all the real southeast asians i know they're popping on social anything from ig to tiktok let's be honest i'm gonna keep it real here o f yeah okay they're popping right sure crazy magnetism but nowhere near the mainstream mainstream would have no idea who they are so when they want to cast a southeast asian it's going to be somebody who's like so all outside of that azn experience they don't know what to be like british or something yeah that's what i'm saying i'm saying but uh why is that i think i think a lot of those people that they're like not those people but like a lot of the abg types aren't concerned about network television they're not they don't audition they get everything in life for the most part they don't have to try right you say you say like get money let's say for example and this is the most stereotypical example you're a bottle girl yeah you're hot you're making a ton of money cash flow why why go out to audition in sunset right why pay taxes right why pay taxes give me a bag of cash at the end of my work shift they just they walk around they get their bag cool i respect that i respect getting the bag and saying cute uncle sam but uh it's so hard to find like asian talent just because of how hard they have made it for us just to get in we have to like go through auditions hundreds of auditions you make us memorize pages and pages and pages of scripts for free right for something you will never get casted something you'll never get casted in and they'll continually and they'll continually to exploit the artist always no matter what so i guess do you understand the mindset from people who are like man i'm just gonna go chill back to the azn world whether that's oc houston etc etc it's the last thing on our minds that they've already got the whips they've already got everything you want they're not concerned about the prestige of an annanis like a kind of a uppity term to use but they're not concerned with the prestige it is that comes with being a well respected entertainer it's just not something maybe with ali wong's success maybe that changes maybe they're like oh man look she's one of the people that understand prestige yeah you know i think i think one thing preventing a lot of people from joining the industry and maybe this is in particular like a lot of southeast asians is that they don't know if they can be themselves and make it you know like you said like the whole process they don't even know themselves yeah the whole process of getting into the industry to get your face in front of a casting director you have to fit all these different roles and it's like get an agent maybe you just like having cash in your hand like i think cash is something that like vietnamese people really like like i know that sounds weird but like they like the money like all my friends they like to give me cash all day every day forget all this digital currency i'm about cash put cash in my hand i will dance for you you know what i mean but with the vietnamese culture too is just like we're not great with relationships so to speak so in the industry you have to make a lot of relationships you gotta get to know people you gotta just like talk to them shake hands kiss babies it it's exhausting it's very much for kind of like private school kids right to be honest like a lot of the actors they come from private schools good families there's nothing wrong with that yeah but that is how the industry runs and it is like a private club so obviously if you come from a background completely opposite from that trying to adapt to that is just tough yeah it's a nightmare i've had to read so many books about it it is there's how to talk to white people chapter what it's a lot of schmoozing a lot of grooving and schmoozing and things like that that may not be organically developed from a lot of like commonly immigrant backgrounds yeah it's it's rough it's not a common skill set up what i'm saying is like your parents are not going to give you those skill sets that you're going to need to navigate that particular board game yeah and in vietnamese culture the good thing is that you're always being watched you're always being judged partially so that prepped me for to work in entertainment because i'm like six skin yeah i was like oh you're gonna tell me that i'm not going to be successful because i look like every other asian person a white guy background extra told that to me while i was a principal i was a principal on a commercial national and he was like uh you know you kind of look like most like asian dudes you know i don't think you're gonna be successful i'm like oh i gotta go rehearse my lines real quick and you come here and you're always being watched not so they can take care of you so they can see if they can work with you or not so i'm just like uh you gotta be very careful about that too what what gave you the mindset that's so different where you do want to put in all this unseen work say achieve this like very lofty goal that a lot of people would just be like man that takes too long you know i'm saying like what makes you different you were saying this because you're the youngest child yeah what allowed you to have i guess a more like uh narrative driven or philosophical or idealistic driven vision for what success is like rather than just getting racks and racks and racks and bread mental illness bro mental illness sociopathy the need to be liked as the youngest kid you know we're always like trying to be liked right so i'm like uh and you also don't get picked on when you're like a funny guy so me growing up in the hood getting picked on every day of my life by like you know mexican people black people that they picked on me because i was the only asian kid so i was like oh if i'm funny and entertaining i won't get picked on so i'll come out here and you got these people that can either make or break your whole career if i can make them laugh okay at least i'll be in good standing you know so it's kind of like a survival thing almost when you're going through it a couple times i've wanted to quit move back home and just go like stack up run some small run some small cash only businesses right only businesses dry cleaning launder money whatever i need to do just to make that cash as soon as i am almost gonna move the universe is like here's another thing that'll pay your bills for a whole year and i'm like oh fine all right oh representation now when they start to talk about representation and when you know stop asian hate started bubbling up i'm like okay people actually care people actually care about us this is this is nice this is nice that people actually care about our well-being and then mental illness still isn't talked about in like the asian community we will i know i talk about it on stage like how mentally ill like a lot of asian cultures are especially vietnamese people because we got so much healing to do and i'm gonna do that through these jokes that's that's the only way i can do it and i just i love what i do man all right just to switch gears real quick what are the most underrated vid dishes that people don't know about because everybody knows at this point yeah everybody know you know what i mean the typical bunnies spring rolls people know spring rolls i love spring rolls i would say probably like some deep give me some deep cut ones where i'm like because i i know a lot about food so i i may or might not y'all have salty wings with fish sauce okay i've only had it a few times that's i mean are those nook mom wings what do we yeah nook mom wings nook mom wings are getting a little bit right that's really good uh i would say caramelized pig intestines if you had that i haven't had it caramelized pig is it the catfish too the yeah it's cooked like the catfish but but not catfish right it's like cleaned three to five times over and water and vinegar and everything just to get all that stuff out of there and then you chop it up and you saute it is tasty andrew's morning intestines how do you say uh it would it's called gulk what so you would just say um gulk yeah gulk sour uh i was like the shortest thing i was gonna say i was like you're not saying gulk i i thought it was like gulk god the the something but not just gulk call like when you go like hit call that means it's like caramelized yeah cat call take call then you got gulk call which is uh so tasty oh yeah i got another dat fan real quick because we were talking about we got dat fan comedian dat winner of america's last comic standing uh long time ago i'm not gonna the first time he's i saw him i couldn't breathe it was funny it was funny sure sure uh a flash in the pan no pun intended but wait you pro or against him i'm indifferent i could care less i would say at this point i'm against him just because bro what are you doing you had the golden ticket does he do anything for other uh comedians as far as you know like other v it's like no he does not he don't reach back to the community he does not reach back to the community he's busy with his white girlfriend which hey praise to him go ahead do your thing but i'm just i'm looking as a young guy uh that had to pick myself up by my own sandals okay like i had to work my way make my own path which is great that's great that because it's it's it's a foundation that cannot be shook at all but it would have been nice to have somebody to be like hey you know you know you got like a handful of comedians that are not vietnamese to help out the vietnamese comedians hats off to them they've taken care of me through the way i agree with you and it's true and that fan did not joe coy it you know how joe coy got the squad of filipino comedians that he's like yeah where's that nest but it's it's hard to like lift people up when you ain't got an hour you know he can't do an hour so that's the true test of a comedian can't do you got bars for an hour do you got a special if you can't even fill a 30 minute special comedy central presents back in the day then i'm indifferent i could care less but i ain't gonna root for you dog i'm also i'll yeah you did your thing sure you got bread yeah you got bread so he's all good he'll be fine he'll be fine i could care less about him he's he's not in my on my vietnam there is no vietnamese like rush mount mount rush you're messing with uh keshi keshi is uh he's like a vietnamese like indy singer like but he's like real vibey with gen z like gen z he's from dallas really yeah i haven't i've been out of the loop boy he's like super young like 22 years that'd be funny if i did know him i'm like oh man yeah no you just like i just know him but i don't know his music i just know him from no i haven't come across him yet unfortunately but i i'm sure if he's vibing he's doing his things that's a really hard like a market to crack is the gen z like music market he he's he's it he's the one uh i i guess uh yeah i would put him as a groundbreaking vietnamese artist hell is i think that a lot of people don't know he's viet killie killie's part viet killie was part viet killie keshi's doing better than killie though okay keshi's doing better i'm gonna have to fuck with i'm gonna have johnny dang johnny dang my guy i don't uh what what is it let's well we'll wrap richie lee too we gotta shout out to richie lee yeah richie lee uh what does it mean to be vietnamese moving forward man like is it vietnamese american or is it the viet's from vietnam right now who are coming over like i know some international viet's that are coming over now more are do they more represent vietnam like you know there's always a rift between the american experience and yeah vq versus vietnamese that's a real big thing well you see like the rich viet fobs dripped out in balenciaga looking like how chinese fobs used to look 10 years ago now oh it's it's not a good look man you were in seven different brand names all at once like you gotta relax on that man the art is in subtlety my guys and gals but i think vietnamese is having a hard time to crack because our language is so harsh but you know how like chinese people have softened the language a little bit for american digestion korean people have like softened their language just for digestion they made it a little more catchy i think we're having uh a challenge right now with making vietnamese entertainment vietnam in particular to be catchy right what about the tip you can't sing on any courses did you hear that viet trap song though when the dude yeah that guy with the backpack yeah yeah yeah that's a banger that's a banger well all right how can you do an impression of a smooth vietnamese accent and then one that people think it sounds like which is like the harsh one so if you were saying like uh how are you doing today like uh like are you doing well today you would be like uh that doesn't sound bad that sounds easy this is the harsh one yeah that's the one yeah no that's the one i heard growing up yeah yeah that's uh like our our brains aren't registered like we're not evolved enough so are you all right are you pushing for some type of movement to beautify or smooth out the vietnamese accent a little bit because you understand listen i'm not saying accents aren't authentic to where you come from right they usually are but you're but you're making the point that hey at some point we do need the vietnamese to sound a little bit better to go beyond uh to go beyond uh underground i think we have to smooth it out a little bit make it a little more catchy i've had so many conversations with vietnamese creators about it because uh i'm like so americanized and they're like so there and they got great beats they got great video videography talking about like a su boy or something like that like which one su boy i don't know he's a girl rapper yet now so some people that i've spoken to vietnam a su boy hasn't reached out to me uh but like a couple of them who like represent like artists over there they were like we talk and i just reach out to them because i'm like oh your vietnamese you're doing numbers you you like prolific this is cool um just like shouting out or whatever and they're like they'll reach out to me on the same token to be like oh cool it's really great to see vietnamese people representing so on and so forth and i'm like i listen to their stuff on youtube and it's just it's it's hard to catch on i'm like yo this beat slaps but i can't sing along i need those four masters is it is that just like a country versus city thing because you know how back in the day in america i think all accents have been standardized in 2024 but let's go back 50 60 years ago in the continental us people use a top like this you know i mean when we're out when you get outside the city people talk like this it's not true anymore and that's funny but it was true that's that those accents are funny asian accents are hilarious for the sake of comedy but if you want to move beyond that i think you got to soften it down yo we can't just use it for comedy we got to use it for romance now yeah we got to go push for sexy vietnamese let's say some sexy vietnamese man last question last question what do you think about the social media um comedians where it's like they do the viet accent but it's like uh who's the dude 50 50 dong you don't talk about the 50 cent no i haven't seen i mean he's like the sub dog or you know what i mean like okay okay there's so many guys out there and who else do you watch we watch everybody you know that pops up yeah i think uh that's fine but it has it has a timer on it as a timer are you gonna get your 15 and then uh next you know you gotta be talking about some real shit you see on social media people get their little 15 minutes it's cool they pop up to get the views which we don't get paid for by the way you're doing this for free do a little abg club event in houston sure you do a little pop up you get what about a thousand a rack for that appearance you know how many hours you put in for that thousand dollars just to show up at a little club and pop some bottles that ain't enough dog you need to go beyond that the roads a lot rougher than that and it requires a lot of fucking money so how you how are we gonna get the back we go we got to go mainstream we got to appeal to a broader customer base you can't just be a little fish in your own little you know koi pond or whatever but i think it starts that way but i would encourage all those guys and shout out to sub dog 50 dong i know you that everybody got their own hustles on the side like what up at like they could grow it or at least sit down with somebody to think through the possibility there there's so many opportunities out there especially with us now like connecting through social media that we can support each other we can combine all the resources and everything that's what photo culture has been doing with little saigon with sub dog like all those guys hang out together they're homies like we hung out at a couple like vietnamese parties together all cool super talented now we're now we're getting it we're understanding that we got to combine get rid of all this north south versus bull like we we have to combine all the resources because if you go down to any vietnamese like community you see 27 shops that sell the same thing yo let's share the bag it's a bigger bag if we share and you combine all those forces into this like conglomerate it can be so much bigger so much better more hands make light work dog hey man that's a perfect point to end on alex i know you for 10 years and man you're coming up i'm happy to see it check us out stuff out social media very funny guy see him on blue bloods i love all around town when does this drop in a week in a week in four days oh four days february 17th if you're in orange county we got embarrassed by night coming down there it's going to be a sold out show at the circle shout out embarrassed by night that sounds like a v it it's a v it's a comedy show my boys andy and fred they came up with a monster brand and we're going to take it to a new level this upcoming uh you know thought it's going to be a good time oh for the new year for the new year you're the dragon baby chakmak namoy uh yo i just thought of this uh play on cafe du man yeah whatever was cafe du ma they got that mercury oh there they got that we're we're very inventive folks man vietnamese people have so many ideas like we were the first people to turn a sony walkman into like a playstation four they got that out there we're the first ones to do they got that in vietnam incredibly inventive send me the send me the photos so we can pop that up oh absolutely but yeah shout out to ham choy out in uh houston too shout out to everybody man all right you guys let us know what you think of this in the comment section below dope discussion until next time we the hot pop boys we out peace big gang