LeMent Tonight for August 13, 2026

This Week In this episode of LeMent Tonight, host Bob interviews Southern California stand-up comedian John Liu, exploring his background as a first-generation Filipino-Chinese American and his journey in comedy. The conversation touches on John's day job as an auditor—which he deliberately keeps separate from his stand-up routines—as well as his experiences performing across the United States and internationally in Taiwan and the Philippines. After playing a lighthearted improv game where John offers intentionally terrible advice for dating and dinner parties, the discussion shifts to his love for cooking traditional Filipino dishes like adobo and kare-kare, followed by reflections on vegetarianism, religion, and the practical challenges of owning and operating an independent comedy club. https://JohnLiuComedy.com https://youtube.com/live/lSicf2OlkSo Bad AI Transcript Hey, everybody, it's Lament Tonight. guest tonight is john Blue. Or is it live? Now, how would you pronounce this, John? I pronounce it it makes it easier for my neighbors. Yes, sir. Oh, okay. You're totally ignoring the eye pretty much. I'm trying to be less central me i'm not trying to be less egocentric. Let's talk about you So John Liu is a first-generation Asian American. You give your heritage as Filipino and Chinese on your bio. You're based in Southern California. You have a sharper tongue, as we just heard. And your comedy centers around growing up in a multicultural background, being a first-generation immigrant, current events, and dealing with the ever-changing American zeitgeist. You can catch him… at JohnLiuComedyLiu.com. John Liu, how are you doing tonight? Cheers. I'm doing great. I'm chilling in a city called Anaheim, which is, as if you may know, may or may not know, is the hometown of Disneyland. Lovely, beautiful day in Southern California. The heat is finally letting up. The humidity is letting up. And there's some wild parrots hanging around outside. It is a good day.Were you at Disneyland today? No, no, no, no. A friend of mine is running a comedy show. So before I showed up, before I logged in, I dropped in to say hello. Support local comics, support my friends, all that good stuff. Well, that was awful nice. I do what I can. Were you just there for support or did you do something else? No, it's a theme night, actually. I have a friend. His name is Eric Escobar, Hilarious Comics. plug for him uh he run he's doing a special comedy night uh at a local brewery called cast comedy night these are all current or former disney performers so i went down to catch you know catch his comedy and you know see see some comics and now i'm here with you and this is a wonderful setup thanks again for having me bob you're so gracious my goodness are you your mother must be very proud of you. I hope soYou're so polite. So now you just said for current or former Disney performers. Now, what do you mean by that? Well, OK, so when you go to Disneyland, they have people working, you know, staff members. They also have crew members. These are the forward facing people like the tour guides on the Jungle Cruise or, you know, people manning, you know, dressed up as characters, things like that. Oh, okay. Cast members, as they like to say, so they don't have to pay them. It's true. But funny enough, I do believe they're part of the actors' union, too. They're actually considered acting. It's an acting job, I think. Oh, really? Okay. It's fascinating. That's a good move on their part, is to pull that in, right? So the whole cast member thing was kind of a dodge, I think, originally. And so now they're going, yeah, well, wait.If we're cast members, we're acting. Have you ever worked at Disney or no? No. Oh, my gosh, no. I have no patience for that kind of thing. I wear my heart on my sleeve and my contempt on my face, so it's kind of like I can't do that. It's very difficult for me to be in a customer-facing position. You're so polite. You've been so polite to me tonight. And here you're saying, oh, no, I can't do that. It's a lot of work, Bob. So you've got like five minutes of pleasantries and then after that it's all venom or what? Well, I don't know what to say. I really don't. I'm not much of a conversationalist. That's why I'm in stand-up and not improv. Oh, my goodness. It's working right now, John. Well, cheers. Thank you. Now, since you're a Filipino-Chinese, is John your first name or is this an Americanized name for you?Well, here's the thing you got to know really quickly about the Philippines. We are an English-speaking country. English is one of the languages that we speak, so we do have a lot of crossover. John is actually my given birth name. So, yeah. I do have a Chinese name, but I don't use it too much, mainly because I can barely speak Chinese. It's like at a four-year-old level, if I'm lucky. It's terrible. What level of Chinese do you speak, John? Oh, four-year-old. I don't know. I really don't know. My wife describes it as, my wife says I understand half of the conversation. Unfortunately, I understand the useless half. I only know the words and, the, and. Right. I can count to a decent extent. I know important phrases, some words, because I did go to school where they taught Chinese, butPart of the difficulty is that I didn't get a lot of practice. I moved to the States when I was a teen, and where I moved to, there weren't a lot of Chinese speakers, so it kind of fell by the wayside, and I wasn't that good to begin with. So where did you grow up in your teens? Can you tell me an area? Southern California, through and through. Okay, so dude, whoa, hey. Pretty much, pretty much. There's no Chinese words for that. No, if there are, I don't know them. So would you in the Southern California culture, would you what would you describe yourself as? So like, you know, there's skater, surfer, you know, beach. I think the closest thing I don't know if they still have them. But, you know, when I was younger, I was definitely more in the nerd slash preppy kind of thing. Oh, OK. Yeah.And I was a kid. I had my fun, but I wasn't much into skating, wasn't much into sports. I was a bit of a nerd. I was into comic books, toys, that kind of thing. And I'm not – the why doesn't apply anymore, but I would certainly be – could have been classified as a yuppie back in the day. I think you and I are of the same generation that you know what a yuppie is. Oh, yeah. And for the younger folks, a yuppie – Young Urban Professional. Oh, I thought you were going to say it was a wet puppy. No, no, no, no, no. No, I know. Young Urban Professional. Exactly. You drove your Beamer. And your girlfriend was named Buffy. No, I don't have money. That's why I'm here. No offense. But otherwise, I would have bought myself a comedy club and called it a day. Oh, well, that's interesting.Why are you waiting? What is stopping you from realizing this dream? My bank account. Well, no. Banks will give anybody money. You could go get a loan. They want me to pay it back eventually. That's the part you've got to figure out. Respect anyone that runs a comedy venue. It's not easy. It isn't. Well, you just sell drugs in the back and you're all set. Everything works out. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, no, it's not for me. Plus, it's a lot of logistics that I don't really want to deal with. I want to be free. I want to be happy. You know what? You can have the John Liu comedy car. It's like Uber, except you get comedy on the way to your destination. Actually, a friend of mine had this idea recently.of taking, like, you know, one of those creepy, gigantic vans, you know, and just opening up the door and having, like, a pop-up comedy show, have the speakers and the mic in there, and just drive wherever, park somewhere, and set up a comedy show that way. Yeah. I mean, they did the cash cab on television for I don't know how long. You could do the comedy cab. Talk about a captive audience. Just lock the doors, have the choppers. That's right. And then if they want to get out, they got to pay you. Yeah. Oh, my God. We could be like those crazy people that preach on planes. Have you been seeing that on the news? No. We could do that. We could just put on a comedy show. They preach on a plane? Is that allowed? No. It's absolutely not. Explain this to me. Do they just, like, bother the person next to them, or do they stand up and tell the whole plane? No, they stand up and tell the whole plane. Oh, my word.one lady, she got put on the no-fly list forever because she was pretty much preaching the entire time. She would get up, preach to the plane, and just she just refused to sit down. You know, all that stuff. And there are a couple people doing that so i'll be honest with you. I would rather have it happen in a plane than anywhere else because, I mean, you never know. That's fair. You look like a 50 50 that you may need that at that moment. That's true. That's true. You know, but it, yeah, it's all about that captive audience, getting that group of people together. And I like to perform, I'll be honest. I like to perform, you know, I, it's the advertising, the marketing that doesn't appeal to me, you know? Oh no. Well, I think this, I think this, you know, comedy Uber thing is the way to go. Cause then, I mean, you like to go places, right?Absolutely. Travel is one of the perks. I've gotten to go to so many places and see so many things that I wouldn't have if I wasn't in comedy. It gives me that incentive to travel. Tell me some of the places you've gone. Have you gone to Macau? I have not. I've only recently started traveling for comedy. Let's see. I've performed in the Philippines. I've been to open mics in Taiwan. Wow. in terms of shows, proper shows, I've done show