From Military Service to Stand-Up: Thom Tran on the Healing Power of Humor and Comedy's Role in Mental Health-Encore Episode

Comedy saved me. Can we just talk really quick about stretching before we get started? Because that is the number one thing. Like you can work out all you want, but if you don't stretch as you get older, I mean, you're going to fall. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to seize up at some point. I used to tell people at the gym that I used to go to, I just had a gym put in here at my house. Nice. Like a whole setup. But I would tell like these younger kids, like I see younger kids who are like the reserves are national guard and they come in their PT uniforms and they're like, hey, big Sarge, why are you stretching so long? I was like, because the moment you guys hit 30 and you don't stretch correctly, you pull a muscle, you're done. You're done. So like I spend a significant amount of time stretching like full body, regardless of what I'm doing that day. It's like you got to stretch every muscle I used to tell, you know, I used to tell my soldiers, the bad guys don't care if it was leg day or strength day, you got to be ready whole body to fight with everything you got. So every day it's like I have a very specific stretching regimen that hits every muscle group because, you know, I don't know if after I do my strength training stuff, if I'm going to literally have to, you know, a friend will call me and be like, hey, can you do, can you work on my movie? I need somebody to run up a hill wearing a rucksack. So, you know, full body training every day, even though not in the army anymore, it's just it's what you got to do. It's built in, but it's just so huge for everybody in their everyday life. Like you can't even stress it enough and it's always the last thing anyone thinks of. And, you know, my mom, she's 80, she walks every day and I'm like, Matt, do you stretch? No. And I'm like, oh my God, do you know that all you just fall once and it's all over? It's because, and it really is like your rubber bands or your muscles in your tendons and all the ligaments and stuff. And if it all gets tightened up, how are you going to be able to catch yourself if you trip on something? Yeah, it's not cool and it's not sexy, but no being being laid up with a cast on or whatever for three weeks is even less cool and even less sexy. Yeah. When you're just sitting there just eating garbage because you can't do stuff. So it's been a big part of my mental health journey. Now that I'm not in the army anymore, it's like one of the few things that just keeps me going. Wow. Well, I'm so glad we have this discussion because I just want to say I told you so to my mom and all of my friends who give me a hard time, but when I yell at them for not stretching. One last question about this, because I know it's not really even a part of this, but do you stretch before and after or just after or just before? Before and after. Before and after. Okay. Before stretching, I do a lot of dynamic stretching because you want to loosen up and warm up the muscles, but you don't want to overwork them before you start lifting weights. So just like I do it, I'm a Star Trek nerd and I call it the seven to nine, seven of nine stretching and do everything for seven to nine reps just to get the muscles loose, just ready to go. And then post workout, a lot of static stretching. So a lot of like holding, pulling, holding for like seven to nine seconds usually. And it's literally, those numbers are literally because of Star Trek. That's it. There's no scientific reason behind seven to nine seconds. I love it. Other than that. I love it. It's really important and I'm grateful that I just got to pick your brain about it because you definitely know what you're talking about. And by the way, if you just, just checking us out right now, Tom Tran is with me in studio via zoom. And I probably should give him a proper introduction, but I also feel like we need to take a quick break first before we get started. So would you mind after this great stretch talk that I mean, take a minute, go stretch, do what you got to do and come back and join us because Tom Tran is here on comedy saved me and you're not going to want to miss this. This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human. Comedy saved me. Welcome to the comedy, save me podcast, the show where we dive into the power of laughter, the struggles behind the punchlines and the stories of how comedy can heal, uplift and even save lives. If you like this podcast, thank you so much for listening. It really means a lot to all of us. You may also enjoy a couple of other podcasts produced by the Buzz Night Media production company called music saved me, which I also host and another podcast called taken a walk, which is hosted by the amazing Buzz Night himself, who is an incredible music historian. You will be blown away at his conversations with people in the industry. It's, it's pretty cool. I am your host Lynn Hoffman and today I'm so excited. I'm joined by the hilarious and inspiring Tom Tran. Tom is not just someone who brings the jokes. He is proof that comedy can be a lifeline, a coping mechanism and a bridge to a connection. We're going to talk about his journey as a military vet, the moments where humor pulled him through tough times and hopefully share some laughs along the way. No pressure. Tom Tran, welcome to comedy saved me. Now I just want to make sure I get this correct. You are a military vet. You are a purple heart recipient who transitioned from a communications and civil affairs sergeant in the special operations community to of all things a stand up comedian and a really good one. I think that's a kind of a rather unique journey and one that I'm really looking forward to finding out about talking to you. So first of all, did I get that correct? And can you give us a little bit of a glimpse into that sort of beginning part of your life where you entered into the military? You did miss one part. I did. We can talk about music too because I of course need the guitars, some of which I have a severe case of gas. Is that what that wants? Because I was wondering. Yeah, guitar acquisition syndrome. Yeah, I have so many guitars. But no, I actually wanted music was a big part of my life too. It's always been a big part of my life. And actually when I left the army and I went back home, I wanted to be a musician. Like I wanted to be a musician before the army. I started band. I was playing out the Goo Goo Dolls or Friends of Mine from my hometown of Buffalo, New York. And then just I think post combat, I really had a tough time working with other people who weren't military people. Like I spent a career in the army and spent, you know, a combat deployment in Iraq, suffering some of the worst tragedies a soldier can. And I came home and I wanted music to be the thing that saved me. But as much as I love it, the business part of music and having to deal with other band members, producers, things like that. When I found comedy, it's not that I found comedy like it came out of nowhere. But when comedy became a viable option in my life as a tool for therapy, but also as a career, that's when I went, okay, I don't have to spend the thousands of dollars I have spent on guitar equipment and pedals and amps. And I can just, I mean, it was the late, early 2000s. So I was buying a lot of hoodies and jackets because that was the comedian uniform at the time, like a sports coat and a hoodie and a t-shirt. Yeah, comedy became the thing that I turned to after my career in the army. Yeah, I read it. Well, first of all, to everyone listening, I want to thank you for your service to our country. And also for your continued service now through your craft of comedy, because you're creating healing laughter for all of us to tap into when we need it. So I'm grateful that you found your niche. But I also read that while you were deployed, as you were describing, that you were hurt only like four days into your deployment, but you continued through to the end. And I was curious, you described comedy saved your life. Can you share when you realized that laughter was helping you to heal and cope with what happened? And was it during the time while you were still serving or was it after? It wasn't until well after I got home because, you know, so what happens, I deployed to Iraq 2003, OIF-1, the first deployment across the border on a Sunday, shortly after the war officially began. In March and then on Wednesday, I was in my first gunfight and I got shot in the back of the head. So that's how my war started. It literally started with like, cross the border, establish an OP, observation point, and then observation position, and then went out on a mission, got shot fourth day. And I didn't realize it at the time, but even then, comedy was the thing that was keeping me going. Literally, moments after I got shot because I was the combat lifesaver in the truck, so I was the one with the medical training at the time. I was a communication sergeant, but I was also cross-training like combat lifesaver. So I literally banished my own head. We continued that mission. Are you serious? You helped? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. If you watch the video, because there's video of it, I'm bandaging my own head. And I remember, you know, the combat life-saving training kicking in, just going, keep talking, keep talking, do not lose consciousness, because I was the guy with the medical training in the truck. Not only was I the comm sergeant, I was the medical sergeant. So I remember thinking, just keep talking, just keep talking, just keep talking. And on the outside, because we videoed the entire mission from before I got shot, me getting shot, we have that on tape, and then us running a second mission as I'm bleeding for my skull. And then on our way back to the combat hospital in the entire time, I'm trying to stay awake by making myself laugh, making the major laugh, making the colonel laugh, making our interpreter laugh. And it was just me going, all right, keep talking, because if you lose consciousness and we're in this convoy, 10 clicks from the base. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm the medical guy. So how is anyone going to be helped if you don't make it? Yeah. Wow. So even then, like, I watched the video once in a while. I have the whole thing several hours long, but, you know, I'm just talking to keep myself going, and I'm telling jokes, like I'm looking right in the camera and telling jokes that are, they were not good, they were not good jokes. And they were really just like to make me in the major laugh so that I could make yourself feel comfortable, maybe? Well, really, it was just to keep conscious until we got me to the combat hospital. And the story I used to tell on stage was, we called back to our ops center after the missions that we ran. And I'm the comms guy, and I had to get on the radio and say, hey, listen, we're coming back. And I said, we have to stop at the hospital. I kind of got shot. And the person back in my operation center, my talk, tactile operation center, they said, what do you mean you kind of got shot? And I said, well, I kind of got shot. And before I could give them the details, the radio signal gets broken up because we're kind of far out. And then the retrans communication sergeant at the hospital rings up and he goes, hey, sergeant, I can hear you. I can hear your talk. You tell me what's going on. I'll relay it to them. And I said, yeah, I sort of got shot. And he goes, I heard that part. Where did you get shot? And again, just try to make myself laugh. I said, this is going to sound way worse than it is. I got shot. And he's like, what? I said, yeah, yeah, I'm good. I'm good. We're on our way back. We're about 20 minutes out. And then he said, how long is it going to take for you to get back here? And I said, we're about 20 minutes out, but I'm going to stop, get some donuts from the guys at 123 Infantry. Because they, and they was like, no, you come right back. I was like, relax. I'm joking. Oh my God. I thought you were serious. And that was just to keep me from Wow. literally passing out because I'm losing blood. There's a lot of blood vessels in your head. I'm your scalp, particularly. And I'm like, I was bleeding just nonstop. So it was really just like, stay awake, keep talking, get back to the, the cash, combat support hospital, and, and let the real doctors take care of you. Because I have just minimal combat life saver training. Wow. But I, that's, I did it with comedy. And I didn't really realize it. It was just the thing that I was doing at the time to keep the mission going. That's incredible that you say that. Did you even know that you were funny or that you knew how to be funny? And, or was it just, do you think it was a, just a reaction within you that you couldn't control? That you just knew that you had to keep talking? But keeping talking is one thing. But being funny and joking with the fact that you were shot in the head. I mean, that's, that's incredible. Sometimes I question now if I'm funny. Do you really? I have sets. I have sets sometimes. I will get in the car afterwards. I'll call my friends and I'm like, what am I doing with my life? What is that? I just, I just tanked so hard. So, did I think I was funny? I don't, I don't know. I remember the first time I did stand up comedy in college. It was part of a class that I was taking because I was a radio guy. I was a communications sergeant. I was a radio broadcaster. I just retired from a career in broadcast radio in Los Angeles. So, I was in college before the deployment to Iraq. I was back in the reserves, back home, and I was taking a class. I'll never forget it. It was called voice indiction. And the teacher's name was Jerry Trentham. And I quote his name all the time because I blame him and Robin Williams for my career choices. But the idea of the class was to find your voice in radio and broadcasting, television, whatever it was. Everybody in the class was a broadcast major, somewhere theater majors. And the final project was to take a scene from your favorite movie and do it in your own voice. So, for instance, my friend Sean, he did a scene from Boiler Room. It's his favorite movie. And I said to Jerry, hey, I've always liked stand up comedy. It's not a thing that I thought I'd ever do, but I liked it. Can I, can I do stand up as my final project? And he said, yeah, you have four months and three days, which is the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. So you get four months and three days to write a five-minute set. And it took me four months, three days, and like 25 minutes right up to the moment I walked into the class to do this five minutes of material. And I remember blacking out. Like, I got up there, I opened my mouth, everything went blank. I don't remember what happened. But my friend Sean, who was in the class who lives out here in Los Angeles now, he said to me, he goes, you killed. And I was like, I don't remember that. Like, everything just went blank. I just opened my mouth and just whatever nonsense I'd written down came out. But I assumed I did well because there's a really hot girl in the class who like immediately gave me her phone number. I've been trying to get it all semester long. And she was like, you deserve to take me out on a date. And I was like, I do. And then that was November of 2002. And then I got deployment orders to go back on active duty shortly thereafter. And like weeks later, weeks later, like I think I mobilized down a for brag where our command is mid December for train up, came home for Christmas for a couple of days to see our families one last time. And then we were on a plane right before the new year or right after the new year to Kuwait. So it was like, I did stand up for the first time. I think I did it one more time at a club in town and then got my orders to go to Iraq. So did I ever know I was funny? Not really because I blacked out. I blanked out. I don't remember if iPhones weren't a thing at the time. So nobody recorded it. Thank God, because I found the notes from that set and they are terrible. I was really awful. You've been involved with Homebase, which is a program near and dear to our hearts here at Comedy Saved Me, supporting veterans mental health. And I'm wondered how that work influenced your approach to comedy. There are three things in my life for sure that I know. And anybody close to me knows that if I do not do them for any extended amount of time, I make terrible person to be around. One of them is working out. I hate it. I don't like it. I don't go to the gym because I want to. I'm not a gym rat. I do it because if I don't, my physical and mental health are so tied together that if I don't do it, I cannot function in a normal society with normal people. I can't. The other is comedy. If I don't do stand up comedy for any significant amount of time, I can go a day or two just hanging out with my cats, hanging out with my girlfriend, whatever. But if I go any longer than that without doing stand up comedy, I am, again, a miserable person to be around. And if I don't pick up one of my, I think it's 42 guitars now. And I don't write or play or create something musical. I get very depressed. It's not as bad as when I don't work out when I do stand up because then I'm just aggravated because those are very much my therapy. But music, like I do get genuinely sad if I have literally a guitar or two in every room in this house. I think I have two in my bathroom. It's, I have no excuse to not pick them up, but- Wait a minute. I'm getting a visual of you spending a length of time in the bathroom. The guitar. I write some of my best stuff in the bathroom. Eddie Van Halen recorded some of the greatest stuff with a Marshall 412 and his Saldano head in his bathroom. Because the acoustics in a bathroom are fantastic. I don't know if people know that. A lot of great solos have been recorded in bathrooms. No, you're right. Richie Sambora and John Bon Jovi told me they recorded an album in his mother's bathroom. Yeah. Because the acoustics were so good. Yeah. It was the New Jersey album. I'm a huge Bon Jovi band. I have three Richie Sambora guitars right over there. Wow. Wow. This is like a combo show. This is a music, save me and comedy save me at the same time. I love it. Wow. Well, what, how do you see comedy playing a role in sort of breaking the stigma around? I do a one man show called Laugh After Death and it is a culmination of the last 20 years of my comedy performing to civilians, military audiences, veterans, stateside, inactive combat zones, the Arctic. And it is me taking my stories and my jokes from my life as a soldier and as a comedian now and as somebody who's been struggling with mental health and addiction for a very long time and, and, and putting them together in a cohesive story that when people hear it, they leave understanding a little bit better what veterans and combat soldiers go through without feeling bad for us. They can laugh at, you know, I tell a story about me getting shot in the head. I show the video of me getting shot in the head and it's a great joke. You normally wouldn't think that. And when people, people don't want to be uncomfortable. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable. They don't want to feel uncomfortable. They don't want to feel bad. They'll say, thank you for your service or whatever. But they don't want to feel bad about listening to the things we go through. And if you don't listen, you're not going to know. And if you, if you can't make that information digestible through comedy, then people aren't going to listen. You know, so I do this show and even like I do a joke now. It's a brand new joke and I love it. Oh, it's one of my favorite jokes. And it's about PTSD. It is literally like I start off by saying, I'm going to be vulnerable with you right now because my therapist at the VA says I have to be. Like that's the opening line of the joke. And it starts kind of sad just for a few seconds. And then it becomes a joke about Coldplay. And it's fantastic. It's one of my favorite news. Wait a minute. You start off with that and you end up with Coldplay? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a fantastic joke. Okay. Are you going to tell them to me or is it? So basically, people ask me if I have PTSD, which is it's an honest question. And the honest answer is yes. I mean, I got shot in a rack. My roommate got killed. I bought three alcoholism. So things do trigger me. Cars backfiring, things in the roadway that shouldn't be there. And that's what I suffer through. And I used to feel really bad about that until about a month and a half ago when I found out that there are two people on this planet who feel the same way listening to Coldplay music. Because my stuff makes sense. These two here, these two got caught having an affair on the Jumbotron. And now every time they hear yellow, they want to turn into oncoming traffic. So it's a, it's a, but that way I get to talk about what I went through, my trauma. And it's a real thing. And then people hear that and they go, oh, okay, I get it. Something traumatic happened. It's not necessarily, you know, veterans don't, we don't own PTSD as a stigma. It's anybody who goes through any kind of trauma, car accident, you know, divorce, getting caught having an affair on a Jumbotron, becoming the laughing stock of the entire internet for, you know, a month. And that way people can make that connection. People who have, what is it, the numbers are, I think it's 0.5, 0.04% of the US population are serving in the military, less than 7% are veterans, as opposed to like World War II, where it's 12%. So 7% of the American population can understand what I'm talking about. I've gone through what I'm talking about. So what about the other 93%? Well, I turned my comedy into a thing that the other 93% can understand. Yes, I got shot. I went through these things when I came home. I deal with trauma now. How does the other 93% relate to that? Hey, everybody watch this video of these two idiots getting caught having an affair. That's pretty traumatic. And then they can go, oh wait, this other thing might happen in my life. I got in car accident, blah, blah, blah. And then hopefully it brings people a little closer together because there's such a divide in the world right now, not just our nation, in the world between everybody, not just military, not just civilians, not just red, blue, Packers fans, whatever, other fans, I'm not a football person. But there's so much division along so many different lines that if I want my message of, hey, this is what I came home to deal with, this is what my friends deal with, this is how we get through it. Well, let me explain using comedy. So the other 93% of the American population go, I get it. I get it and I can laugh at it and then I can leave understanding that because you're more likely to remember a thing that you laughed at than you will if you tuned out during some boring talk or PowerPoint presentation about PTSD or whatever. I know I do. Yeah, yeah. If I tell people all the time, new soldiers, young soldiers, I wish I'd paid attention during my out processing. I don't know if I was drunk or just not paying attention, but when I got out of the army, I wish I'd listened to all the things they told me about my benefits, who can help me, the things like, because I didn't, I was 25, I was getting out of the army, I just got back from a war, I'm like, I don't care, I just want to be out of this uniform and go do things. So when people come hear my keynote or they listen to the one man show, they don't want to listen to just the sadness of which there is a lot. But if they can remember it through the comedy, they'll feel that, they'll take that with them. I still remember Eddie Murphy jokes from 1983 that I definitely should not have been watching, but would you hear good comedy, emotional good comedy that hits you in your soul? You take that, you remember that. Sometimes people just sit in the car and they'll just remember a joke that a comic said and they'll just start laughing to themselves. And that laughter is the thing that I use to heal me after war, because every day is a struggle. Every day I am just, I'm waking up, there, I'll be vulnerable, every day I wake up and I think I don't want to wake up every day of my life for the last 20 some odd years. I open my eyes and go, I don't want to do this. I get up, I go to the gym because I know that's the thing that I have to do. And that gives me the energy to go write comedy or write music. And then if I write a joke that makes me laugh, and then it makes an audience laugh, that's the best feeling in the world. Because I've healed myself for a little bit and then I heal these people for a little bit who, you know, I don't know who was at the laugh factory last night who had a really bad day and just needed to laugh for the whatever 15 minutes I was on stage. And if I can do that and then bring it to that audience or this audience or whatever, that's what I'm meant to do. That's my job as a soldier now, even though I'm not in uniform anymore. It's just what I do. You're a life soldier now, really. I mean, soldier for life. That's what they they call retired soldiers now. So, well, I, so many things you just said that I would like to unpack, but we just don't have, you know, a week to talk. Plus, you need to eat because you're intermittent fasting. And I can see that you're looking at like that eraser on your desk. You want to know protein shake. We'll be right back with more of the Comedy Saved Me podcast. Welcome back to the Comedy Saved Me podcast. All right, three things. One, you just brought to my mind from earlier in this conversation, my grandfather, who was on his deathbed cracking jokes with the nurses. So, this now makes me realize why he did it because of how you described your experience in the military. Second, my father suffered from horrific PTSD and he didn't listen like you. And it took 21 years before my mom realized light bulb. We got to show him all the things he has access to that he didn't know he had. And it was until he'd knocked on the door of my apartment when I was 26 and said, I think I need help. You know, and it was from that service. So, wow. And when thunderstorms, forget it, you know, lightning and all of that stuff. So, as a, from the military perspective, I understand that more than most, but, but like you said, again, as well, it doesn't even mean that you have to have PTSD from being in the military. It could be from any traumatic experience in your life. And so many of us suffer from that and have had that happen. And whatever it looks like to you, it is what it is. I mean, no one's going to tell you, well, that problem wasn't bad enough to be considered, you know, it is. And, and something you just said today, being vulnerable. And I was going to ask a lot of the questions I had for you, you've already answered. Because, and it's, I could listen to you talk so much longer about this subject. Because it's so important for so many people to hear. And the fact that you just do it, not only with your comedy, but when this discussion with me to just say how you felt when you wake up in the morning, I wake up like that sometimes. That's every day of my life for the last 20 plus years, every day. And you're so blessed where you're at. And you think to yourself, you know, why do I feel this way? And so how do you change that channel first thing in the morning when, when that happens to you? It's muscle memory. So like they taught us at airborne school, like when you jump out of an airplane, you don't think about it. You go through, we go through three weeks, two weeks of training before the first time we step out of an airplane. And it's muscle memory. You know, you hop out that plane, you grab your, you grab your reserve, you count to four, and the shoot opens. It's, for me, that muscle memory is get up, feed the cats, turn on the sauna, start working out. Literally the first three hours of my day is physically getting to the point where I have to, I have to get those endorphins going. I have to get the physical part of it ready so that mentally I can deal with the world. That's genuinely one of the reasons I put a gym in my house. The 10 minutes it takes me to drive to my gym, find a parking spot, go through the stuff of like, going in the locker, put my stuff away, dealing with people I don't want to deal with, talking to people at five o'clock in the morning I don't want to talk with, waiting for people to like finish on their phone or get off the bed, whatever. That takes me out of the space that I need to be in, which is focus, do the thing, get this two and a half, three hours of PT done. If I add any additional stress to that morning routine, the rest of the day is shot for everyone because if I'm having a bad day, everyone is having a bad day. So it's muscle memory. I get up, I go to the gym, I work out, I do what I gotta do, and then I have the energy to sit down and write or edit or answer emails or whatever it is the day has in store for me. But that's it, that's it, it's muscle memory. I can only imagine how many people listening right now are like, I feel the exact same way. So thank you for being so open and so vulnerable because that's sort of what this podcast is all about is to let people know, even if it's just one, that they're not alone and that it's not so bad and that you can pull yourself out of it and have somewhat of a life existence and it doesn't have to ruin everything for you. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I do comedy, not specifically for veterans, but I do focus it because the percentage of vets is so low and I never know when someone's in the audience and just goes, oh, did that guy was like me? We wore the same uniform, wore the same boots and now he's, I don't know what kid gets out of the army or the Marines or whatever and goes, I don't know what to do with my wife and they go, oh, there's a dude with a microphone telling jokes that jumped out of planes and like trudged through the desert. So I want to be that, I hate the word inspiration because I don't feel like I inspire anyone to do anything and if I do, I'm sorry. I don't apologize. I want people to go, oh, there's a guy that was like me and now he's doing this thing that I didn't, comedy? What was comedy? You know how disappointing I am to the Asian community? My parents wanted a doctor or a lawyer or whatever and I'm like, I still fart jokes for a living. So it's, you know, and even then, Asian people come up to me all the time. They're like, I didn't think this was a thing you could do. I was like, neither did I. Can you give a little piece of advice before I let you go to any aspiring comedians, whether they came from a background similar to yours or wanting to get into the industry as it's definitely an interesting entertainment field to be involved in? Don't do it. It's a terrible one. All right, Joyce. No, no, that's my go-to dumb joke about that. I will give you the advice. I tell every new aspiring comedian, whether they're military veterans or not, get up on stage as much as possible. Find an open mic, find a cafe, find a, you know, find a coffee shop that does it and just do it. The only way you're going to do it is do it. The second thing I will say is, and this is like a personal observation that I came to in my career about comedy, record everything. Every time you go on stage, record it. You don't know when lightning is going to strike and the way comedy works, you could say something amazing. And unless you're John Mulaney, who has like an incredible comedy mind, you're going to forget. You are going to forget. Nothing is ever so funny that you will not forget it. I've lost jokes and bits to the ether because I thought to myself, that's so funny. I'm never going to forget that. And then I go grab a pizza and I'm like, what was that thing I said? What was that again? Just record, yeah, record everything. Any funny thought you have, write it down. If you're in your car, tell your phone to create a note. I cannot emphasize how much I took my, I take my own advice. Even to this day, I'm like, that joke's so great. And then gone. It's gone. Write everything down, record everything. Every funny thought you have, even if it makes you laugh just for a second, write it down because it could turn into something amazing. It could, you know, I have a note in my phone now that says, monkey condoms. I have no idea what it meant. It could be funny later. It just sounds funny. It just, you know, it's just some dumb thing. Apparently I wrote down, I was at a comedy club one night, I was like, come on, monkey condoms. I'm sure the thought was in there, but yeah, just write it all down. That's like a song that gets started and shelved and then you can pull it back out later and add to it if you, or remember it. Oh, and I say this as a former Apple employee. Back up your phone for the love of God. Back it up. Kirk Hammett from Metallica told a heartbreaking story about like he had hundreds of riffs recorded into his phone, like in his voice memo. And then he lost the phone and then he didn't back it up. And we lost hundreds of hours of Metallica music because Kirk didn't back up his iPhone. So as a nerd, as a former Apple guy for the love of God, as an Asian, back up your phone, just plug it into your computer, back it up. That's like the cloud's fine, but back up your phone. But yeah, write everything down, write all your jokes, write every thought you have down. It could be something great. It could be nothing, but if you forget it, you'll never know. All right, one last thing as you're telling me this, have you ever bombed? And if you have, uh-oh. Have I ever bombed? How do you? Tuesday I bombed. Okay, well, how do you deal with that? Because that, I mean, that's sort of the dance you play, right? You want to give the laughter to the people to make them feel better and to know that they're not alone. You're helping yourself by making them laugh. And then one night you go out and then they're not laughing. How do you deal with that? It's about experience. And like you never want to bomb to the point that you can't recover. Like the moment I feel like I'm starting to lose them. And this is a military analogy. It's the one I use as a paratrooper. No matter how many times I've jumped out of a plane or gone on stage as a comedian, as a professional, something can go wrong. Just like jumping out of a plane, sometimes your parachute doesn't open. Sometimes it does a cigarette roll. Sometimes the rigor didn't pack it correctly. If you don't have the experience to know, hey, this is where you pull the pin on your reserve chute and start slapping away, then you're just going to go slam to the ground 200 miles an hour. As a comedian, you have to realize when things are going wrong and have the experience to go in your head very quickly, what joke can pull me out of this dead spin? Like what joke is going to be my reserve parachute? What can I say or do right now to turn this back around? Sometimes you just hit the ground at 300 miles an hour. It just happens. But just like jumping out of airplanes, it's muscle memory. You have a split second to decide what's going on. And you can hurt for a minute or you can hurt a lot later. But it's really about having the experience and the knowledge to go, all right, this didn't work. Do I need a breaching around? Do I need a claymore? Do I need a grenade? Do I need small arms fire? Do I need to call in close air support? And that's, those are, you have these jokes and these bits after years of working as a comedian to understand, all right, this is, I don't want to call him the enemy, but sometimes, you know, the audience is hostile. Yeah. And then you can either use the tools at your disposal, which are your career and your job and your experience to write that ship. Or as I saw a comic recently do just nuke the place. Just, it just, things weren't going right. Just go down in flames. Yeah, things weren't. I saw a comic very recently. It wasn't me who was not having a good set, was not dealing with the audience correctly or well. I don't know what this person's thought process was on the day or at the time, but just nuked it. We were just like, calling the B2, just nuked this place and just like the set went up in flames. It just, that's, I don't know what was going on in that person's mind at the time, but it's weird here in Hollywood because you have like these shows where they're like last night, there were six or seven comics on the show. And you don't want to do that in a situation where a comic's got to go up after you. That's what I was going to ask you, like what if you're following that, that's horrible. Because I had to follow that person. Oh no. Yeah, luckily I'm really good at my job. So I watched it go down and I was like, oh my God, what do I have to, so like in my head, as I'm walking on stage, because this comic nuked the place and then it was like, bye. So literally as I'm walking on stage, what I had planned in my head and what I wanted to do, that went out the window because now I'm going, how do I get this back? Because I don't want to fight this audience. I don't have time for this. I had a thing that I was going to do. I have new jokes that I want to work on and I need them in a headspace where I can do that. So what do I have to do now to fix that? It's different if you're like headlining and there's three comics and you're the headliner and the room just bombs. Sure, nukem, doesn't matter. You're in Iowa. Boom, drop that bomb, get on a plane and leave. Doesn't matter after that. You don't want to do that, but I can understand why some comics do that. But for me, it is, what's in my bag of tricks? What's in my bandolier of like ammo? What can I do to fix this situation to do the thing that I need to do? It just dawned on me too. You worked in radio and that is very helpful for having to be quick because you're on the air live. So you got to come up with something. If something happens, then you have to learn how to be very quick. I mean, I was a traffic reporter in Los Angeles. I was a traffic reporter in Boston. Oh, really? Okay. Where did you work? Did you work for Metro Networks? Yes. Me too. That's where I started. That's where I started my career. Shut the front door. Wait, we could probably swear because it's a podcast. Are you serious? That's where I started. Yeah, I started Metro in Buffalo. Oh my God. Metro traffic. Did you have like Metro and then shadow, where it was a shadow first, I think it was shadow and then it was Metro. Metro networks because they started doing news. Metro total traffic. Do you know when that happened? I was doing traffic and then the OG Simpson thing happened. And the next thing you know, I was not just doing traffic. I was doing news hits in the afternoon about it. Yeah. I mean, as a traffic reporter in Los Angeles, like if there's a car chase, then you're a news reporter because now you're following a crime. Wow. Yes. You have to know how to do like 15, 20 things while you're talking to the fixed wing or the helicopter of getting a report of something to go on the air and you got 10 stations waiting for you. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Did they just, you know, is there another precinct taken over? Is there another, you know, did they go into somebody else's jurisdiction? Whose police cars are those? Are those, yeah. I knew we had some type of connection. I just didn't know what it was and that nailed it right there. Tom Tran, it was so wonderful getting to catch up with you and hear about your journey and all of the incredible things that you shared with us. And I really hope that it helps someone because I know it helped me just hearing you talk. And thank you for your selfless service to our country and to our veterans and to all of us with your humor. It's so much appreciated. And thank you for coming on Comedy Saved Me. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Maybe next time I'll do Music Saved Me because I have things to say about music. I would love to. Oh, what's the name of your band? The Tom Tran Band, correct? The Tom Tran Band. I also have a Star Trek themed motley crew cover band called The Bridge Crew. Oh, whoa. Whoa. We need to, Buzz, can we have him on Music Saved Me too? Absolutely. We played William Shatner's 93rd birthday. No, you didn't. Are you serious? How was that? Did you get a chance to chat with him? And so his, the movie I just did with Morgan Freeman was produced by the same studio that did Shatner's documentary. And long story short, the producer found out I had this band and he's like, do you want to play his birthday? And his Bill Shatner's birthday is the same day as James T. Kirk's birthday, which is March 22nd, 2233, not really 2233, but whatever. So they premiered the movie in LA on March 21st. And they did it at the studio where they shot the original Star Trek, the original series. God. So my band played and like he was turning 93. You were in heaven, weren't you? I'm 20 seconds. Well, it was like 1030 at night and Shatner is giving a speech that just kept going on and on. And I looked at the stage manager, I'm like, hey, man, I'm 50 years younger than him. And I am tired right now. Can we hear this up? Because the band has another hour to play. I'm like, thank you, Mr. Shatner. And then I think about a year later, yeah, just over the spring, here's a weird sentence I get to say. Jay Leno called me and he asks me to present an award to William Shatner. And the first question I had for Jay Leno was, how did you get my phone number? I never gave you my phone number. But then, yeah, I said I'd give Shatner this award because they're buddies. And I had a 20 minute set about why Jay Leno wasn't there. It was the last minute thing. He asked me to cover for him. Shatner missed the entire 20 minutes about why I'm there. He shows up right before we give him the award. And I do the announcement and I hand him the award. There's a photo of me handing Bill Shatner an award. And as a Star Trek nerd, falling all over myself. And then, again, he doesn't know why Jay's not there and he doesn't know who I am. And he says, Jay, you look, you age really well like a young Asian woman. And I'm like, whoa, how am I taking strays from Bill Shatner? Because I'm doing a favor for Jay Leno. Well, did Jay Leno know that you were a huge Star Trek fan? And that's why you called or? The joke is that he called me after he called every other comedian in town. Oh, he were last on the list? Yeah, it was, I think the event was actually on a Jewish holiday. And he called like Seinfeld and a bunch of people are like, you know, we're Jewish, right? And like, it's Rosh Hashanah or whatever. Oh, it's like the highest holiday of, okay, I got it. Yeah, it was one of the high holy holidays. And then, like, he finally called me because I think in his head, he went, Tom's a heathen. And he likes Star Trek. So I got that call after literally everybody in town. Because I called my friends. I was like, hey, Leno just called me and every single one of my friends went, yeah, he called me too. I can't do it. Oh, come on. No, he didn't. Yeah, I just saying that to you're so incredibly talented. And you're just, you shouldn't belittle yourself like that. One of the things Jay said to me was, hey, I need you to do this thing. The LAPD is giving Bill Shatner an award. He goes, if you do it, you'll never get a ticket again. And I said to Jay, I have purple heart plates on my car. I haven't had tickets since I was 25 years old. Take that. Just keep doing everything that you're doing and don't change. And just please come back and see us again on maybe another podcast so we can talk about your incredible music career. We'll talk to you again soon. Good luck with everything. Thanks.