Folks, my new book, Not Sick of Winning,

A History of President Trump's First Saturdays,

is available now.

Just head over to NotSickAWinning.com to buy it on Amazon. This is Michael Malas speaking. Let that be your welcome for the next hour. You know, when you do a show like mine,

you're often pitched guests and 99 times out of 100, someone you would never want to talk to. And then once in a while, you get something that gets you so excited that you're talking about it for days and days and days. And that happened to me. Our guest today is a man who I'm happy to introduce, Yakuya Smirnov. Growing up, you were one of the biggest comics of the 80s,

all the Russian jokes that the kids these days still make, they don't realize this from you, right? So now, after your big career in stand-up, you opened a theater in Branson, which is still going strong. You got your degree studying psychology of humor. I have so much discussed with you about. One of the things I wanted to start with is, you came over, you're from Odessa, where my grandma's from. For Americans who don't know, Adesite have a reputation of being big mouths and talk a lot. Funny. Yeah, yeah, funny. Which really worked out for you, obviously. You came to the States in 77. I came to 78. You also moved to New York. What neighborhood did you move to, do you remember? Well, first we were in Queens for a very short time and then because our friends who helped us come to America, they lived in Queens, and a lot of Russian-speaking community lived there. And I realized that I want to do comedy, but I didn't speak English. And I said, my parents and I will move to Manhattan. And my friend who helped us come to America said, no one lives in Manhattan except of bankers and bank robbers. And I said, I'll be one of them. And they thought you're committing suicide by going to the Manhattan. And we couldn't obviously afford a lot of, we didn't have much money. So we found a place in Washington Heights, which is uptown Manhattan. Still Manhattan, but it's closer to New Jersey than to downtown. So that was where we lived for a little while before I went to Hollywood. So yeah, for people on No Washington Heights, like 180th Street. So it's way up there. And it's not a good neighborhood now. What was it like, you know, like 70s, early 80s? It was okay. It was kind of a German immigrant neighborhood. So there was a lot of immigrants in our building that helped us to establish, you know, get settled. That's one of the things I talk about in my show how important that was, that kindness, that Americans showed to us. we didn't expect it. We came from the

Soviet Union where everybody is kind of doing what they got to do to survive and hear people who are just generous and give us things that like waffle iron that wasn't a good thing because my mom ruined two pair of my pants with that iron.

So I... that wasn't a good thing because my mom ruined two pair of my pants with that iron. So, but these people were very helpful because they came from other parts of the world, so they knew how difficult it is. And so they were doing, not just physical like giving us blankets, pillow, dishes, things we really needed and desperately needed, desperately needed. And they did give it to us, but they also gave us advice on how to get a job, you know, things like that. And and one of the things I don't think ever Told anybody on the podcast that what they they said what do you want to what did you do in the Soviet Union? I said I used to work in the cruise ships and so So they helped me to put together a resume which I again, I didn't speak English. So they sent it out to all the different cruise companies. And at that point, I moved to Miami because I was a bar, bar boy in bartender. And I get a call from my mom saying, they called from Royal Caribbean, and they want you to come on board today because they're looking for assistant of cruise director or something like that. So I got on board and then they realized that I don't speak English. So but they had to keep me for at least a week. They couldn't like, so they gave me a job to do excursions. So I was supposed to stand there and just show people where to go. So they're probably still people in St. Thomas who are looking for that bus. You know, so I got fired. Well, I got they didn't they didn't take me on the next cruise. So that was the good beginnings. So it's something you said that just I find really interesting. There's a writer I love called Ein Rand She's right there on the cover. Yeah. And she was from St. Petersburg.

She moved to the US in 1926 a little bit before us. And she wanted to be a screenwriter. And she also didn't really speak English. And on some level, it's just like you're crazy person. You're going to come to another country, don't speak the language. You're going to make a living in that language. Okay, like we need to put you in Bellevue,

but that ended up happening.

So for you and for her, so for people who are young

who have these kind of

aspirations and dreams, which, you know, if you tell 99 people they're going to say, okay, crazy person, what made you realize that this is something you could actually do as opposed to am I nuts? Like what am I thinking? I guess I didn't know any better.

It was, I was daring.

I was hooked. I was a comedian in the Soviet Union. So I was kind of hooked on laughter and enjoying that part of my life. So that was I was trying to find that being in the Soviet Union, you might remember, you might not, but the information about America was very limited. And I was lucky because I worked on the Soviet cruise ships and they allowed me to talk to different groups of people from different countries. They would give me an interpreter. So I was able to ask questions, is it possible to have to be a comedian? And they would say, yeah, it would be possible. So it was giving me a little bit of information. And I remember one of my friends who worked, I think he was a piano player in a band on the ship. And he would go, the band would go with the ship when they would lease down to Britain or Germany or wherever they would take them. But I wasn't allowed to go abroad. So I went to him, he lived in Kiev and I remember, I said you would know if they have, would I be able to be funny there or not? And I remember him putting a pillow over the phone and saying let's walk outside and and then he would tell me only then he said yes they do have comedians, glad, and they were brainwashed because they would constantly tell them how bad America is. So he would say, I would never go to America because they sell their mother for money, their evil. I mean, it was just off from the Communist Party handbook, you know, all of the information. So, but I was savvy enough to kind of go, you know what, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm gonna give it a shot. And then when I started testing jokes in the bar, I would just translate the joke from what I used to do in the Soviet Union, and then I would test it on my audience or my customers, and if I get tips, then I knew I was funny, if I didn't, then I knew I need to work on it. And so that was kind of my slow process

of inching towards my comedy career.

So I've got a Yaka of Style joke.

Is it true in Soviet Russia?

The cruise ships are one way.

It would be a time gap.

Yeah, they circle around, but you might, you might not.

Um, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, so I don't know if you know this story. I told

...