I recently got the chance to meet up with David Dimapilis; an actor, a comedian, an entertainer and 1/3 of the Fresh off the Boat Comedy Jam to speak about the project, its success and its future. (Mind you if this was television I’d have a disclaimer for mentioning the ‘f’ word…gasp!)What is your definition of a F.O.B.?“Fresh off the boat is just basically a racist term to describe Asians and in this particular moment, Filipinos who are coming from the Philippines to live or work in a different country, abroad. I don’t know who invented that term but hopefully not a white person.”Were you born in the Philippines?“I was born in Vancouver, actually.”So you’re not a fob?“Ehhhhh, uuhhh, well you know…” *shrugs*Whose idea was it to call the show, “Fresh off the Boat” and why?“Chris, VJ and I sat in a room for about an hour during rehearsal and…. just…. figured…out a name.”“If you hear it you know it has to do with Asians…and its kind of funny, because you know despite that whole idea that you can kind of be that racist if your from the country,  (you know how black people can use the ‘n’ word when they describe themselves)  well Filipinos can use fob —the ‘f’ word when describing themselves.”For other’s just getting into it, you guys have a wide range of skills and experience in improve and sketch comedy and have been performing for a long time, how long exactly has Fresh off the Boat been in the scene?“Yeah, we’ve been doing shows for about 5-10 months together….but collectively , professionally  we’ve been working for about 10-15 years and well Casillian’s been working since I was in kindergarten so that’s like 38…40 years.”Oh wow, way to make him look bad..“Well, he’s not here, so..” *smile*Did you guys go to some type of school for this?“I know myself, I have a degree in UBC  in theatre. Both VJ and Chris are from theatre sports leagues… a program for improve.”Like clown school? (I had to ask! )“Ya kind of, very similar to clown school –learning how to be funny.”So how do you guys decide  what’s good to throw on the show?“Basically we just sit in a writers meeting and do sketches and the ones that we do film in time we show. They’re all good usually, so we’ll just think of a bunch of ideas and we’ll kinda of either go back and re-write them or find them. The show itself, how the format works, is we do either like a song or a dance number to open up the show and then we do improve –theater sports for about 10 or 15 minutes then we just show digital shorts —the stuff that we’ve shot over the past few months or weeks or whatever.”What’s it like working with 3 comedians?“There’s three of us in total, so… they’ll only be  working with two.”Thanks David...Are you guys ever serious, when you  think about content?“No no, we don’t take it too seriously, we’re comedians, so the only thing we get serious about is the content of the comedy sometimes, raising the level or kind of adding to the problem or soemthing, we get really serious about how funnier we can get.”So there’s competition?“Within us? No not really, we’re all too old. I think its because we’re a really good collective of guys. I’ve worked with a lot of comedy groups but this isn’t really a job for us, like working for different companies, but this is just having fun, there’s no stress or pressure for each performance.”What are your influences for coming up with comedic content?“I guess growing up in Filipino homes. Pretty much I mean all three of us, our parents are all from the Philippines and so we grew up with all the same kind of funny stuff like our grandmas . You know …everyone’s got a good lola, right? Filipinos have a pretty distinct culture and you know, the kids pretty much from zero to nineteen/twenty –the parents pretty much grow up the same way, right..”So what do you think the funniest thing is about the Filipino culture?“Nannies. I think its funny they’re like the number one export from the Philippines….It’s pretty entertaining even in Australia you know there’s Filipino nannies.”Moving on…what do you guys do to prepare for a show? Any Routines?  Supersitions?“Nope…we just try to get everything there on time. That’s it. Improve is very easy it comes very naturally. Well not easy but comes very naturally to chris and vj and I just join in along the ride. But that part is pretty much second nature. The sketches that we shoot , they’ar already prepared before the show  so literally we just show up, do the improve and that’s about it and everything else is basically done for us..”Do you ever get stuck trying to be funny?“No, I think that’s what’s funny about improve,  people in the audience, they almost laugh harder when you struggle. So when you can’t think of something funny, the audience laughs at you so its almost better to not be funny and its just better to sort of just go with the flow.”So you guys have been performing Fresh off the Boat for about 8-10 months. How do you guys set yourselves apart from each show to be better than the last?“Its just about raising the bar. This year, this show, is the first show moved into a kind of more performance friendly venue. The Biltmore is the best live venue right now….we also added the SVS style dance crew and the Boombox Saints –-which is huge! So now you’re really getting a full variety show and your getting musicians , comedians, actors  and dancers all in one show and each group is very good at what they do.”What more can we look forward to for Fresh off the Boat?“Well we’re hoping to pack this show up as a TV show. So it can hopefully air on Shaw or on the multicultural network soon.”Is there anything more you’d like to say to our readers and your audience?“Hopefully we’ll be on your television screens soon,  and then you can write us your hate mail. I’m just waiting for the hate mail. My life is too happy right now. Life’s really good so I need something to even it out.”Well I guess you’re asking for it!