It is pau.
After 27 years of making Hawaii’s people laugh at, by and for themselves, Augie T. is dropping the mic on his comedy career, just as he dropped his boxing gloves decades ago. He’s giving his last major concert Saturday at Blaisdell Arena, site of some of his fondest memories, and everyone is invited.
A combination of factors led to this decision, including a desire to pursue a new and somewhat surprising interest, and the need to spend time out of the spotlight with family rather than as “everyone’s property” as a local celebrity.
To an extent, Augie said he feels burned out on his high-energy performances — although no lack of fire was in evidence during a recent interview, a stream-of-consciousness talk-story session that, if it reflects the concert, indicates that the audience will be in for quite a treat.
Mostly, the comedy star is leaving the stage because he’s achieved everything he wanted to in comedy.
He now believes his experience as a Kalihi kid who fought his way through his humble beginnings and personal challenges to become a beloved entertainer has given him a perspective that is better served elsewhere.
“AUGIE’S T’s LAST STAND”
Augie Tulba performs his final major concert with special guests Andy Bumatai and Frank De Lima, music by Cutting Edge and Justice Moon; hosted by Mehealani and Lil Guy
>> Where: Blaisdell Arena
>> When: 6 p.m. Saturday
>> Cost: $10-$20
>> Info: 800-745-3000,
ticketmaster.com
“Every year after doing a special, I would think this is the time to walk away from it,” said Augie. (His full name is Augusto Tulba.)
“The last three, four years, working with kids through my daughter’s foundation (B.R.A.V.E. Hawaii, founded by Mahealani Sims-Tulba) — it’s been hard.
“I grew up poor, but working with kids in the community, statewide, talking about anti-bullying, goal-setting, you realize there are a lot of kids who are super-poor. I’ve never seen poor like the last few years. And it’s hard because as a comic, you supposed to look at everything, like almost opposite. You see damage, you see hurt, you gotta turn it around.”
“There’s a conscience now in the back of my head. Before, nevah have noise. Now there’s noise. … It was like ‘It’s funny, I don’t care if I offend somebody. Your job is to be funny.’ I still talk about that.
“There’s a freedom on stage. But I also know there’s a lot of people who see things differently now.”
AUGIE T. knows all about growing up in tough circumstances. He’s one of five brothers and grew up in public housing, where people were always finding ways to test each other.
He speaks openly about dysfunctionality in his family, but he does compliment his father for not only teaching his sons to box, but for staging their fights in full view of the neighborhood kids, as if to show everyone not to mess with his boys.
“He knew that guys in (public) housing didn’t know how to fight,” he said. “We’d fight the bullies in the neighborhood, and just take ‘em to school, because they’d be swinging, leaving themselves open for punches.
“I’m punching straight punches, and they’re getting hit, and they’d be crying, throw their gloves, and we’d be saying, ‘Go home!’ And my dad be like, ‘Get down outta here! You lost already! Go home!’
“And they wouldn’t fight me the next day in school.”
One day, though, Augie beat up a girl. She had beaten up his brother for his lunch money and so his father, not knowing that it was girl, urged retribution.
When Augie’s father found out, it was no fun.
“He said, ‘You never tell me it was a girl!’ And we said, ‘You never asked if it was a girl! You said we gotta defend ourselves!’
“So we got lickin’s two days in a row, from the girl and my dad.”
As a teenager, Augie T. became a Golden Gloves champion, a PAL champion and junior Olympian, undefeated in his first six fights with one draw in his weight class. But his last fight, by his own description, was almost as funny as his comedy routine, as he got staggered by a punch that sent him reeling around the ring. His father recorded it and “used it as motivation for his ‘fun-times weekly.’
“He’d say, ‘You like see something?’ And he’d rewind it to the part where the guy hit me, and it was one of those punches Mike Tyson gave guys. It was so bad, I think I went from one side of the ring to the other. … I got up and fell right back down.
“And I was done: ‘Thank you, it was a great career, it was a great time, I got to see some amazing places, do some amazing things, but that’s it. I’m going to try stand-up comedy.’”
He feels now that boxing helped him in his comedy career.
“There’s nothing worse than walking into the ring, knowing that somebody’s going to try to knock your head off, ” Augie said. “So walking up on stage in front of the people who like you, who respect what you did, who are fans, that’s not that hard.
“I’d rather have get people looking at me, saying, ‘What are you saying?’ than getting punched in the face.”
IN SCHOOL, Augie T. struggled. Later diagnosed with both ADHD and dyslexia, both of which inhibit learning, he’d been assigned to “Title 1” classes, which he felt were demeaning.
“I knew I wasn’t dumb, or slow,” he said. He speaks at conferences about the conditions now.
Fortunately, his fourth-grade teacher noticed his gift of gab and encouraged him to enter a speech contest.
He performed a routine by the legendary local sketch comedy artist Rap Reiplinger, and the die was cast, even if it took awhile before he would roll the dice on a comedy career.
Much of that was because of early obligations. Augie became a father at age 16, and so realizing he needed to support his family, he got a job at Kapiolani Medical Center, working up the ladder from food service to housekeeping. For years, he kept that job, even after attaining comedy success.
“Part-time with benefits,” he said. “By the time I was 23, I owned my first home. It was just hard work.”
Shortly thereafter, his boxing career over, he started up his comedy career at an open-mic at the Honolulu Comedy Club in the Ilikai Hotel, where he talked about “making doo-doo in school,” he said. “Eddie Sax, the owner of the comedy club, said ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, but you come back.’”
He was befriended by Hawaii’s headlining comedians, Andy Bumatai and Frank De Lima — both of whom will appear at this weekend’s concert — and appearing with the comedy team Booga Booga.
He realized he was making some headway in his career — “I could actually make money at this,” he remembered thinking — when he got a chance to fill in for De Lima at the Captain’s Table, a Waikiki restaurant that offered entertainment.
“I remember getting there, thinking it was just going to be a fill-in night,” he said. “I walked up to the Captain’s Table and saw a line of people. You go from performing in front of seven people to a line. And this was before social media.”
The radio comedy team Perry & Price had him on their show, then invited him to join them to play Vegas.
“The opening act, I stole his jacket and walked up on stage with his jacket,” Augie recalled. “Mike (Perry) and Larry (Price) was crackin’ up.
“I became a favorite. They started inviting me, and that audience started saying ‘Who’s this guy? And it all kind of evolved.”
NOW THAT Augie T is ending his career as a concert comedian – he expects to give private performances and left the door open to returning in a few years – what are his career plans?
As a former boxer, he’s still got some feistiness left in him, but he plans to focus it on a somewhat unusual path: politics.
“I’m honestly considering running for office,” he said. “I want to challenge myself, and I feel like I want to fight for the everyday guy, the guy who works hard, not getting noticed.
“I feel like, when we get only 30 percent of our island voting, and you hate the fact that we’re being taxed out, and you hate the fact that you see the same people, no new ideas, no fresh ideas, what if I motivate people to possibly get out and vote?
“Maybe, possibly, (people) will look at me and go, ‘If this guy can?’ There’s a lot of smarter people than me, but you don’t have to be the most smartest guy, obviously. If you’re passionate.
“I’m not a Republican, not Democrat, but I just want my children to live here and enjoy all the things that I enjoyed. And if it takes me being criticized for being a candidate for office, I don’t know which one, then so be it.”
As he leaves the Blaisdell stage for the last time, a site that means so much to him not only as a venue for his talents but as the place where he saw his boxing heroes and other entertainers perform, he’s proud of his legacy.
“I stayed clean in my comedy, ” he said. “I know not everybody likes me, but at the same time what I brought to the stage was real – no holds barred in the way I interpret my jokes.
“Everything that I said I wanted to do, I did.
“Even despite all the challenges – growing up poor, being a teen parent, losing a brother to drugs, raising two kids, getting remarried, al those challenges – I got to do what I wanted to do.”
AUGIE T. COMEDY CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
>> Top comedian citations from Pacific Business News, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Midweek, Honolulu Magazine. Named one of Hawaii’s Top 100 Influential Filipinos.
>> Only local comedian to sell out Blaisdell Arena.
Awards:
>> Na Hoku Hanohano awards, “Da Comedy Kahuna” (1999) and “Locally Disturbed” (2003)
Comedy specials:
>> “Augie T Live from the Hawaii Theatre” (2004)
>> “Then and Now” (2006)
>> “The Augie Show” (2008)
>> “Augie LIVE at the Blaisdell Arena ( The Main Event)” (2009)
>> “Augie Ultimate Comedy Collection” (2011)
>> “Augie Na Alii of Comedy” (2012)
>> “Augie T’s I Was left behind “ (2013)
>> “Augie So Dumb” (2014)
>> “Augie Laugh the Island Way” (2017)
