Jokoy

Jo Koy is a Filipino American comedian.

He has a special on Netflix. It's fairly funny material most of it is racial. I stuck with it I think about 1/2 before dropping off. I'll probably tune back in to catch the rest. It seems he veers off the constant racial descriptions to other things. I admit it is rather funny.

His special is held in Hawaii and the crowd is nearly large as Trump's last rally in Orlando. The audience is nearly entirely Asian and he has them dying laughing. He has them wrapped around his finger. The whole thing reminded me how Hawaiians are so easily given to laughter. I could be a comedian there. You could be a comedian there. They laugh at everything. Their laughing at everything kills me.

I discovered this right off with my brother. I didn't notice it previously traveling with friends and traveling with my whole family.

James was talking it up with the car rental and taking a very long time. He loved that car rental place. We kept going back and getting a different car. The first visit he was talking it up with a young woman behind the counter as I waited outside. No problem, it was beautiful outside. But he was taking forever. I opened the door and the office is beautiful. Larger than it needed to be with a very long counter but only one clerk and James was bending her ear pouring on the charm. He is the youngest and his four older brothers and sisters raised him to be charming. So it's all quite natural.

I said, "Honey, are you almost done?"

James is abashed but he conceals embarrassment beautifully. "Yes Dear I'm almost done."

Then turning to the young woman he's talking up, "See what I have to put up with?"

The woman laughed hysterically and it wasn't even that funny. I thought, "She really appreciates faint entertainment."

And many of them do look Mexican. To me, anyway. Their relaxed facial expressions appear self-contained somewhat isolated somewhat racially sore. A bit, just a bit, threatening. Those are the vibes that I feel. For example a man was dismounting his motorcycle as we were exiting a convenience store. He looked like biker trouble. All dark leather and to me a threatening facial expression and assertive physical movement.

The store had a wire basket filled with coconuts carved into monkey faces. Who would even want one of those, but what else can be done with coconuts? I said to James, "I heard many times 'more fun than a barrel of monkeys' but I never expected to actually see one." I said that soft-voiced to my brother but the guy off his motorcycle cracked up laughing. And I'm standing there thinking it wasn't that funny.

James wasn't amused by me making up place names and lewd phrases using only vowels and sparse consonants forming English sentences constricted to Hawaiian alphabet and diphthongs that in my mind made everything funny. But the Hawaiians, not the haole, found everything else hilarious. Where I thought I was funny, I really wasn't to my brother, while to everyone else ordinary things were hilarious.

James wanted a haircut. We walked past a hairdresser then I convinced him to circle back. We went inside and one woman said, "You two bruddas, huh?"

We said at the same time, "Yes."

She was delighted because she noticed us outside and said that to her coworkers. "See? I guess right. You two walk by I say doze two bruddas. I can tell. You look same. You two like twins. I know you two bruddas. I say, those two bruddas. Dint I say dat? I say, doze two bruddas. Day look same."

Now I think that's hilarious. While she's perfectly serious. And I imitate that woman to my own delight while everyone else thinks my imitation is racist and when they laugh at me laughing at her then they're racist too.

I'm waiting again. James is getting his haircut and I'm standing reading labels on fingernail polish. There is an array of a line of fingernail colors. They all have ordinary names but the colors are somewhat off. They are not girlish colors. They're more serious dowdy mature colors. So I make up names for them and pretend to read the labels.

Hazardous Household Waste light gray
Industrial Toxic Dump orange
Pale Amphetamine white
Ecological Disaster blue green
Bubonic Plague Blister yellow

And so on, whatever terrible words came to mind in that moment. Lifting the bottles, making up something horrible, saying it as if reading a label and setting it back down. Extremely offensive. I don't know why I'm so ugly sometimes I was just amusing myself but the Hawaiian women were cracking up laughing. They loved having someone come in and be ridiculous. They took no offense. They're always up for a game. They're looking for entertainment, and not looking for offense. I find this trait of theirs very appealing.

So this Jo Koy is similar. He's not that funny but he has these Hawaiians dying of laughter. Imagine a place like the Orlando Amway Center filled to capacity all laughing their butts off at racialist jokes. They love it. They love unique perceptions of themselves and their cultures.

Koy tells his audience that Koreans speak like they just smoked marijuana.  If they have an accent. Then he imitates them and they die laughing. He said he visited his Korean friend and his friend's father made the house sound haunted whenever he spoke, then he imitated the guy's father sounding like a ghost, sort of stoned. The whole audience fell out laughing at this simple direct honest interpretation of how he hears Korean accent.

Then he describes Cambodians as smallest of all Asians. But the most inclined to fight. And they speak rapidly and put a period after every word then he imitates their staccato speech high/low inflections and the whole audience roars because they recognized the truth in the parody, the truth in themselves.

Dental floss ↓