Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Local Stand-up Comedy - an assimilation self-test

As I've mentioned in my previous blog entry, I went to a Canadian stand-up comedy performance recently, a double-bill by Paul Bae and Charles Demers. They have collaborated previously before. See below for an example.

Bucket (Bae & Demers) @ Urban Well 9th Anniversary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4RbuPO7Rd4

I had a good time laughing that night. I caught about 90-95% of Paul's jokes, excluding the bits with specific North American politicians' names because I am not familiar yet with most North American politicians' names. I caught about 85-90% of Charlie's jokes. It took me a couple of seconds before I caught-on about the "track-suit wearing" Brit-copy-cat Canadians. I laughed especially loudly when Charlie joked about the dangers of dating an Asian because one can never tell how old they really are.
If you watch the embedded video below, you'd realize that Charlie has an East Asian wife. When we were collaborating on a theatre project last spring/summer, he declined to guess my age when that topic came up. He told me that he had learned from experience -- his East Asian in-laws look nowhere near their ages -- that it is impossible (from his perspective) to guess an Asian's age.
Comedian Charlie Demers on the ups and downs of giftgiving, on DNTO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoPHgzuzWxc


At the end of the evening, it occurred to me that one has to understand the local psyche and issues to be able to catch many of the jokes on a local stand-up comedy night. Thus, IMHO, a local stand-up comedy could serve as a self-evaluation tool on how well one has assimilated.

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What are the Singaporean equivalent of local stand-up comedies for the Singapore immigrants to do a self-assessment? I believe that there are many. The following are a few suggestions.

Mr Brown and his satirical podcasts
http://www.mrbrownshow.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_3MGNVH8qs


30Aug 2006 TalkingCock in Parliment -Ruby Pan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCsZdbfBuSY
Google "Youtube Indignation 2006" for the entire series.


Dick lee song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRTApB9hQqo

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