N.M. Cabangbang

Chokwang Uncovers the Coverboys was held at Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino last August 29, 2009. It was organized by Tagged Productions and had major sponsors such as ABS-CBN, Southwestern University, and Sun Star. I had the chance to see the show, and this was what I thought about it.

The very first thing that crossed my mind was, “There were a lot of things not right about this show.” This, I did not expect it from such a major production. You kind of expect for these things to be perfect but hey, there is no such thing as perfection, right? Well, even with such a realization, you were still hoping that the best would happen; not the other way around. Well, here goes.

First of all, the show started late, and I mean very late. It was advertised to start at 8:00 pm, but instead, it started at 9:00 pm. That’s one hour late. I think the organizers were still waiting for the seats at the back and the sides to be occupied. Though at this time, most of the seats were already taken, I think it was 70% taken, which makes the venue, almost full. But the organizers still had to wait. This prompted most of the audience to start booing, demanding that the show start already.

To somehow lessen the boos, the organizers kept on showing the movie trailer of Eugene Domingo’s KimmyDora which worked for a little while. The trailer was indeed funny and I have always been a fan of Eugene Domingo since she started saying that line, “Hey. Hepi Birthday” on one of her movies. Well with the movie trailer played around 3 or 5 times, the boos did lessen and laughs were heard but the organizers also knew that they cannot keep on playing the trailer every time for it would bore the audience. So when they had to stop showing the trailer, the boos started to be loud again. One thing they could have done to remedy the situation was to show more videos or trailers. I think Star Cinema still has many films so they could have played it. Or maybe, show trailers of their teleseryes or music videos from their singing talents but they did not do this. A problem could be they did not have such copies of these videos, a problem that could have been solved if they anticipated the situation long before.

A skill that organizers need to have is anticipation. Anticipation is like hoping for the best and expecting for the worst. Organizers need such a skill so they can make an educated guess: what bad things are going to happen and how to prepare for it. Things such as these could be discussed in meetings. Likewise, people can be assigned to troubleshoot specific problem scenarios. Anticipation is also a skill that develops more with experience which means veteran organizers usually have the upper hand. However, new or young organizers should not be discouraged. This skill, after all, can also be developed by watching other shows and pin-pointing the mistakes. After which, lessons learned are to be applied to your own shows or events you are about to organize. So if organizers want a successful show, they better learn how to anticipate.

The show did finally kick off at a little after 9:00 pm. To the audience’s relief, Pokwang and Chokoleit came out to the stage for their opening number. That was great but before I comment on their jokes, I observed something. The show had a bad stage design. The background was only a bare black canvas, which I think was composed of a huge black cloth draped over the stage wall. The stage corners were partially covered with two white curtains. And that was it. Now again, this show had major sponsors so a big tarpaulin poster about the show would have worked. If they had no budget for it then maybe they should’ve been creative enough to forgo the boring and spartan black background. One does not need to spend to have a great stage design, you can go cheap with only your creativity being the great investment. But again, this show did not have it. It had no money to spend for background design and it had no creativity to come up with something better. All these elements kind of makes you ask the question, “Was this a major production or not?”

Now, when it came to the main event, when it came to Pokwang and Chokoleit’s jokes, they were funny alright – adult humor, green jokes, gay jokes, that kind of stuff. This was okay for a start, you know. But again, something was wrong here because a lot of parents brought their children with them thereby exposing their kids to green jokes. Now I do not know if this was the repertoire of these two comedians to be playing around with green jokes. Their stints in the televisions shows they have does not allow them to run free with such type of adult humor. But these two comedians were dishing out green jokes with kids around and nobody seemed to mind.

Now, there are two things to be seen here. First of all, there are two jokes that always make people laugh: the laughing-at-people jokes and the sex-jokes. People who are not comedians or do not know how to crack jokes always resort to either of the two to make it an ice breaker or to keep the audience’s attention locked on him. On the other hand, comedians also do this kind of jokes especially when they are confronted with new audiences. These two jokes are always sure to get people laughing, especially the masses. These two types of jokes have one thing in common, though: they make fun of people. They make fun of the old, ugly, fat, thin, gays, tomboys, black, Chinese and. Then there’s the joke that makes fun of something taboo to our culture: sex; green jokes.

Now, this is why most comedians are gay or ugly. Because just by looking at them, audiences will already start to laugh. Being gay or being ugly is one sure formula to keep the audiences laughing. Well, nothing bad about this because if the comedians want this kind of reaction, then they prepared for it. We are laughing at them and they get payed to be laughed at. But when the moment comes that they start making jokes about the audience which have old people, fat people, or any of those listed above then, it is another story. I think people come to comedy shows to be laughing with the audience and not getting laughed at by the audience.

Then when it comes to green jokes, this type is a sure formula to keep people laughing. But it has limits, it is not good for young audiences and not great for television.

So when people start doing such jokes, what does it tell about them? Well I think comedians such as this lack creativity. Because by doing this type of formula all over again and just inserting a new thing or two, they expect us to laugh all over again at the same old formula: ugly and gay people making green jokes. What is the difference between them and the unpopular comedians who are just starting? The difference is that these famous comedians are still making the same jokes but on a bigger and grander stage. If we wanted this type of jokes then might as well just listen to gay people cracking jokes on jeepneys. It’s a free and cheap way to have fun.

Well that is what comedy is all about and anyway we want to think about it, jokes are discriminatory. We laugh at the people we think are lesser than us. But a way to lessen the discrimination is to have comedians make fun of themselves only and not the audience. And that can be done in numerous ways. Micheal V and Ogie Alcasid do it with Angelina and Yaya stint. Then Moymoy Palaboy does it with their lypsynching. Then impersonations are also funny, Pooh was funny impersonating Manny Pacquiao and Annabelle Rama. Jason Holganza is funny by looking like Boy Abunda. Even Pokwang was funny by being Manang Dionesia at the show but she just mixed the impersonation thing with green jokes which makes it bad again.

So if we return to the topic about the show, whose fault was this about the green jokes thing? Well, first of all I do not blame much Pokwang and Chokoleyt for this. After all, adults can always have a laugh out of green jokes. But when minors are added into the mix, the material becomes inappropriate. The blame has to be given to the organizers again, because they did not place a “Parental Guidance” or some sort of advisory warning their audiences about the nature of the event in their posters. I think if the parents knew about the “PG” warning, I do not think they would have brought their kids on the show. But there was no “PG” warning, so what happened, happened.

You can forgive the “1-hour-late” thing, you can forgive the bland stage design, and you can even forgive Sheryn Regis for forcibly speaking in English to a majorly Bisaya crowd. But exposing children to green jokes and not having a “Parental Guidance” warning is just too much of a mistake for one night.

So with all the not-so-right things about this show, I still somehow enjoyed and that is because of Chokoleit. Have to admit it, Chokoleit was funnier than Pokwang. Chokoleit had green jokes, but he also had other jokes that were made of genius! And they didn’t have to be “green” at all. Some of the best jokes he made during the night were off-hand, spontaneous retorts. Being able to be funny on your feet takes skill. And I have to commend him for his improvisation skills, too. Chokoleit completed a love story using a microphone stand, and just that, from start to finish. This takes creativity; this is talent. We all know that Pokwang is more famous than Chokoleit because she gets all the television airtime in Wowowee but trust me when I say this, Chokoleit is the laugh-master. He is way funnier than Pokwang and he saved that show. If not for him, that show would have sucked all throughout. This funny little guy saved an otherwise humdrum event.

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