January 13, 2008

Thai standup: 21st Century comedy!

While I enjoyed the homecooked 19th Century comedic goodness of my last post, I thought I'd give us a little push into the present century with some help from YouTube. User aanon2550 (who posts as user aanon on the Thai language forum at thaivisa.com) has done English translations for three videos by Thai comedian Note Udom โน๊ต อุดม (อุดม แต้พาณิช). aanon knows his Thai, and the videos are a lot of fun. There is also plenty more of Note's material on YouTube, but I figured I'd post the ones with the English subtitles.

The second two appear to be from other TV appearances, but the first video is apparently from one of Note's series of standup comedy specials. The term for standup comedy in Thai is เดี่ยวไมโครโฟน, which literally means "microphone solo". As opposed to the concept of a standup club where people can come anytime and see different comics, shows here tend to be periodic, but bigger deals held in larger venues. Note has these periodic sell-out events where he packs the place, and then sells the video of the show on VCD. He seems to be extremely well-known and popular, and has been for a while. A few years ago I ran into him at the mall, but had no idea who he was at the time--the Thai friend I was with got his autograph, though. He just did his seventh standup show this past December. You can learn more about him at his website, udomteam.com. Enjoy.

Video 1: แฟนบอกเลิก


Video 2: ศาลพระภูมิ


Video 3: ต้นงิ้ว

3 comments:

  1. I like him. He is so funny.

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  2. That's hilarious! Loved all three. :)

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  3. Rikker, many thanks for posting my videos on your blog. I'm really glad they're being enjoyed. In fact, it makes me feel like doing some more!

    All the best!

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