After months of writing and shooting for www.gua.com.my, our producers are beginning to take over our reins and gradually manoeuvring our bandwagon towards pop culture, for the sake of ratings. Its easy to understand pop culture; its anything that makes money.

In comedy, pranks, spoofs, impersonations and sitcoms now pave the way. Stand up comedy, although not very well-received or understood amongst the older generation, is getting more popular with ever-increasing stand-up impersonators, imitators, and wannabes taking opportunity on audiences' shallow knowledge on comedy.

Jokes and one-liners, what used to go stale quickly and not reused back in the pre-Internet and pop media days, are now hard to come by with myriad comedians recycling them so much so that audiences are confused of who and where 'the originals' were. The Internet and YouTube these days only made things worse by helping the more popular comedians get instant recognition for their work without us even asking the question, "Hey, is that material really his/hers? I received that from an SMS before..."

In an era when comedians are taken more seriously and our politicians are taken as a joke, quality comedy is going extinct with pop culture on top of the entertainment food chain.

Take the music industry for instance. Songs used to make us cry. Rappers used to have roots. Singers used to have voices. Lyrics were written as if a writer's heart and soul melted and froze into long lines of melodic words. Thanks to pop culture, the music industry has lost its rhythm and is hijacked by those who do no justice to the industry's history and meaning. Songs are now less memorable even though popular music stations play them more frequently. Popularity of songs are now not judged by voice and sound quality but by effeminate-looking males and Barbie-bodied bimbos. And comedy seems to be heading this way... except, maybe, the last sentence.

But there is something about originality and its all about taking risks. Now, everything and everyone are so blinded by $, they would rather stick with those that can promise $ even though they have the resources to buy the world several times over. Unfortunately, risks is something to risky to buy, it seems. Perhaps they have forgotten that what is now considered popular were once original before.

Save Malaysian comedy. Save Malaysian polit ... I mean, comedians.

-chi ho-

As a tribute of our own success in this event, we decided not to blog about this event until now.

WHY?

As you might've noticed from the title, the event date is on 25 October but heck, our very first contact with our client dates back to 26 April (THAT'S A WHOPPING 6 MONTHS IN BETWEEN!). This is arguably the longest project we've taken on, so, to commemorate this memorable feat, we decided to take a longer time to blog this.
OK, the 'we decided to take a longer time to blog this' bit was pure bullshit. We are just busy with our JOKE AJE shoots and coming out with believable excuses.

This Synovate (pronounced See-NO-V-8. We only learnt about this in the llth hour. Previously, we kept saying 'saino', saino', 'saino'...) project was by far the most difficult; difficult in a sense that we're so 'dry' on ideas specifically for this project. For a start, maybe I should've explained the reasons for this but doing now same difference right? Basically, our client wanted to move away from the traditional MS Power Point presentation and give their facts and figures 'some life'. Those facts and figures evolve around stereotypical groups in Malaysians and supposedly, we have 9 main groups. So, for this arduous task, who better to call than The ComeBackKings lah (che wah! bangge siut!).

Our priority was to portray these 9 groups 'comedically' and 'entertainingly' possible without moving away from the facts and figures. As easy as it sounds, comedy is never easy. We practically utilized the whole 6 months that we're given. The 9 groups were mashed into 6 two-minute skits with each King playing multiple roles, except King Ronnie, who played the main character, a census surveyor.

The stage was tiny and no breaks for costume changes mean that everything must be done on stage. Luckily, the crowd treated cross-dressing, cross-dressers and, most of all, cross-dressers cross-dressing, very well.

Along the way, we came out with countless storylines, suffered through countless nights without sleep, cracked countless jokes (some lifelessly lame), made countless trips to our client's office but during the show night, drank countless bottles for beer in return.The fee wasn't that rewarding but nevertheless, we had the most fun. At the end of the day, applause is all we want to hear and what great applause we received that night!

Since you readers missed this private event, here is a random line from our script that day:

Census Surveyor

'He he, err. No, its just a question. Next,

do you have internet connection?'

Hope you enjoyed that bit. If you didn't, you should've been there. He he.

Labels: event_performances_show

Its all our fault. We should've formalize our original tagline rather than just treating it like a party topic. We had 3 years to do so and now, our original tagline have been hijacked by Hitz.FM (their tagline is 'We take comedy seriously' ours is 'We take our comedy seriously').

So now, we are in search of a new tagline to replace a great one ... much like replacing 'Dance 101' with another skit of similar stature.

So far, all we have are these;

1) We work so hard for comedy, its not funny anymore.

2) Our 2-liners are just as good!

3) We put the 'FUN' in please give us more funds

That's all. We believe we need some outsourced help if want to figure out a good tagline before next year. PLEASE HELP! Drop us a few suggestions or comments.

Hey ppl, as you've already known, we have a spanking new makeover for our blog, courtesy of our 'futsal kaki' Reza (click here to find our more about the bloke).

So here is the 'least' but not 'last' open thank you from all us Kings.... teeeriiimaaa kaaasih Rezaaa.

And see you on the pitch Rez! We'll set you up with some jaw-dropping goal-gapping sitters to beef up your goal scoring account. Haha!

Oh, and have a look at our logo. Can any of you guess what it resembles and what it spells?

Hint: King Ronnie is petrified of...

A lot has been going on The Kings' minds lately. A mental tug-of-war is brewing right beneath their crowns over which side of the rope they should cling on; POPULARITY or EXCLUSIVITY.

Why so? As the Kings venture into the endless prospects of cyberspace (meaning www.gua.com.my) , they are exposed to its endless demands as well. And when these demands come from a majority of the lowest common denominators, The Kings must adapt to their limitations, thus moving away from The Kings' endless potentials and, unfortunately 'who they really are'.

I ask again' "Who The ComeBackKings really are?"

Do we watch 'Scenario' and laugh and follow their lead or do we stay as Kings and make people earn their laughter through thought.

If you understand this entry, be the judge of which 'end of the rope' The Kings should tug; POPULARITY or EXCLUSIVITY.


Some writer who's book didn't sell.

Labels: Updates...