Filipino humor is a special sort of gem. It’s a gem that stays dusty, flawed and chipped – but it’s still a gem, to people who can appreciate it.

A shining example is the Filipino term usapang lasing (literally, drunken talk) which gives birth to crude, mind-boggling jokes that make sense only to the heavily intoxicated. Usapang lasing sessions are mostly held over bottles of Red Horse, late in the evening, between a cluster of friends and pulutan.

We may also be familiar with the term kwentong barbero (literally, barber stories), which gives me the impression that barbers in the Philippines, those who aren’t gay, are simply dead-bored with their jobs that they spin bogus, out-of-this-world stories to their unwilling barbershop victims to pass the time – making the customers wonder if the barber is indeed a mentally-ill patient who has managed to escape his cell. Hence, the term kwentong barbero.

***

Back in college there was a yearly tradition of Streetpainting, where students were allowed to paint the street (duh) in front of the AS building. Being Fine Arts students, this was something to look forward to, mostly because the walls of the Fine Arts building were already covered with so much graffiti that there was hardly any more space to even write down one’s name. This was also an excellent opportunity to not go home, to hang out with friends, to vandalize the “conyo street”, and to maybe eat tapsilog at Rodic’s as soon as it opened for the day, given that we had enough money for breakfast.

While waiting for the paint to dry, the usapang lasing started. “Do you want to buy eyedrops?” someone asked, lazily. “For only one peso.” He paused, then delivered the punchline we all knew. “Pero may problema, mehn… roll-on!” (”there’s a problem though, it comes in a roll-on bottle”)

Between groans and jeers of “We already know that one!” and “Get a life!”and “Ang baduy mo, ha” and “Tangina mo” someone followed it up. “What about a helicopter, do you want to buy a helicopter?”

“How much?” chimed in one student, the beer obviously getting to her.

“Ten pesos!”

“Only ten pesos?” someone asked encouragingly, from the other side of the street.

“Oo! Pero may problema, yung katawan yung umiikot, hindi yung elisi!” (”It’s the body that turns, not the propellers”)

An hour later, everyone was rolling over in laughter, either stoned, drunk or sober, rolling over the paint, rolling over the grass, rolling around everywhere. (”Gusto mo ng kotse? Kaya lang yung windshield, may grado!” “Gusto mo ng stockings? Kaya lang baggy!” “Gusto mo ng trabaho? Taga-hila ka ng elevator!” “Gusto mo ng lion? Kaya lang yung buhok niya, one-length!”) The laughter had reached maniacal proportions. The jokes weren’t even funny anymore, we were just letting the mood and alcohol and the moon take over what came out of our mouths and were finding it, well, hilarious. Students from other colleges looked at us like we were mad. “It figures,” they probably sniffed self-righteously, “they’re from Fine Arts, and they think they’re cool.” Of course we weren’t cool – we were just pathetically happy.

***

Conan O’Brien’s humor is probably the closest the West has ever gotten to Filipino humor. His humor is condescending, crude, and very self-depricating. Any Filipino would appreciate him.

***

I have to admit, it was hard getting Julien to “get” my jokes during the first few months of marriage.

“Hey, do you want to buy a rocking chair?” I said to him one day.

“From whom?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter. It only costs 2 euros.”

He turned to look at me. I started to giggle, because I’m a very bad joke-teller: I always start laughing at my own jokes before delivering the punchline. “But there’s a problem,” I said between guffaws. “It comes with a grandmother!” (May kasamang lola, in Filipino – which is funnier I think). I ended up laughing by myself. It was one of those uncomfortable moments when you hear your laughter hang in the air.

“Don’t you get it? You don’t think it’s funny? Ok… do you want to buy eyedrops?”

“This is n’importe quoi,” he shot me down.

And this is how my “Do you want to buy…but there’s a problem” series of jokes died.

***

I gave it another try a few days later. “Listen,” I told him, opting for a kwentong barbero now. “There are two men, coming home from a drinking session. They’re really drunk, and one of them sees dogshit on the road. Look man, one says, it’s chocolate. The other says, No it isn’t, it’s shit. They argue about it until they agree to taste it. The man who tasted it says, You were right, it’s shit. Good thing I didn’t step on it.” I burst out laughing.

“This is not very funny,” said Julien.

This frustrated me to no end. “Why don’t you tell me a joke then?”

He said, “Ok, I read one the other day. A priest, a doctor and an engineer were at the golf course, waiting for their turn because there was a slow group of golfers playing at the moment. So they ask one of the staff why these golfers were so slow. Oh, they are a group of blind firefighters, we let them play here for free because they lost their sight after trying to save our clubhouse from a fire. So the priest says, This is sad. I will pray for them tonight. And the doctor says, I will contact my opthalmologist to see if there’s anything he can do for them. And the engineer says, Why don’t they play at night?” At that, he looked at me triumphantly, and chuckled.

“This is not a joke, this is too intellectual!” I hollered (although I did get it, and found it funny, but in a Reader’s Digest’s Laughter is the Best Medicine sort of way).

“At least, it does not involve human trafficking.” Obviously, the thought of selling a grandmother along with a rocking chair still bothered him. “It is because engineers think this way, which is the funny part,” said my husband, the engineer.

Four years later, a healthy dose of exposure to my brothers and friends who are champions of kwentong barbero, numerous trips to the Philippines and a growing knowledge of Tagalog, Julien now manages to “get” Filipino jokes, occasionally rolling his eyes over punchlines, and seeing the beauty of n’importe quoi which Filipinos love so much.

I mean, for a country whose President is a joke, why not laugh?

*n’importe quoi = kalokohan

Links:

• After months of hiatus, the newest PINOYexpats issue is online, so go see!
• Also, for music reviews from someone who lives for music, go to DarkGlobe (only in French, though). Thank you, L, for my Currently Listening to

Currently listening to:
The Editors
An End Has A Start

Days are moving quicker, especially now; I’ve kept very quiet about it but there are so much things to think about and so many things to do that as an antithesis to it all I simply find myself falling to bed and falling asleep at once.

But to wake up sometime is a good idea: everything moves and I feel like I’m watching someone else getting ready, a move to France, a move to new lives, staring under bright lights at circles on my hand, trying to figure out which one is best, which one is for keeps.

What people don’t know is that three years ago in Marinduque Julien and I exchanged dusty stones at the foot of the old antique house we were staying in. This was the closest thing to perfection, that afternoon in a foreign island where people spoke a different language, where he and I were the only ones who understood what we wanted to say. A dirty dog watched our little exchange from the corner, scratching himself behind his ear, urgently. Like I said, the perfect engagement.