You’d think it was Taylor Swift’s concert judging from the line-ups outside, but nah: Jo Koy and Tay-tay are Never.Ever.Getting.Back.Together.
Remember the icy stare she lasered Jo Koy with at the Golden Globes?
At almost 20,000 seats, one would be hard-pressed to fill Scotiabank Arena in Toronto to full capacity.
And yet, at Jo Koy’s World Tour show last Saturday, March 9, 2024, the venue was almost sold out.
And just how does this Filipino comedian genetically modify our late-to-every-party DNA and make us do things like go to a comedy show an hour early?
Perhaps for the first time in Filipino history, Pinoys (mostly) got the memo and arrived an hour early to the show.
After all, one cannot be late to his show when Jo Koy has become the sole comedian to hold the title for “Most Headlining Shows by a Comedian” with six sold-out shows at the LA Forum (capacity 17,500).
Joke Analysis
Let’s analyze why he packs arenas, shall we?
First of all, Jo Koy is fast-thinking and quick on his feet: the mark of a great clown.
He’s so confident that he can ask random audience questions and turn their answers into a long-running gag throughout the show.
Jo Koy asked someone what they do for a living—an electrician’s apprentice—and when he was clueless what an apprentice was, he mulled it out loud, paced back and forth, and came up with funny comebacks.
When he noticed a woman in the audience clearly having a good time, but with an empty seat beside her, he asked if she came alone or with a friend.
A few minutes later, the friend comes back, and Jo Koy made us all laugh with his toilet jokes.
Engaging with the audience could totally backfire—what if they answered with the most boring response? One you can’t make a joke out of?
But Jo Koy seems capable of spewing out unrehearsed, smart and amusing quips. He volleys back and forth with the audience, and wins every time.
It takes years of experience, and a lot of talent, to do that.
Next, Jo Koy caters his humour to different age groups.
Millenials get a kick out of his sexual jokes. The cruder the jokes got, the louder the laughter coming from the young crowd.
(May it be noted that the cheeks of the more mature audience totally transformed into a reddish colour.)
He then praises the mature women in the audience—the titas (aunts)—who see him as their son.
The titas are tickled when Jo Koy talks about his strong-willed, accent-heavy, no holds-barred mother, who raised three kids single-handedly on her own.
His mother is the woman behind the man: Jo Koy would not be the success he is, if not for the many hilarious stories he tells of his mom.
His mom IS the original jokester.
Jo Koy’s best comedic acts are those where he performs accurate impressions of his mom who makes it clear that she tolerates no carabao poo-poo.
Then he wins the middle-aged women in the crowd with his tender but graphic depiction of his wife’s birth—he is the weak link, the one who fainted three times—while the mother of his child becomes The Hulk during the difficult birth.
He admonishes the teenagers in the crowd: “when your mom asks you to clean your room, you answer ‘how many rooms should I clean, Mom?'”
But the most touching moment during the show was when he did karaoke.
He is Filipino, after all, and what’s a party without karaoke?
First, he played the romance-killing music his son listens to: the mumbling lyrics, the manic and fast beats.
Then he played “I’ll Make Love To You” by Boyz II Men.
The stadium sparkled with cellphone lights, and the audience—made up largely of fifty-something Pinoys, who grew up listening to 80’s and 90’s music—became putty in his hands.
That’s when I knew: this jokester doesn’t just make us laugh. He also makes us proud of our heritage, he makes us remember why we should respect our elders, he lets us reminisce our good ole days.
That’s why he packs them in.
(But please, Jo Koy, let us know what went down at the Globes.)
