Imet Paul Ogata when he was just a little mental, running a comedy club at the Ilikai Hotel by the utterly unlikely name of "The Comedy Cow." PC cops just
don’t get the jokesPaul was one of the local comics who coached me in my attempt to spelunk into the scary world of standup comedy and live to write about it. I appreciated Paul allowing me onto his stage in the way a condemned man appreciates the guy who ties him up to a firing squad post not making the binding's too tight.
The Comedy Cow has been put out to pasture, along with every other Honolulu comedy club, victims of the economy. Ogata is still mental but has moved on to Krater 96 radio as an "air personality," which is not a bad place for a local comic to land during a recession.
But as if to remind people that his heart still belongs to the type of eyebrow-raising ethnic comedy for which Hawaii is known, Ogata's released a CD entitled "Mental Oriental."
I don't believe the Association for Asian American Studies gives out awards for comedy albums, as it does with novels. But if it did, it certainly would want to give Ogata its top award if simply to yank it back like it did to writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka.
The Asian studies group displayed its petty politically correct prejudices by taking back Yamanaka's award because one of the characters in her fiction novel "Blu's Hanging" was a Filipino who molested children.
If members of the AAAS thought Yamanaka's characterizations of ethnic groups were harsh, then they'd better steer clear of "Mental Oriental."
Let's see, Ogata's characters include "We Go Fish" show host "Bari Nojima" and "Haole Stan," who troll for "pakes" in Chinatown using char siu duck, cats and wallets for bait. (They catch an "old shopping lady pake," but have to throw back the "Chinese restaurant chef pake" because he's too short.)
NOJIMA bites into a musubi at the end, only to find himself hooked by two rednecks ("Lookie here, Buford, I caught me a real live Japanese boy!), hosts of "Fishin' World with Bubba and Buford."
If that doesn't make the PC police cringe, there's the Filipino children's author "Dr. Ay Seuss" who talks about "green balut and Spam," and two mokes in New York who wander into a ritzy French restaurant and assume "venison flambe" actually is "mahu deer."
There are plenty of stereotypes to go around, which, Ogata believes, is fine.
"People like to laugh at other people," he says. "It's learning to laugh at ourselves that needs a little work."
He thinks it's hypocritical -- and ironic -- for the Asian studies group to first give an award to Yamanaka and then attempt to humiliate her by snatching it back on the grounds that her writing's not sensitive enough to Asians.
Of course, Yamanaka wasn't humiliated or cowed by the self-important and self-appointed guardians of artistic expression. Ogata, likewise, is not comedy cowed by those who attack local ethnic humor.
Ogata realizes he now performs in a world where Frank DeLima will be pilloried yearly for his classic, though politically incorrect, Christmas carols ("Black dog roasting on an open fire.")
From Lenny Bruce to Andy Bumatai (Ogata's childhood idol), comedians have always found themselves on the front lines in the battle for free speech.
In Hawaii, that free speech necessarily involves the discussion of foibles and eccentricities of the various racial and ethnic groups that make up island life.
("Mental Oriental" is available from Tropical Jam Productions and most politically incorrect record stores.)
Writer's Blu's and Writer 'flabbergasted;
Friday's Letters to the Editor and viewpoint
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
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