Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
Tony Hendricks - FILE
AFTER RIOTOUS jokes had the full house at Backyaad, Constant Spring Road, rocking during his extended closing performance of Wednesday, Tony 'Paleface' Hendricks got relatively quiet and serious.
"I like to go around the world and do shows. I like to show people we are not the stereotype they have of us," he said. He illustrated how different people around the world, from Italy to Japan to New Zealand, give greetings, then came back home. "In Jamaica, we say respect, blessed, love, guidance, honour," he said touching his chest and bending slightly at the waist.
And there was strong applause to bring 'Crack-Up Remix' to an end just past midnight.
Hendricks and Trinidadian Nicky Crosby did long performances on the second segment of the show, Lemon giving the jokes and the Cadillac Dancers showing the moves before intermission. And in the break the Crack-Up host Elva injected humour into giveaways.
THE RED STRIPE LADY
The first giveaway went to somebody who could come onstage with a baby's picture, a shoe, a Red Stripe Lite bottle, a thousand dollar bill and a pair of glasses. A lady was up with the unlikely mix in very short order. "Whose baby is this?" Elva enquired. The lady said hers. "It shows," Elva said, to laughter.
After a second sting from the Cadillac Dancers, with dance and drama injected into songs from Vybz Kartel, Busy Signal and Bounty Killer, among others, Nicky Crosby started on the men. "I have to apologise to the men on behalf of the Jamaica women for calling you dogs for so long. Men can't be dogs. Dogs are loyal and faithful and they are always home." There was applause from the women in the audience.
She ribbed the men all night, another barb going to the head. She sent a new boyfriend to get an AIDS test and he came back excited. "It negative," he said. "You positive?" she asked. "Yes," he replied. There was laughter. "You see the problem," Crosby said.
She did a giveaway of her own, asking a man to answer three questions. And she made it easy, by giving him the answer to them all - 'yes'. But when she asked "do you wear your wife's underwear?" he said "what!", to hoots of laughter.
PURE LAUGHTER
One man insisted he was once Elva's boyfriend, but when Crosby called her out from her 'activities' in the tenement that served as the setting for the stage, Elva could not make him out. "It possible. So many, so little time," she said, to laughter. And there was more hilarity when she said "I forget the small ones."
Hendricks came out to Damian Marley, Bounty Killer and Eeka-A-Mouse's Khaki Suit, slinging a comment at somebody in the audience. "If everybody was supposed to be in comedy, them would a give out microphone at de gate," he said.
He said things have changed, indicating his stomach. "It is not a paunch. It is an airbag. A lot of gentlemen here have one too. And the ladies have two. Driver side and passenger side," he said, to laughter.
In between 'disciplining' foreigners who have wrong ideas about Jamaica and describing how people react to him in England when he is introduced as a Jamaican comedian ("is like adjust the picture"), Hendricks took a hilarious, finger testing of point of origin trip on a duck hunt encounter with a red neck sheriff.
And he took a swipe at 'bad words', illustrating just how the chickens and parrots squawk in colourful Jamaican terms.
"That's why they call it 'fowl language'," Hendricks said.
