Frank DeLima’s final Blue Note Hawaii show on Sunday (Dec. 15), celebrating the 50th anniversary of his show biz career as a stand-up comedian, was sentimental, daffy but somewhat predictable.
Sure, he’s outrageously funny, and on this milestone day, he brought along a couple of famous folks — some real, some surreal –to the party.
The most indelible gem was Imelda Marcos, who’d been mothballed for quite a while. DeLima donned costume designer Kathe James’ splendid dress with the characteristic toaster cover sleeves. DeLima’s Imelda ‘do, completed the image, and the dark glasses completed The Looks.
In the comic’s own vivid words when the Filipina figure first attended his show at The Noodle Shop back in the day, “I thought I was looking into a mirror.”
The tune accompanying the Imelda tribute was “What I Did for Love,” magnifying her fidelity to her infamous shoe collection. This salute has been perhaps the most endearing of his characterizations.
DeLima also mimicked the voice and slur of Don Ho, complete with a bad wig, and he’s always sounded like Uncle Don with the foggy memory, with a lifelike repetitive conversation to an assumed visitor, “Where you from?”
Truly, DeLima is at his best as a master of racial accents; the gags are not racist but kind of a fond laugh-with-the ethnic targets, like his creation of Foo Ling Yu, his Chinese TV game host who challenges a contestant to try to answer a multiple-choice-test with an impossible Chinese tongue-twister of a reply.
Then there’s DeLima’s signature “Filipino Christmas” parody, where he dons a costume that’s a lit Christmas tree. The accoutrements, however tattered, are vital because it’s part of the package. But the tree’s looking awfully worn and weary.
And while there are spurts of genuine bliss in his attempt to get folks from the audience to participate in his local-style “12 Days of Christmas,” it takes forever to assemble the right participants to utter the requisite countdown, though he seems to know how to discover a precise visitor dude who can’t remember the routine of “numbah one day of Christmas” and its “one mynah bird in one papaya tree.”
Because his mounting leg/hip problems prohibit him to do “stand-up” comedy any more, DeLima has evolved into a “sit-down” comic with an aide assisting him to get into a costume or out of a pair of shoes. His ardent fans laugh, because it has its hilarity moments, though real hip aches should never be comedic.
Then again, with DeLima, life’s always a laugh and retirement means he’ll spring back in motion, as soon as Jan. 5, with his comedic bros Augie T, Andy Bumatai and Paul Ogata. So the laff riots will continue, retirement or no retirement…
And that’s Show Biz…
Hi Wayne,
Nice write up for Frank. Too bad he is having hip trouble. Maybe he needs a new one.
Aloha Dolores
Frank is remarkably active, for a soul with body aches. Maybe his climate amid laughter helps the medicine go down, as Mary Poppins sings…