Behold, the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors. Based in Los Angeles, these guys are an Asian American comedy troupe that has been around since I was in high school; we’ve blogged about them before since they’re kind of big on the Asian-American activism circuit.
So these guys come out with an aptly appropriate video for Thanksgiving, and it’s pretty clever. And then I realize: this isn’t a live performance, or part of a packaged DVD set. They’re doing this on YouTube. Actually, no, they’re doing this for YouTube.
To which I say: Jeezus, it’s about time.
In the age of viral videos and Dane Cook and SNL sketches on hulu instantly consumed by millions of people around the world, sketch comedy is dominated by the Internet. In turn, those skits seem to be written by recent Yale grads trying to turn a buck out of their clever one-liners and liberal arts degrees. Compared to the CollegeHumor Original Videos team, they make 18MMW look like a bunch of frumpy Asian senior citizens. But that said, they’re still a bunch of frumpy Asian senior citizens, and let’s be honest: the amount of additional Asian sketch comedy groups since 1994 can be counted on one hand. Actually, zero hands.
18MMW may be late to the viral video party, but at least they’re AT the party, and as they get more comfortable with this viral video thing, they can only get more popular from here. (Provided that they can be constantly funny, of course.)
