If It's Sunday, It's...

THE ROCK by STEVE ROSSE

Thai TV

There are two kinds of expatriates on Phuket: those who can watch Thai TV and those who can't. Being able to watch Thai TV has nothing to do with understanding the language, since popular culture in any country is aimed at teenagers and full of slang and idioms that they don't teach at the AUA Purty Good Language School. Watching Thai TV has more to do with understanding that it is a metaphor for life here, sort of a Rorschach blot found in a Chinese fortune cookie.

Sometimes you'll be watching one of the evening soap operas and there will come a scene shot in a hallway or bathroom or some other enclosed space. Four actors will be sharing a single microphone, and you can't hear half their lines and the other half sound like their being spoken over a cell phone from the Arctic circle. And you'll think: that's just how it was at the Immigration Department today. It was like everybody had water in their ears, nobody could communicate the simplest idea.

And sometimes you'll be watching a situation comedy, and you'll see the masking tape seams on the plywood walls and the wrinkles in the painted backdrop behind the glassless window. An actor will speak into a phone that has no cord connecting it to the wall, and another actor will start for the door an instant before the doorbell rings. And you'll think: that's just how it was at that party last night. Everybody making a big show, making face and making moves, and all of it transparent as onion skin. The jokes were old and the laughter forced and there was Seng Thip in the Chivas bottle.

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Then sometimes you'll be watching a game show and you'll be stricken by how handsome the men on stage are, how beautiful the women. Jintara's eyes, Santisuk's hair. And you'll think: that's just how it was in the market today. The young women selling fish, surrounded by noise and filth and stench, their skin was clear and their eyes sparkled and their voices were bright as they shouted vulgar insults at the boys who carry the ice on their backs. God must have made the people here last of all the world, because here he got it just right.

And sometimes you'll be watching the news, and you'll see some politician bitching about the West imposing its cultural values on Asia. Then a commercial comes on and the sound track is lifted from an old Credence Clearwater Revival song, the models are all half-European and they're wearing Levi's blue jeans, Mickey Mouse T-shirts and New York Yankees caps turned sideways. And you'll think: that's how it was downtown today, with taxi drivers giving you the thumbs-up and "USA numbah one!" and then charging you three times the official rate for a ride to the post office.

And sometimes you'll be watching Si Thoom Square, and Tongchai MacIntyre will come on to talk about his new Fuji commercial. He'll bring the pair of snow boots he had to wear while filming on an Alaskan glacier, and the camera will linger on those boots for minutes on end, while the audience oooooohs and aaaaaaahs and Bird chooses just the right moment to produce the thick woolly socks he wore in the boots and is rewarded for his impeccable sense of dramatic timing by a sustained gasp of awe from the audience.

And you'll think: It's just a pair of boots, what's the big deal? This is like Michael Jackson going on The Tonight Show and demonstrating a Pah Kao Ma to Jay Leno. "You can wear it around your waist if you're a man," Michael would squeak, "or around your breasts if you're a woman." Jay would mug for the camera and ask "Where do you where yours, Michael?" The audience would laugh on cue and Michael would blush a bit, then go on to explain how the Pah Kao Ma can be used as a blanket, a hat, a bag or a towel. And the sophisticated LA audience would oooooooh and aaaaaaaah while some Thai restaurateur in Reseda is sitting in front of his TV thinking "It's just a Pah Kao Ma, what's the big deal?"

And sometimes, you'll be watching Poo Ying Yak Roo or Week Soon Jed or one of the other "live" shows, and you'll see an actor go up on his lines and flounder around a bit before the others jump in to save him, or he'll reach for a prop that's not there or turn to greet another actor who's just missed his entrance and you'll think: that's just like life here; sometimes things happen and you have to improvise. You've got to keep on dancing as fast as you can while the orchestra picks up their sheet music off the floor and tries to find their place again.

Sometimes we all get homesick for a life with better production values. But just then something will happen, something like a stranger stopping on the road to help you fix a flat tire, and suddenly life will be a shot of royalty sloshing through the muddy streets of some upcountry village to greet the peasants, or Siriam's smile as she sells hair care products, or a rollicking old Chinese kung-fu movie inexplicably broadcast in its original Mandarin...

You never get to be the director of the TV show of your life. You usually have to settle for prop man, or hairdresser, or more often than not, just a member of the studio audience.