The Leafs in the Playoffs, Barry Manilow’s Announcement, and Tim Hortons’ Toilet Paper
Nappoholics Anonymous is a weekly column featuring twelve random thoughts by actor Tony Nappo. Some are funny, some are poignant, some bother him, and some make him weep from sadness while others make him weep for joy. Here are his thoughts: unfiltered, uncensored, and only occasionally unsafe for work.
1. The JUNO Awards, under fire for Russell Peters misogynist off-script remarks last week, also apologized when it came to light that the award’s more familiar name, the JUNOS, was indeed originally an intentional anti-Semitic “inside joke.” The plan, at present, is to change the name of the award, after forty-six years, to a much more complimentary racial stereotype regarding size. I can’t wait to see who they ask to host the 2018 BLACKGUYSPENIS Awards.
2. The Leafs are in the playoffs this year. If we can just get Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to announce who wins the Stanley Cup, I think we’ve really got a solid fucking chance.
3.
4. The only way that Pepsi commercial could have been any more offensive is if Bill Cosby had been in it, at some point, making that stupid fucking fake cute face of his.
5. As I have gotten older, the biggest feeling I get when a show closes is relief. The sense of having survived it without fucking it up. There is a lot to mourn, of course—the attention, the press, the buzz, the community exposure, the opportunity to ply one’s craft. All of the things I desperately craved as a younger actor but seem to need less and less as I get older. I was really tired the night we closed Butcher. I will miss the show and the work but I was also surprisingly ready to stop doing it. I had been tired every day since we began it. And I knew I would be. Years ago, an actor named Shaun Smyth said to me that it costs to do theatre. And he was right. It demands every part of you. And not just while you are on stage but the entire time you are rehearsing and the entire time you are in performance. It is THE centre of your every breath and action from when you wake until you sleep. You have to become a willing hostage to it. You eat, sleep, and shit around it. And while you are doing it, nothing else matters, really. I mean, it DOES, of course, but it also can’t. Because your name and reputation ride on every single performance. And you have a responsibility to the writer and director and cast and team you are working with, because all of their names depend on you showing up and doing your fucking job, too.
The flip side of theatre costing you, of course, is what it pays you. And it does—in many ways—but, for me, that payment mostly comes in those moments of discovery and connection with the other actors and with the audience. It comes to me in the form of the work we are doing itself. But all of those moments have been experienced now and they are over and gone forever. To ask for more of them would just be greedy; I’ll just be happy and proud of all that we did have. That’s what closing has become now for me: the time to let it all go and figure out who the fuck I am NOW, how the whole experience has changed me, and then to figure out where the hell I am going to go from here.
But, first, a good long anxiety-free sleep.
6. Barry Manilow came out as gay last week. In related news, Chris Rock came out as black.
7. When I advised Michael O’Hara, Noble Talent’s junior uber-agent, to “maybe try changing your profile picture” on Tinder to get some better results, I think he kind of missed my fucking point entirely.
8. The Top Five Kellie Leitch–Inspired Beatles Songs:
5- You’re Gonna Lose That Election, Girl
4- I’ll Follow the Toronto Sun
3- I Want to Hold Your Hijab
2- The Long and Whining Toad
1- The Fool on the Hill
9. The naked audience performance of the show S h e e t s on April 1 set a new Toronto theatre record for receiving twelve “standing ovations” before the show even started.
10. Sometimes my daughter Ella will say something that scarily reminds me of a younger version of myself. Like, just the other day, she said to me, “Dad, we need to get some more coke.”
11. Hey, Tim Hortons. You make a billion fucking dollars a day. Please give me something to wipe my ass with that isn’t see-through.
12. When I was growing up, I was surrounded by Italians and Jamaicans. I thought “Appy Heaster” was actually how you were supposed to say it.
Tony Nappo
Tony is Italian, he’s from Scarborough, he’s an actor, he’s a father, he’s a really good house painter, and he doesn’t believe that most things matter, ultimately, at all.
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Paintings, Pornos, and Broken Countries
Every single fucking time there is a mass shooting, we all give the speeches, and we all share the memes (to each other, who are all mostly already in agreement), but nothing changes.
Gottfried, Strays, and Easter Eggs
Dogs rarely have a hidden agenda when they meet people or other dogs: they're either wagging that shit or they aren’t.
Slapping People, ACTRA Meetings, and Dog Shit
At one point, I was sleeping with so many actresses that they used to just hold ACTRA meetings in my bedroom.
Birthdays, Cranes, and Judd Apatow
If the Freedom Convoy has answered one question for every Canadian, I think it's this: whatever happened to that dumb kid in my class?
Scorsese, Dentists, and Dying Alone
If waving a Fuck Trudeau flag is a legit way to get a meeting with him, I’m gonna start waving my Fuck Scorsese flag wherever I go and keep my fingers crossed.
Truckers, Porndle, and Bad Boys
In these newly woke times in the entertainment industry, it’s slightly amazing to me that nobody has protested the fact that Denzel Washington isn’t actually Scottish yet.
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