National Siblings Day, Cocaine Island, and Dating in Your Fifties
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. For National Siblings Day, my sister and I did what we do every year- nothing.
You just can’t beat tradition.
2. . . . I will become part of the lamest ad campaign OF ALL TIME.
3. Dating in your fifties is a lot like being a Leafs Fan. You get your heart broken pretty regularly. What seems like a certain victory can turn on a dime into just another disappointment. And you spend a lot of fucking time thinking about how much more there was to cheer about in the past.
4. I found it legitimately touching when I heard that Crayola, to commemorate the short lived Street Legal reboot, announced that they are naming one of their new colours Writer’s Room White.
5. Top 5 Classic Interracial Porn Films
5. Diving Miss Daisy
4. Malcolm XXL
3. Mississippi Banging
2. Slimdong Million Hairs
1. Guess Who’s Cumming, Bhupinder.
6. I believe I featured him the first year I was writing this column but Troy Brooks is certainly worth revisiting. I love his hyper real character studies and how every piece tells me a story. Check his work out at: www.troybrooks.com
Also- If there are any local artists or actors who make visual art that you can alert me to, that would be greatly appreciated. Apparently a few people look at this thing so let’s use it to shine a spotlight on work that is deserving.
7. Fuck Yeah of the Week
8. I wasn’t so much running lines for my audition, last night, as I was pushing them around in a wheelchair.
9. Friday Night Imagined Phone Exchange
Guy- Hey Man, what ya doing?
Other Guy- Just staring at Cocaine Island here.
Guy- That movie on Netflix?
Other Guy- What movie on Netflix?
Aaaaaaaaand scene.
10. Instagram Handle of ALL TIME.
11. David Fox receives the Order of Canada.
Sometimes there is just nothing to say that can add a single thing to the visual.
12. One thing the world of acting isn’t very conducive to is relationships. Actors are constantly being exposed to the most interesting, charming, funny, smart, attractive, creative, and famous people on earth. It doesn’t help that the primary personality type that enters into the world of acting is the one that seeks constant validation and attention. Sometimes, it can just be hard to build trust.
Your partners are always going to be interested in other people and other people are always going to be interested in your partners. Of course. That’s natural. That’s human. Honest communication between partners is the key to building trust and surviving the tests and traps along the way. Well, that and just not fucking other people.
When you get a sense that someone may be interested in your partner, it’s completely okay to ask them if they think that that is the case, as well. You do not have any right to tell your partner who they are or are not allowed to be in communication with but you do have every right to know who those people are. If you discover that your partner is hiding friends on their social media pages, it’s completely reasonable to ask why they have been hidden and expect an honest answer. It wouldn’t seem an illogical assumption that someone who is being kept hidden is being kept hidden for a reason.
To be clear, there isn’t anything wrong with people having an interest in each other in and of itself- as long as both parties respect the expected boundaries of their respective commitments.
If you are ever asked by your partner if someone is interested in you, the worst possible response that you can possibly give is is that “they are married.” I have both given this answer and gotten it as a response, in the past. It’s especially weak if your partner knows that you or the person in question has a history of sleeping with married people (which is not that uncommon).
First off, it’s a terrible response because it doesn’t answer the question. Secondly, it implies that if the person weren’t married, your partner may absolutely have something to be concerned or worried about.
We live in a day and age where being married and being faithful to your partner are far from synonymous. I don’t know that it is any better in any other industry but I do know that infidelity is fairly prevalent in ours. A lot of actors treat their marriage vows like they treat lines in a scene. As soon as they say them, they forget them and move on. And, of course, “players” who are married will generally look to play with others who are married or in serious relationships because it is so much easier to enter into a contract to keep things quiet and hidden and exclusively between the two of them to decrease the odds of getting caught.
The thing about infidelity is that once you aren’t faithful to someone, you can’t ever be faithful to them again. You can stop being unfaithful to them but you can’t ever BE faithful to them because that’s already been undone. It becomes harder to trust anyone once you have crossed this line on either side because you know that almost anyone is capable of almost anything under the right set of circumstances.
Trust, fidelity and communication. The holy trinity of relationships.
So, in the name of communication, in case it is ever asked of you, here is a list of clearer answers to the question,
“Do you think so and so is interested in you?”
A. Of course they are interested in me. I’m fucking interesting. You’re interested in me, aren’t you? Why would you think that nobody else would be? That doesn’t mean I’m interested in them, though.
B. It’s a good feeling when interesting people are interested in me. It makes me feel good. Don’t make me feel like I need to hide those feelings from you. Because I will if you force me to.
C. You know a big part of my self worth is tied up in people liking me, gravitating towards me, and choosing me—same as yours is—it’s the nature of what we do. Don’t try to turn that into shame.
D. Don’t worry, I know three other people they slept with and the reports were NOT GOOD.
E. I get that you have been hurt and hurt people and that this can be threatening to you, but if you don’t trust me or feel safe based on nothing that’s actually happened in this relationship itself, you probably shouldn’t be here anymore.
And finally-
F. OH Yeah! They very clearly are. No doubt about that. And, if I were to be brutally honest, I’d tell you that I am interested in them, too. And that I’m considering all of my options and calculating exactly what I think I can and can not get away with without you ever finding out.
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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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.
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Dogs rarely have a hidden agenda when they meet people or other dogs: they're either wagging that shit or they aren’t.
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At one point, I was sleeping with so many actresses that they used to just hold ACTRA meetings in my bedroom.
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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?
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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.
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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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