Opening Doors, Painting Houses, and Spraying Roaches
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.
- I just finished serving my second 30-day sentence in Facebook Jail and I have to say, outside of Trump hogging the TV remote and switching it to Fox News all the fucking time, it really wasn’t so bad in there.
2. Smart Move of the Week:
Kudos to Brendan Healy and Monica Esteves for making this call. I don’t think just attempting to go back to things “the way they were” is gonna work out for anyone. There is absolutely no way to know what the audience is going to do, in terms of attending theatre. Outdoor theatre has the best chance of drawing an audience in the beginning, anyway. Why not share that space among whatever shows and companies that are ready to play, for whatever audience members that are hungry to devour as much new theatre as possible, in the safest and probably best-attended venue in the city?
This is the kind of outside the box strategy that I believe will be necessary for Toronto theatres and Toronto audiences to slowly become reacquainted with each other again. We’ve all been through a lot over the past 1 1/3 years now. To expect that this whole period will just be forgotten, and that people will just return to the theatre just because they can is, in my opinion, naive thinking. But hey, I could be wrong. I’m wrong all the fucking time.
3. Quandary of the Week:
4. Fuck Yeah of the Week:
5. Guest Post of the Week:
6. When I was a kid, I lived in a building with cockroaches. We would have the place sprayed every month to make the roaches go away. The thing was, if the entire building didn’t get sprayed, the roaches just left our unit and went to someone else’s. When it was safe and the roach spray’s effect was no longer dangerous, they’d come back.
The way I understand it, COVID is the roaches. And the vaccine is the roach spray. If everyone doesn’t get it, the roaches are gonna have places to play and flourish and never go away. Not that they will ever go away. COVID is never going to “go away”—but we can get back to some safer semblance of our old lives. The problem is we can’t establish herd immunity unless 70 per cent of the population is either vaccinated or actually catches and survives the virus. Pretty much everyone can get the vaccine now. Make it a priority. Don’t be the unit that lets the cockroaches live.
And if you’re anti-mask, anti-vaccine, or any kind of COVID conspiracist, go fuck yourself. I don’t care what happens to you, personally, but you’re fucking up the herd’s chances and only continuing to draw this shit out longer and longer and longer.
7. Note to filmmakers:
If you’re gonna make a documentary about Prince and you can’t get the rights to use any of his music, do me a favour and don’t make a fucking documentary about Prince.
8. I invited a close friend to hang out with me for a day (someone who is in my bubble) on the weekend, but she had just gotten her first vaccine and didn’t want to, in case she had any bad side effects. She said “you’re the only person I know who hasn’t gotten sick from the vaccine. The vaccine probably got sick FROM YOU!”
9. Amen of the Week:
10. Real Talk of the Week:
11. Someone asked me to write a piece in this column about actors having a side job or a back-up job or whatever you call it. I guess it’s meant to mean something coming from me because I’m an actor who works pretty regularly and still paints houses from time to time when I’m not busy. When I was young all I did when I wasn’t working was drink and do drugs and chase women. As much fun as that was, it cost me about a half million dollars. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to start painting houses for something to fill my time that I could do creatively between jobs. Firstly, I’d still have that half a million dollars. But more importantly, I truly believe that a person needs a purpose each day when they wake up to drive them. Painting is as good a purpose as any—and a heluva lot of a better one than coke.
In any event, that’s my story. I’ve never felt less than anything when I’m painting. I paint the same way I act: I put everything I have into it. When I’m painting, I’m a painter. Not an actor who’s slumming. There is no shame in having a job that isn’t an acting job when you’re an actor. There IS shame in not feeding yourself because you have a big stupid fucking ego telling you you’re a failure if you can’t do that on your acting income alone. Why should anyone else give a shit what anyone else does or doesn’t do to feed themselves or pay their bills? And if they do, that’s on them. They’re probably just some miserable fuck who tries to build themself up by tearing others down.
Anyway, that’s all I’m gonna write on the subject because I don’t really give a fuck what anyone thinks about how I make my living and I strongly suggest you don’t either. There is no need to justify it. No need to explain it. Just do what you have to do. Or what you want to do, if you’re lucky enough to be able to be doing that. Either way, it isn’t anybody’s fucking business but your own.
12. I finally got my first COVID shot on April 28th and the only side effect was that my penis grew. But then 48 hours later it went back to its normal three inches.
Stupid fucking vaccine.
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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