Practical Tips for Lazy Actors, Mike Pence, and Sudbury Graffiti
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. Word of the Day
PISSIPLINE (noun): The practice of training one’s urinary system to ignore its natural impulses and obey the mind’s direct orders.
E.g. Joe was excluded from the road trip because he was completely lacking in pissipline.
2. One of the things I love about Facebook is that it’s kind of like this endless conversation I’m having with people I legitimately know and care about from every single chapter of my life… Whereas Twitter is a lot more like just screaming shit out a streetcar window at strangers on the sidewalk.
3. Look on the bright side: maybe the millennials will decide to slit all our throats in our sleep one night and just take it from here on their own.
4. That time before Sudz Sutherland and Fab Filippo got super famous and were busted for being the Milli Vanilli of the ventriloquism circuit.
5. Practical tip for the lazy actor: If you are doing a play, buy a pair of socks and underwear to match your show socks and underwear. Wear them in the very first performance and throw them in the show laundry when the show is done. Wear your show socks and underwear home. Repeat every day for the entire run. You’re welcome.
6. One time, in an attempt to guide my daughter as a half-decent father might, I was about to stop Ella from dipping a McNugget into her McFlurry when I realized that no half-decent father would let their kid eat McDonalds in the first place. What possible difference could it make HOW she ate it?
7. 
8. This won’t be a popular opinion, but what I know with zero doubt is that if Obama had gone to a show (some kind of Trump rally/theatre hybrid in, say, Texas—I have to invent an entirely alternate world here) and had been addressed/lectured on his way out of the show, from the stage, by a cast with an opposing political ideology, the liberal reaction—specifically that of the theatre world itself—would not likely be to support and celebrate so quickly and entirely the actions of THAT particular cast.
Before you get all fucking offended and protest, think about the Tenors guy holding up that little cardboard sign that said “All Lives Matter” at the All-Star Game as a reaction to the BLM movement. There is zero difference between what he did and what that Hamilton cast did—saw an opportunity and seized it. Don’t confuse the action with the message. Clearly and obviously, we all agree with the message the Hamilton cast delivered, but I personally think they did overstep by delivering it as they did. Especially when their curtain call message echoed so many of the themes (as I understand them to be) that were already contained in the show itself.
I think the audience booing Pence upon entering was a far more authentic statement and a far less manipulative and opportunistic one. It said way more to Pence than that post-show appeal did. I know that the casts’ appeal came from a place of desperation and passion and that it was respectfully articulated and I entirely agree with the message itself, as do we all, but it was still an ambush, plain and simple. The show was over. The man was leaving the building. It was an artless act when you separate it from the message, a clumsily executed one and, I think, an unprofessional one. But not one that I think requires any kind of apology. In theatre, the voice that we speak through—the only voice that gives us any power at all—is our work. If you can’t say what you need to say through that, then you should probably be saying it somewhere else.
9. The first rule of redundant club is the first rule of redundant club.
The first rule of amnesia club is— who the fuck are you?
10. What the Sudbury graffiti artists lack in aesthetic skill, they more than make up for in conscientiousness.
11. The movie Hacksaw Ridge is just a longer version of the trailer for Hacksaw Ridge. Seeing the entire film just takes way more time and has way less impact.
12. Try not to ever be one of those actors you see at auditions who say it’s all just a lottery that anyone can win. It’s lazy and defeatist. No one has ever won a lottery because they worked their asses off and knew exactly what the fuck they were doing.
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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