Thursday, July 11, 2019

Laughing Stock: Pride and Predicates

Posted By on Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 3:19 PM

click to enlarge Laughing Stock: Pride and Predicates
tonytripoli.com
“Can we talk?” Joan Rivers’ sidekick Tony Tripoli comes to The O July 12.
Tony Tripoli: We’re way more the same than we are different.

“It’s odd that my balls look like it snowed a little, but hey, how many more years will I be able to see that far, anyway?” The gorgeous Tony Tripoli turns 50 this December and he’s got things in perspective. He complains that the young ones won’t leave him alone, but he isn’t too proud to offer them a ride home.

Tripoli brings his nonstop one-liners and bad boy charm to The O on Saturday, July 13 at 8 p.m. Tickets are priced for a sell-out: $3 on Eventbrite.com. Also on the bill are Phoenix comedians Trejon Dunkley and host Kid Ever.

Tripoli fans are Joan Rivers fans. He was her favorite. Not only did he open her on tour for four years, he was head writer and co-producer for Fashion Police with Joan Rivers on E! He also produced and/or performed on her Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, In Bed with Joan and What She Said.

Previously, he was a staff writer on The Dish on Style Network. Other TV credits include Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, Fashion House, Two and a Half Men, TV Guide's Funniest Commercials, TV Guides Hollywood's Sexiest Couples, and E!'s 50 Super Epic TV Moments.

Tripoli contributes hours of his time advocating for LGBTQA rights and AIDS awareness. He started out in gay clubs but he says, “When I walk out, every gay man over 30 folds his arms and just shuts down. I will win these judgmental bitches over, but I may pull a muscle doing it.

“In a typical club, the audience is 90% straight and I love that. I am ‘the other’ to straight folks. I’m interesting. My dirty talk is funny to them because it sounds so foreign. But a few minutes in, they start to realize that we are way more the same than we are different. That’s a cool moment.”

Ever on trend, Tripoli has a podcast, Due diligence with Tony Tripoli and Tobias Barrington Wolff. Otherwise he generally resents the online world as only an elder can. “Now, kids who never stepped on a stage make videos in their bedrooms that only make sense to themselves. Then they have a million followers and someone suggests, ‘You’re hilarious. You should do comedy’. So they start booking comedy clubs.” Tripoli’s generation, of course might work decades before a name club gave them so much as a ten-minute set.

If his future’s been interrupted by the modern world, it’s owing to Rivers’ death in 2014, an event from which he is no doubt still reeling.

“Joan was the kindest, most generous, stereotypical Jewish mother. Every day ‘Eat something. I need to see you eat something’. It was hilarious. ‘Why are you single? I met a man for you:— a theatre producer, early 90s, very, very wealthy, more hair coming out of his nose than is on his head, but he won’t live long, and you’ll have such a life!’

 

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