George Lopez
Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre
Tucson, AZ
October 22, 2022
By Mary Andrews
George Lopez is by far Tucson’s favorite stand up comedian. Lopez has more than 40 years under his belt as a stand up comedian gracing television and movie screens as well as America’s stages.
Everything is coming up roses for the comedic actor and entertainer. Lopez and his daughter have a new series coming this fall, Lopez vs. Lopez. His one-hour special streaming on Netflix, We’ll Do It For Half, is described as a hilarious exploration of race, politics, and life lessons. Lopez’s show in Tucson can certainly be described as hilarious as his shows on television.
Rubin Paul opened the night’s festivities with a half an hour of comedy. The comedian is a storyteller and his upbringing is the foundation of many of his stories. He has opened shows for Lopez for several years. His set was the introduction for Lopez.
As Lopez’s theme song “Low Rider” started playing, Lopez entered the stage. Typically, the only props on the stage were a stool and a microphone. Lopez was dressed in an all black ensemble. The main difference in his appearance from three years ago was his generous amount of facial hair. Lopez begins with, “God bless you! Isn’t it good to be away from the kids?” A huge roar of applause came from the crowd. “What a price to pay for not pulling out! For a few seconds of joy. For the rest of your Fu*kin’ life. you have to look at their stupid-a*sed face.”
Lopez broke ground for Latino comedians by embracing his ethnicity and confronting racial stereotypes. An example of this during the show, was when he told the story of how to break a Latino child from sucking his thumb. “No kid sucks their thumb. If the grandma sees it, she exclaims, ’Tonight, I’ll fix him.’ You wait until the baby goes to sleep. Get a chili or jalapeño pepper and you cut it in half and you put it on his thumb and leave it on for a half an hour. Let the chili soak into the nail, into the cuticle surrounding it, surrounding the first metacarpal. You take it out and when the baby wakes up, the baby makes a disgusting sound trying to spit it out. Grandma comes in and says “Suck it. Suck it.” When you ask grandma what she did, she replies ‘I fixed it, first thumbs, then dicks.’” At this point, the fans are screaming with laughter! It doesn’t get better than that at any comedy show.
He reminisced about his childhood when his parent asked,
“What do you want? You want a bike or do you want the helmet? Our heads were the helmet. Mother nature gives our f**kin’ helmets. We’d ride a bike, no shirt, no socks, no shoes, no helmet, no seat. You’d forget and sit down. Hiii. . . . .You go too far back, you’d hit your head on the sidewalk.” Lopez was firing on all cylinders for the entire set.
Once again with this show, the laughter was nonstop. Lopez is known to be irreverent, nasty, and bold, but, above all, very, very funny.
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