From where he’s sitting, George Lopez thinks Donald Trump spends a bit too much money on hats. “Yeah, like I’m looking at my room right now, I see a Raiders’ hat, a Dodgers’ hat, a Mickey hat (I got like five hats the last time I took my daughter to Disneyland; I spend a lot of money on hats), but I saw Trump has spent over $400,00 on hats. That’s not presidential. That sounds like a comedian. Even I think it’s ridiculous.”
But now he’s wading through America’s heartland— seeing all sorts of folks, and all sorts of hats— during the Comedy Get Down Tour. The tour, which has recently been picked up for a TV series, has been going strong for the past two years with comedians Lopez, Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, Charlie Murphy, and Eddie Griffin. The group got together to put on a show raising money for a Richard Pryor memorial statue in his hometown of Peoria, Ill. The show went so well that they decided to take it on the road, and the Comedy Get Down was born.
See Lopez bring over 40 years of stand-up comic expertise to Toledo’s Huntington Center on August 26 with the rest of the Comedy Get Down crew for an over-the top night of stand-up.
We caught up with George and spoke with him about his special performance exercises, the past and future of the tour, and a certain presidential candidate:
Is this your first time in Toledo to perform?
I performed out at the Funny Bone, where all those new shops are. On occasion, my buddy Brian Kellen and I would go on a week or two run of clubs through the area, through Cincinnati and Kentucky and Pittsburgh, and we ended up in Perrysburg. It was great, we met great people. It was like, what me and Arsenio Hall call “going into the gym”, these shows on Monday through Thursday, then you do the big shows on the weekend, to keep that fire going.
What made Toledo a destination for the tour?
Cedric and D.L. are part of the Original Kings of Comedy, and they went through Toledo before, so they knew the area. The Comedy Get Down Tour is good for me because comedians have a tendency to rely on “home games” (like, for me, larger Latino audiences) where there isn’t a lot of diversity. The tour’s been going for almost two years and now it’s leveling out to include just about everybody. It’s great because it’s a part of this resurgence of comedy; the summer tour is becoming big again, and we just want to get out to as many markets as we can.
You guys will be performing on the same stage Trump was on back in July.
Yeah, we don’t book our schedule around his, but on occasion we’ve been to places where he’s been or is going to be. And if Donald Trump wins, I want to know where all the people that are voting for him are, because we’ve been up and back around the United States, and it doesn’t sound like anyone wants to vote for him; I don’t know where they are.
It’s strange seeing people with his “Make America Great Again” hat on, it’s like a lightning rod for controversy.
I know a rather high-profile actor, that I’ve been friends with for years, who came out in support of Trump— and he’s dead to me. I’d say Mike Tyson is dead to me, but he might kick my ass, so I gotta be on watch for him. Anyone who has his hat I unfollow on social media. People on Twitter still tell me to go back to Mexico. I don’t know anyone in Mexico, so I’m not sure where I’d go first. I gotta go to the visitor’s center cuz I don’t know anyone. Hell, I remember when a vote was private, and it’s not anymore. That’s why they have the little curtain in the booth!
See George Lopez perform with the rest of the Comedy Get Down crew on Friday, August 26 at 8pm. Huntington Center, 500 Jefferson Ave. Tickets available at here.
