Meet the Mind Behind “Story Time with Joey Rinaldi”
By Matt Levy
In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. There was a feeling of joy, relief and euphoria when the final out was recorded- this was something New England had dreamt of for years. In the stands for Game two of that World Series was eight-year-old Joey Rinaldi. Sports was his life.
Fast forward ten years to the highest slopes in Mount Snow, Vermont. It’s the kid’s favorite place in the world. Rinaldi, now 18, is up there. He can’t skip a winter without getting a few weekends away on a Black Diamond. It’s one of the few things that make the high school senior feel free. He said, “Once you get to the top of the mountain there’s nothing to think about in your life. All your problems go away because the only thing there is to do is get to the bottom.”
Hit the VCR on that Red Sox fan’s life one more time and zoom to two years later and find Joey drunk, clutching an overpriced Long Island Iced Tea blissfully dancing to “Santeria” by a Sublime cover band. That’s his slice of heaven. The young Rinaldi has lived a life full of adventures and these experiences led to his eventual stand up career and sold out one-man show Story Time with Joey Rinaldi at The Kraine Theater.
Although he seems assured, the special is all about the cringeworthy moments that make us who we are. Rinaldi added, “Story Time with Joey Rinaldi gives audiences the chance to forget their own childhood traumas and focus on mine. I mean, what connects us better than collective misery? I want people to leave feeling exponentially better about their own upbringing.”
The show is 40-minutes of Rinaldi telling three of his trademark uncomfortable stories. They were about his first kiss, stalking a girl in high school and the time he accidentally booked himself to perform comedy at a drug dealing convention hosted by his apartment’s doorman. The beguiling and soul-baring one-man show won “Best Comedy” at the New York FRIGID Festival. During quarantine, It’s currently streaming on the Virtual Ithaca Comedy Festival, Virtual Pittsburgh Fringe Festival, the Virtual Scranton Fringe Festival and the Virtual Adelaide Fringe Festival and critics are calling it, “Outrageously humorous” and “Extremely funny.”
But how did the kid at Fenway who became a skier and Sublime fanatic become a 24-year-old comic obsessed with the most painful moments in life?
Let’s rewind to the beginning.
The 24-year-old Rinaldi is originally from Greenwich, Connecticut. Pre-pandemic, he lived in the Upper East Side in a two-bedroom with his brother Anthony and his girlfriend Nicole who acts as Joey’s creative consultant. They were fortunate enough to have a nice balcony with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline.
Post-pandemic, he’s back home in Greenwich. There’s no stunning view but he is with his biggest fans, his parents Rose and Ellis Rinaldi (they’re currently tied for his number one biggest supporter). They met at a law school party, and his mom is an attorney and dad runs a law firm for a private equity company. The family has five children; three boys and two girls. Joey is the fourth. Growing up, they preached that their kids could do anything he wanted, and unfortunately he listened to them and became a comic.
Joey had, what he called “an incredible childhood.” Four siblings, tons of cousins and a few very close neighborhood friends made it impossible for Joey to ever be lonely. School was difficult though. He had a speech impediment, ADHD, and Dyslexia. Despite not knowing how to read, or speak, it never phased him when kids made fun because he discovered self-deprecation. He joked, “I have my disabilities to thank for being funny.”
In fact, Rinaldi’s learning disabilities were so severe that in fourth grade he was transferred to a school for kids with learning disabilities. His life changed. For the first time, he was in a small classroom where it was easy for him to learn. In this environment, he started working twice as hard and regularly passing tests.
Still, the seeds of a future in comedy had been planted. The most important thing to young Joey was being funny for his older brothers and their friends. He would memorize lines from comedies like American Pie and Chappelle’s Show and recite it to his brothers and their friends to crack them up. Young kid saying inappropriate things ALWAYS works. He had to prove to all the older kids he was more than the younger brother. He needed them to know he was funny.
This streak continued into his teen years. He wasn’t the coolest kid in high school but he was the “funny, weird guy the cool kids hung with.” Joey played Varsity Soccer and Basketball riding the bench and telling jokes at practice. Although most of his cool friends skipped class, Rinaldi rarely did since he had that work ethic pierced into him from his early years and he worked hard to get good grades. Rinaldi summed it up saying, “I confused most of my teachers since I was the class clown, a stoner and teacher’s pet.”
You can find evidence of this in Rinaldi’s yearbook quote which was Chris Farley’s, “In the land of the skunks, he who has half a nose is king.” It’s simultaneously brilliant and very funny.
In February 2016, when Rinaldi was 20, he transferred to NYU to study creative writing and film. The second he arrived he began doing three to four open mics a week. A month later, it became three to four a day. Comedy had become his life and the transformation was complete. He convinced NYU to let him produce shows in dorm rooms and interview comedians for NYU Radio. Being naïve and having supportive classmates, he did a handful of bringer shows. They led nowhere and lost him many friends. Desperate for stage time, he interned as a doorman at Broadway Comedy Club and barked in audience from Time Square. He started doing the same at New York Comedy Club in the Lower East Side and later moved even farther south shouting, “Free comedy” on Macdougal Street for Greenwich Village Comedy Club and the Grisly Pear in the Village.
Watching Rinaldi onstage, the first thing you notice about him is he doesn’t tell many traditional setup-punchline jokes. Most of his material consists of the cringey, funny autobiographical stories his one-man show is chock full of. He purposely chooses to live and die with this unsettling, vulnerable material since everyone has painful experiences all the time, and he wants his act to be an open forum for people to fully embrace their own insecurities while relating to his. In fact, Rinaldi’s favorite story to tell is about how his bladder temporarily stopped working at 14. He loves the story so much because it has all the ingredients of a perfect story for the stage and even has a funny, cathartic ending that delights comedy club and Moth audiences alike.
He doesn’t do it all alone though. Joey has a handful of artists that he constantly works with but his go-to collaborator is his friend, musical comedian Derek Blythe AKA Soupy Garbage Juice. Joey said, “He is the funniest person I know. Unlike most comedians, he never tries to force his own material onto projects we work on. He also will shut down my ideas if they are not on par with the project. If he ever asks me to work with him, or agrees to help me with one of my projects I know it’s going to be good.”
Together, they co-host the movie trailer review podcast Trailer Trashing with Charlie Weinshank. Each episode, they pick a theme and watch three trailers based on that suggestion. After the three watch each trailer, they rate it on a scale from one to ten and then guess the Rotten Tomatoes score. Whoever guessed the Tomatometer score most accurately the most times in an episode wins the coveted Roger Ebert Award. It’s a lot like Whose Line Is It Anyways, in that Joey and his two cohosts comedically and competitively fight to win points that literally do not matter.
Although it’s a trailer reviewing podcast, Trailer Trashing is also a comedy podcast. Most of the episodes are just the three hosts riffing about the trailers like in a recent edition about “talented dog films” where the guys roasted trailers for Scooby Doo, Air Bud and Cool Dog. In later episodes they watch Nicolas Cage movies and puppet movies and everything gets torn apart.
Rinaldi’s been working on the podcast for a couple months and they finally released their first episode in early May. In the first week, the show received over 100 five-star reviews.
Also, while quarantining, Rinaldi completed his new show Joey Fights Corona. This is a 13-part Instagram web series that began with challenging COVID-19 to traditional sports like basketball, football and baseball but as the series evolved, the challenges became more unique. The last few episodes, Rinaldi challenged Corona to frisbee, ping pong, knock hockey and croquet.
The most beloved part of the series is Joey fighting the camera (played by his little sister Lorraine). Mild spoilers ahead:
In the football episode, Joey tackles Lorraine. In croquet video, Joey strips naked and yells at Lorraine for forcing him to make these videos. The fighting actually got so bad that Joey’s mom had to fill in for Lorraine during the weightlifting episode which led to a memorable on-camera apology from Joey. The series concluded with Lorraine informing Joey that playing sports doesn’t actually stop the virus. It’s sad and true but Joey’s editing abilities managed to make it a hilarious and emotional finale.
In five years, Rinaldi sees himself touring colleges and universities with a new award-winning off-Broadway comedic one-man show and having enough listeners on his podcast to pay for his gas on the road. Lucky for us, if he doesn’t fill his tank, there will surely be a great story about it to come for his next one-man show.
Before all this, you can catch Rinaldi on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. His Trailer Trashing podcast can be found on Apple Music and Spotify. You can also find Story Time with Joey Rinaldi here and Joey Vs. Corona here.
If you’re interested in checking out some of Joey’s favorite things while cooped up at home; here are some options:
TV Shows: Chappelle’s Show, Futurama, Eric Andre Show, Scrubs.
Movies: Juno, Scream, Love Actually, Pineapple Express.
Music: Jack Johnson, Todd Snider, Sublime, The Rolling Stones.
Books: Jon Ronson’s Them, Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.
Plays: Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam, Annie Baker’s Aliens, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy
