STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Peter Revello just hit a major career milestone, and he couldn’t have made a stronger first impression.
During an appearance this week on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” shared on YouTube, the Staten Island native brought his sharp humor to national television, earning big laughs from the crowd.
Revello has been steadily building momentum in New York City’s comedy scene — from placing second in the Devil’s Cup competition to co-producing popular shows in the East Village and Bushwick.
Fallon introduced him as a rising comic fresh off a comedy prize in Shreveport, La., and performing this Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Comedy Cellar in New York.
Diving straight into his signature sharp, straightforward wit, Revello opened with stories from a recent trip to Las Vegas, joking that you “got to be a little dumb to like Las Vegas,” describing the city as a place tailor-made for a “colors and sounds sort of person.”
His bit on losing money at the tables — “When does the addiction part kick in on this?” drew big laughs, especially when he compared gambling to drinking.
“I wouldn’t drink if there was a 50-50 chance every time I ordered a beer, I’d be handed an empty beer bottle.”
Revello kept the crowd rolling as he moved into family humor, recalling his grandmother who lived to 103.
“A tree age, not a human age,” Revello joked.
He used the joke to riff on society’s impatience with older people.
“We like the things they leave behind. Museums, secondhand stores, old houses,” said Revello. “Meanwhile, if an actual old person tries to tell you a story, you feel rage you’ve never felt before.”
The comic also poked fun at blue-collar New Yorkers and their aversion to therapy, noting that the men he grew up around treat sports talk radio as a form of emotional counseling.
“Vinny’s calling about the Yankees, but it’s not really about the Yankees,” said Revello. “He’s like, ‘Yankees doing it this year? Also, you ever get sad?”
One of the biggest laughs of the night came from a story about a couple at a bar trying to proposition Revello and his wife.
“It’s never the couple you want it to be,” joked Revello. “It’s always a Renaissance-fair-looking couple… ‘Good morrow, squire.’”
Revello closed with a bit about being broke and living in a studio apartment so small it could never be the setting for a haunted-house movie.
“It’d be over in three minutes,” he said. “That doll could be anywhere! Oh, no, it’s right there. It’s in the kitchen bathroom.”
Fallon praised Revello’s sharp, rapid-fire humor, calling the set “fantastic,’’ as the audience cheered.
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