East Rockaway man plays it for laughs

Nearly a decade ago, East Rockaway resident Joe DeVito was earning a living as an adverting writer, working hard to keep his customers and his coworkers smiling. After growing tired of his captive audiences’ requests for him to “find fame, while they got some work done,” he decided to finally take the stage, now be able to cross performing stand-up comedy off of his bucket list.

“I worked as a writer for ten years,” DeVito said. “I spent a lot of that time trying to bring levity to my writing or my interactions with coworkers. I always had in the back of mind wanted to give stand-up a shot, and different people started telling me they thought I would be good at it, so I decided to give it a shot.”

Since then, DeVito has taken to the stage again and again, finding success at nearly every turn. In 2006, he was invited to Canada’s prestigious Just for Laughs Festival, where his performance was rated a “9.5 out of 10” by the Montreal Gazette. That appearance jump-started his career, helping to earn him a spot on the NBC prime time show “Last Comic Standing” in 2007. He advanced to the semifinal round, gaining plenty of exposure and fans along the way.

“At first when the show ended and I was eliminated, I was pretty bummed. I thought [that] since I didn’t win the show I had kind of missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime,” DeVito said. “But then as it aired and I kept seeing myself more and more, I realized that I lasted a pretty long time on the show. That was going to be a lot of airtime on a pretty popular, primetime network slot. I was hopeful that it would give me a boost.”

Since appearing on “Last Comic,” DeVito has performed on “The Late Late Show with Craig Feguson,” Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham,” been a panelist on “Chelsea Lately,” CNN’s “Headline News”, Animal Planet’s “Wild 100,” and a regular guest on the FOX News Channel’s “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld” and truTV’s “The Smoking Gun Presents…”

Last year, DeVito embarked on a new challenge, performing and recording a live performance for an album of stand-up comedy, set to be released on Jan. 13 by Rooftop Comedy Productions on iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon, Spotify and all major audio streaming services.