Luis Antonio Rivera
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Luis Antonio Rivera a.k.a. "Yoyo Boing" (born April 9, 1930 in Humacao, Puerto Rico) is a comedian who was also one of the pioneers of Puerto Rican television.
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[edit] Early years
Yoyo's parents moved to Santurce, a section of San Juan, from Humacao when he was only three years old. After receiving his primary education, Yoyo attended the "Escuela Superior Central de Santurce" (Central High School of Santurce). He found a part-time job at a local radio station which opened the doors to a new world for him.
Rivera became a member of the Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico. As a drama student, he participated in two of Rene Marques' plays. Having a deep baritone voice he also became a radio presenter. His radio station dramatized comedy sketches, and one of the producers suggested dramatizing Archie comics over the radio. Due to the lack of audiovisual references for the characters at the time, there were no clear cut ways of representing the characters in Spanish, nor there were exact translations for their names. Rivera came up with the name of Yoyo Boing for representing Jughead; the name "Yoyo" sounded close to "Jughead," and the "Boing" part was a gimmick Rivera developed for the character: a vocalized "boing" that he constantly repeated to fill in silence gaps during each episode. Ever since his Archie stint on Puerto Rican radio, Puerto Ricans rarely refer to Rivera using his real name, and usually refer to him by his by-now "nickname".
[edit] Pioneer in Puerto Rican television
1954 was the year that television "arrived" in Puerto Rico. Yoyo Boing, together with the likes of Tommy Muñiz, Jose Miguel Agrelot and Paquito Cordero was one of the first comics in Puerto Rican television. In 1960, he participated in the TV program called "La Críada Malcríada" (The Nasty Maid).
In the 1970's, Yoyo starred in own show called "Mi Hippie Me Encanta" (I'm Crazy about My Hippie) transmitted in Channel 2. In the 1980's, Yoyo starred in the show "Los Suegros" (The In-Laws) and later in a spin-off of that show called "Los Suegros y Los Nietos" (The In-Laws and the Grandchildren). Yoyo was also the General Manager of radio stations WKVM-AM ("AM 81") and WORO-FM {"Radio Oro", or Golden Radio), the radio branches of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan.
[edit] Later years
In the 1990's, Yoyo wrote a book titled "A Reir Con Yoyo" (Let's Laugh with Yoyo) and donated all of the proceeds to an AIDS organization. He was also active in a television show called "Desde Mi Pueblo" ("From My Town") for WIPR-TV (San Juan's channel 6), where he would visit every town and city and show all of the interesting aspects of the featured place. His co-hosts on the program were Deborah Carthy-Deu and Tony Croatto.
After José Miguel Agrelot's sudden death in 2004, the remaining co-hosts on Agrelot's long-running radio show "Tu Alegre Despertar", Aurora Previdi and María Falcón, asked the program's audience to select a permanent replacement for Agrelot from a round of temporary co-hosts. Rivera won the assignment; given the wishes of Agrelot's family to achieve some closure, the program changed its name to "Contigo en el tapón" ("Along With You In The Traffic Jam") and changed its format slightly. Rivera remains as a popular co-host, filling Agrelot's considerably large shoes. He also hosts a daily program of Puerto Rican music classics at WIPR-FM.
Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi wrote a performance novel using the Yoyo Boing nickname as a title with some punctuation added: "Yo-Yo, Boing!". Besides featuring a tinted photo of Rivera with overimposed X-ray specs for the inner sleeve of the book's jacket (later removed), the novel has nothing to do with Rivera.
[edit] Currently
Yoyo is currently retired from television but, at times makes special appearances. He was the protagonist of the locally produced movie for television "Santa Clos es Boricua" (Santa Claus is Puerto Rican), a Puerto Rican version of the Charles Dickens novel Christmas Carol, which was telecast in Puerto Rico and the United States through WAPA-TV on December 20, 2004.
