Spinning Wheel

Spinning Wheel                                                                     746

Monday, April 11, 2005-11:51 CST

A happy good morning to all my journal readers; Ralph Tetta reporting from my tour of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a side stop in South Jacksonville, Illinois. 

The tour started out Friday morning with a nine-hour drive through Ontario, Canada, then turning northward through Michigan.  The weather was nice the whole way, and I arrived at the Bay Mills Casino in time to take a nice nap.  I only slept about 5 hours the night before the drive, and the nine hours in the car really kicked the wind out of me.

The show was great, about 320 people in attendance, and they turned almost 50 people away by my count.  Why they don't do two shows is beyond me....they charge 5 bucks at the door, and they put tickets on sale for the following week the morning after the show....do they realize what a goldmine they have going?  I think so, but dynamics may be a problem, turning the showroom over for a second show, staffing, etc.  And I guess casinos don't really have a big problem making money, so maybe I'm solving a problem that doesn't really exist.  Story of my life.....

The one thing I would complain about the casino (and I'm gonna complain about something......) is the physical plant is a little run down.  You know what kind of sleep you're going to get when you sit down on a bed, or throw your luggage on it....my mattress had no bounce whatsoever.  I described it to my wife over the phone like this...."Honey, I'm sleeping on the Bed of A Thousand Humps!"

Saturday morning, it was off the Illinois....700 miles worth.  I got out really early, and took some nice photos of the Mackinac bridge.....the longest suspension bridge in the world.  It's just 28 feet shy of 5 miles long, and the only reason I know that is because the only radio station that was coming in well was the bridge information network....it's about a 4 minute bridge history message that runs over and over on 1620 AM or something like that.

It was about 11 hours to Illinois, and I was treated by a doe running in front of my car about 2 hours into the trip.  I totally saw her like a half mile away, and so I was in no danger, but those Bambis are my biggest fear as a road comic.  Animals usually get the worst of the exchange in a collision, but I'd rather die than wait for Triple A to come to the North Country of Michigan to tow my wrecked car to a garage.  Speaking of dead animals, I saw possibly the strangest sight ever on route 10 in Michigan.  There was a small stretch of the road going through construction, and on the left there was a row of orange cones, and on the right, a series of small indentations drilled into the road, shaped like squares, probably about 10 feet apart, and they were all ringed with hot pink flourescent paint...I guessed that they were about to dig up the road, repave, or whaterver.  Traffic was slowed down to about 30 mile an hour, so I had time to look down and spot a piece of roadkill, a dead raccoon, laying on the right side of the road, and mysteriously, he had been painted over by the construction crew....not entirely, just the small pink ring that encircled all of the drilled indentations.

Now, I'm guessing that the drilling and painting were done automatically as a driver just navigated the vehicle down the road, and either the little guy was already dead, or got in the way of the drill and got drilled AND painted in the same stroke, but it was just kind of odd seeing a raccoon with a pink face....it was like the ultimate indignity.

The Country Club in Jacksonville was great, lots of older folks in the audience, and a squeaky clean performance by yours truly.  I wound up riffing on a bit that I think I'm going to keep because it worked very well.  I won't tell you the bit here, wait for my show!  Then Sunday morning after a well-deserved night of rest (I slept until 8 AM!!!  Whooo!) it was off to Harris, Michigan.

By all rights, the trip should have taken 7 hours or so, but in fact, took almost 9.  My itinerary indicated that the show was at 7:00 PM CST, but actually, it was 7:00 PM EST, which means I arrived at the casino only 15 minutes before showtime, not an hour and fifteen like I thought.  A quick rush into stage clothing and it was off to the show.

The show wasn't bad, they usually get quite a few people out for the comedy, but the stage has a full servicebar in the pit right in front of it, and then a row of video poker machines, so the comedy customers have quite a moat in between them and the comics.  They laugh, but you can't hear them on stage.....the casino full of slot machines rings right at you, and you really have no idea if you're killing or bombing.  The upshot is that they buy you dinner in the beautiful Firelight dining room, which last night consisted of the Surf 'N' Turf, chili, shrimp cocktail, and coconut cream pie.  They really know how to treat the talent here.  A $40 dinner for free!  And then after cashing my paycheck, I lost $40 in the nickel slots.  Casinos are NOT stupid.  If they don't get you on the front end, they'll get you on the back end.  And boy, is my back end sore.  I lost 800 nickels!

Today I started out the day by soaking in the jacuzzi in my room....jacuzzi suite for the comics...it's one of the reasons I keep coming back to Chip-In's....and now I'm taking a short break at the public library in Iron Mountain to type this journal entry.  Iron Mountain is my friend Al Wixson's wife Jaime's home town.  I stopped in a Goodwill store and found a pair of blue jeans, next to new, in MY SIZE!!!!  They were $6.99, so I jumped on them.  Of course, I had no idea that because they had a pink tag, they were 50% off, so I wound up with nice new pants for $3.50.  My wife is teaching me to be a smart shopper, but she doesn't like the second-hand stores so much.  I love 'em!

So it's off to Duluth, Minnesota, for a day off, probably to do laundry, and then tomorrow night, the big show at the Tap Room.  If you're in the area, stop by.  And if you're reading me regularly, drop me a line once in a while to say hello.  I check my e-mail every chance I get.

Best Wishes from the North Coast of America!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY