That Was Yesterday

That Was Yesterday                                                      730

Thursday, April 7, 2005-1:22 P.M.

I'm very excited about my road trip this weekend...it's a long one up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with a side trip to Illinois and ending up in Duluth, Minnesota.  I lined this tour up with Summit Comedy, one of the finer booking agencies in the country, and it's mostly casinos, which means my language and topicality are going to have to be more clean and scatologically unbased (how's that for dancing around a point?).

Pamela and I managed to get our taxes done online the other night.  It's a weight off my shoulders to be able to get on the road without that hanging over my head.  I always try to take care of as much business as possible before long road trips (this weekend doesn't get me home until Wednesday....there's a Tuesday night show and a day off on Monday).  It's nice not to come home and have to hit the ground running, especially after 16 hours in the car (my estimated drive home from Duluth).  Also, with the one-year-old, my wife has enough to do and I don't like to shovel more on her plate than I have to...it wouldn't be courteous, would it?

I've been thinking about the old days, when I first started comedy back in 1988, and how I used to conduct myself.  There was a show every week, open mic night on a Wednesday, and it was like a pack of blind squirrels trying to find a nut to see some of us getting on stage and trying to be funny.  We had no sense of what writing a joke was, no sense of promoting ourselves as a talent, no business acumen whatsoever.  But to our credit, we had energy, tried new things every week (regardless of how half-baked they were), and stayed up late every night drinking cofee and eating cheeseburgers at the Peppermill and trying to think of some way to break through that invisible wall, to be taken seriously and to "make it in this business."

Today, there's no gathering, no joke-writing bull sessions, no late-night coffee, just an endless striving to find the next paying gig, get there, and get home with the money.  The quality of the shows we do are better, butthe fun is largely gone.  Art begins from the seed called love, but commerce strips that away so quickly...it's the difference between the passion of a gardener watering the begonias in the back yard, enjoying their beauty and sprucing up the place where they live, and the factory farmer, spreading fertilizer acres at a time and trying to maximize the cash value of a crop.

Case in point; my long road trip this weekend would be the perfect time to load a buddy into the car, and have somebody to pal around with all weekend, seeing the sights, having new adventures, and thousands of miles of time to talk about comedy and think up new ideas and bullshit around in general.  Instead, it's a surgical strike, a long distance drive that I'll make alone, like a mercenary, an assassin, to get there, get the job done, and get home as quickly as possible.  The blood is gone.  There is no fun, the main reason I got into comedy to begin with.  Showtime will be as fun as I allow it to be, which will probably be not much.  The "clean" shows are tight, like walking through a minefield, every joke second-guessed as far as what I can and can't say.  And where is the line of acceptability?  What's clean to me may not be clean to another person.  Is cleanliness the absence of foul language, or is it the absence of any impolite material whatsoever?  Get the money and get home, as quickly as possible.

At least I have my small family to come home to...my wife Pamela and my baby daughter, Harmony.  Their photos on my nightstand at the hotel keep me focused, the sense memory of their hugs and kisses drive me home, keeping my right foot strong on the pedal.  Other comics come home to bare apartments, a mailbox full of window envelopes and final notices, and a cold bed.  And God help me, I was one of them.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY