Promised Land

Promised Land                                                   1066

Sunday, May 29, 2005-5:51 A.M.

Well, it's been an interesting week of shows at my home club at the Comix Cafe (www.comixcafe.com) in Rochester, NY.  The show consists of Chris Coccia (www.chriscoccia.com) from Philadelphia and Larry Schechter from the Funny Farm Comedy Club (www.funnyfarm.info) in Broadalbin, NY.  Friday's late show, a guy hopped up on stage during Chris' set, causing him to beat feet for the office.  The guy didn't do anything harmful, he was just drunk and out of line and started doing kung-fu gestures.  Friday late show is the anathema to all comics; we hate the Friday late show.  People are in a combined state of tiredness and drunkeness, which makes for a poorly behaved and inattentive audience.

Good buddies Joe Fico and Tiny Glover came out for the second show last night, and Joey did a set.  He threw some hilarious new material in there, and it great to see him do his thing.  Tiny and I caught up a bit at the bar, and I really cut loose on the second show audience, digging into the archives a little bit and doing a free-form set rather than the old polished stuff.  I think I may have been showing off for my friends a little bit, but it translated to the crowd, too.  Lots of nice comments after the show.

Instant Karma department; good friend Steve Burr (www.steveburrcomedy.com) pops out of nowhere and says to me, "Ralphus, I just got a new DVD editing program for my computer.  I'm coming down to the club and filming you Thursday night and putting it on DVD for you."  Well, that's huge for me, because it would give me a great recording with great sound to send out as a demo to prospective bookers, and I've needed a new demo for some time.  The set went o.k., but in the dubbing process, there was a few areas of skipping in the recording which render the DVD not completely unusable, but certainly not ideal.  Steve came around and taped the early show Saturday night, so we'll have another go at it.  If the tape comes out nice, I may make copies and offer it as a souvenier for sale after my shows.  We'll see how it comes out.  Anyway, that's just a good example of a real comedy buddy in Steve there, and one of the great things about this business that I love...the comraderie and sharing of resources.

Blacksburg, Virginia, and the southern tour is T-minus three days and counting.  There's so much to do before leaving, I don't think I'll get it all done.  We're having new kitchen appliances delivered this week, so details have to be hammered out, also, I still cannot access the trunk to my car.  Somewhere along the line, the key barrel froze up on me, but I could still open it via the latch release near the driver's seat.  Well, last week, the latch broke off, leaving my trunk frozen shut.  I can still get into it, per se, by putting the back seats down, but retrieving the spar tire out from under the panel would be a real bitch and a half.

One more show tonight, and it's off to the races.  Sunday night's show should be good, because nobody has to work tomorrow with the Memorial Day holiday and all, so the room should be packed.  I'm looking forward to it.  Maybe I'll reward myself by getting eight hours of sleep tonight.

Ah, who needs sleep?

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY