All Mixed Up

All Mixed Up                                                                1196

Saturday, June 25, 2005-12:24 P.M.

Good afternoon from Waycross, Georgia.  Last night's show was interesting and weird, like masturbating with a piece of raw liver.  It felt good, but I knew it was just wrong.

The room, which was in the Holiday Inn we were staying in, was all wrong for comedy.  There was a big dance floor (for the karaoke after the show), and the bartender insisted on running the big blender during Ray's set, and then not running it at all during mine.  So now you get interruptions during the guy who is setting the tone for the show, and pissed off customers during the headliner's set because they can't get their blender drinks.  Better to do either or and be consistent for the show.  Alas, the folks were clueless, and explained it away; "We thought last week was the final week of comedy for the season, but it's next month."  OK, so that's the perfect explanation on why everything is done half-ass.  I love a good rationalization, I hardly go a day without one, but that's total bullshit.

Dinner was good, though.  At least there was a comped meal involved.  A nice steak and baked potato, and the fact that I had already been paid for the performance in advance, really took the edge off.  I was so comfortable, I dropped my pants on stage.  Again, the show was good, but afterwards, it was obvious that I was just a time-killer until the karaoke patrons came in.  They couldn't wait to fill those slips out and get up and sing the same country songs they listened to in their pickup trucks with the cracked windshields on the way to the show.  Que Sera.

Tonight, the show is in Valdosta, Georgia, and experience shows that the crowd will be a little more metropolitan, even though the city hold little more than 44,000 people.  I will make the best of it, and continue to count the days until I can go home.  For those that are counting, that's late night on July 5th I will pull my car into the driveway of my home in Rochester, and get out and kiss mywife, my daughter, and the ground, and not necessarily in that order.

Today it's cool and rainy, and that's a nice break from the sweltering heat we've been having down here all month.  Thank God for the rain!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY