Southern Man

Southern Man                                                    1104

Monday, June 6, 2005-10:27 A.M.

Good morning, and welcome from Lady Lake, Florida!  The sun is high in the sky, and I'm dying...I guess my blood is still thick from being in the Northeast for the month of May.

The trip to Florida was relatively uneventful, although I have lost lumbar support in my car seat due to wear and tear...the car has 255,000 miles on it, so that's to be expected, I suppose.  I picked up a lumbar cushion at Wal-Mart, and that almost did the trick; what really worked was purchasing a small blanket at a Goodwill store (love the Goodwill stores) which I rolled up and put under the pillow.  My back feels great!  For a while, I was experiencing some lower back pain that was so severe, I figured I'd have to stay in Florida because there's no way I'd be able to drive back.

The gig in Blacksburg, Virginia (home of Virginia Tech) on Wednesday was great.  I worked with a headliner I never worked with before, Miss Gayle from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  She was really nice and funny, and we had a great time.  I sold my first DVD, which was a thrill, and I got a free pizza.  I do a joke in my act about Domino's Pizza, just a one-liner, but there was a guy in the audience who, as it turns out, is the district manager for the three area Domino's Pizza stores.  He gave me a business card, which was redeemable for a free large pizza.  I ordered up a pepperoni and mushroom, and shared it around with the happy comedy show patrons in the lounge.  It was a nice perk, especially since I hadn't eaten since lunch, and my stomach was barking at me a little bit.

The next night, I worked another college town, Cookeville, Tennessee.  Tennessee is one of my favorite states to work, because it's beautiful, and the people are very friendly.  And it's not that "nice to your face, talk behind your back" kind of friendly.  I worked the Obscure Cafe with Mimi Gonzalez, an Albany, NY area comic who I heard of many times but never worked with.  We had a good show, despite low attendance, and she gave me a tag which I can't wait to use....thanks Mimi!  Check her out at www.mimigonzalez.com.

The trip down to Florida was a bit harrowing...lots of talk on the radio about hurricane season and the like.  I hit five major rain storms, all of which lasted about two minutes each.  Still, it was enough to send cars careening off the road, and send many more to the shoulders with their hazard lights on.  I, however, kept driving, because I wasn't going to let a 12-hour, 600-mile trip get any longer.  Even with the one-hour time difference between Tennessee and Florida, I got in at about 10:30 at night to my dad's house.  We've had a nice weekend together, and actually ran into my mother at a restaurant on Saturday afternoon.  She and my father are recently divorced, and they live about fifteen miles apart now.  My mother and I wound up hanging around on Saturday night and talking about the entertainment business.  She's a singer, and she wants to try and get her career off the ground, so I gave her some tips (not that I know anything) about how to get that to happen.  She has a CD that she's recorded, and while she's no Mariah Carey or Celine Dion, she makes up for that with a lot of enthusiasm.  Desire can take you a long way, sometimes longer than talent does.

I'm looking forward to getting back on stage.  Staying in a retirement community can make your blood settle in your veins, and I'm not much for settling.  I'm headed out to pay some bills, which is difficult because I can't get any money into my checking account without mailing it back home to my bank...I can either send it regular mail and sweat the three days it would take to get there, or bite down on the $14 next-day delivery that the Post Office offers.  I'm going to hunt down Cingular wireless and just pay them cash, and later in the month, I'll probably be able to do the same thing with State Farm for my car and renter's insurance.  Everything else is a problem, so I have to find a way to send money home to my wife.  It's annoying, but it's one of the necessities of working the road.

Last but not least; Newsweek was right and the government was wrong; they lied about flushing the Korna down the toilet, it happened just as Newsweek reported it.  This is a scary situation; if the press is bullied into not reporting the truth, the American people are never going to be truly "free."  I wish the Bush administration was as concerned about Democracy in this country as they were about spreading it in the Middle East.

Question authority, especially now.

Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY