Stay Clean

Stay Clean                                                        1260

Friday, July 8, 2005-10:05 P.M.

Greetings from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I'm performing with Scott Novotny from Minneapolis, Minnesota.   We started off our week at the Little River Casino in Manistee, Michigan.  It was a long ride in, and the first show was at 7:00 P.M., but I made it.  The folks were very old, but they enjoyed the show.  I even sold a couple of units of the CD and DVD, so it was a success to me.

I'm now at the B.O.B., which is an acronym for Big 'Ol Building...it's a warehouse kitty-corner from the Van Andel Arena, the hocky barn that is the home of the Grand Rapids Griffins.  Last night, we had one show, which was preceded by a slate of seven open micers, all of whom which did fine.  I did fifteen minutes, and sold more product than when I do 30 minutes.  I guess it's true, less is more.

Tonight, the show was great.  Yesterday, the audience was a lot of college-aged kids, friends of the open mic comics.  Tonight, the show was a little older, but not much.  I've been working cleaner than ususal, because the headliner is a clean comic, and the booking agent put me on notice.  No bother.  I've only had to cut a few bits that are over-the-top, and Scott has been really friendly about it.  I don't want to do my regular show, which can be really rough, because a clean headliner usually gets roped into doing a show he doesn't want to do.  There's differing opinions about this...some people say that a headliner should be able to follow a feature act regardless of what the feature does, but my time on the George Carlin tour taught me different.  George has Dennis Blair as his opening act, specifically because Dennis is clean...if Dennis were dirty, it would take the piss away from George's act, which has a tendency to delve into the scatological (sexual and excretory).

Working "clean" didn't hurt me...I already sold out of CD's...one guy bought my combo (one CD, one DVD) just as I was walking off stage.  It bodes well for the rest of the weekend.

Well, instead of talking about business, let's veer away to the world of entertainment...Scott and I saw the Fantastic Four movie today.  As a life-long comic book collector, I had to give the movie a 6 on a 10 scale.  It was fun, but deviated too much from the established comic book mythology.  I enjoyed it a lot, and actually almost cried at one point.  I identify with the Reed Richards character, because he's so smart about some things and so stupid about others.  Also, he went bankrupt and had to go looking for help from a rival.  I've been in that situation and it's not pretty.  Also, he was oblivious to the charms of a woman who really loved him.  Not to say that I am totally in that mold, but Pamela did pursue me for almost a year before I caved in and proposed.  And at that point, I thought I was single for the rest of my life.  I also related to the Ben Grimm character, especially when he sat on a barstool and it collapsed out from underneath him.  I destroyed a seat in the Nazareth College Auditorium once because I sat in it the wrong way.  Also, one time, I ripped the drink holder from it's moorings in a seat at the Cinema Theater in Rochester.  It's embarassing, humiliating, and happens once in a great while.  When you're big, you learn to live with it.

On the subject of seats, I also got my car seat replaced this week.  I have 260,000 miles on my Toyota Corolla (best car ever) and I flattened out the padding in the seat over the course of 5 years of perpetual driving.  Consequently, a metal support rod in the seat wound up rubbing on my butt and caused a welt.  The medical term is an abcess...a deep infection.  I had a lump on my left buttock that concealed an infection deep within and had to be operated on.  It was very painful (not to mention humiliating) and caused me suffering and pain for about two weeks until the incision healed.  The doctors left me open and let it heal from the inside out to prevent further infection.  I had to change gauze dressings every few hours and was on heavy pain killes and antibiotics.  So I've been sitting on a pillow for the last 32,000 miles.  I now enjoy a brand new car seat, and I'm good for another 200,000 miles or so.

Actually, kill me if I'm still doing 1,000 miles a week 5 years from now.

I'm still running for public office, but I didn't prepare any topics for today.  That doesn'tmean I'm not gonna talk about them.

DRUGS

...need to be legal and cheap.  If there's no money in them, drug dealers will quit selling them.  Then you can divert some of the money that's going into drug enforcement, and funnel it into drug rehabilitation.  It's much more efficient to help the folks who are predisposed to using drugs to quit than it is to prosecute and incarcerate them.  Maybe this is too simple, and I'm sure people will tell me if I'm wrong.  Drugs almost ruined my life, but I got out of the tailspin before it was too late, and haven't touched cocaine in more than 11 years.  I think rehabilitation was better for me than incarceration, but I could be biased.

Have a good weekend, and stay clean.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY