Give A Little Bit

Give A Little Bit                                                     3696

Tuesday, February 28, 2006-1:27 A.M.

I spent the day today nurturing my loved ones.  That's not something you can say everyday, huh?

Starting off, let me recap the weekend at Connxtions in Lansing, Michigan.  It was two great shows to end a fine week at the club, with headliner "Chili" Challis.  Both shows had solid attendance, and even though the first show was a better "book" set, the second show was more alive, with more crowd interaction.  I nailed a heckler's coffin shut, and it was the easiest slam I ever put on a guy...he practically handed it to me.  His initial comment was something about me needing a woman, and I told him that if he kept flapping his lips, I was gonna use him like one.  It brought down the mostly redneck house.  I know that some bookers and clubs don't like it when you go into the audience, but I was pulled into the pool, and they were either gonna fish him or me out of the filter the next morning, and it damn sure wasn't gonna be me.  I'm not much for chest-beating,  but it was the perfect response, and I learned the craft from watching my good friend and mentor Mike Dambra crush wanna-be spotlight-stealers night after night.

During the second show, Lansing comic (and Funniest Cop in America) Dwayne Gill stopped in and said hello.  I know Dwayne from the NobodyLikesMe.com message boards, and it was great to meet him in person.  He and Chili and I hung out and talked shop for a little while, and then we parted ways while the staff finished up sweeping up the popcorn and counting the cash.

Back at the hotel, I dove into doing the rest of my 2005 tax prep work, as I didn't want to bring any of it home unfinished.   I got it all wrapped up and hit the rack about 3:30 A.M., and managed to get about 5 1/2 hours of sleep before packing up and hitting the road back home.  I've been fighting off a rather tenacious head cold, and I wanted to break up some of the phlegm I've been carrying around like family heirlooms, so I bought a gallon of water and started chugging it.  It helped quite a bit, butI had to stop and piss every 45 minutes, which demoralized me on long trips, because I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.  I actually stopped three times to go during my trip across Ontario, Canada, where I usually never stop.  By the third time I had to go, my urine was so clear, it looked like it didn't even have any urine in it.  I was flushed out, for sure.  By the time I got home, it was about 6:30 in the evening, and I just spent the night decompressing from the drive and hoping to get to sleep.

Today I took my good friend and comedy buddy Ray Salah in to his doctor for some tests.  They had to give him some pretty strong painkillers for the tests they were going to run on him, and it left him groggy and loopy, so I had to be there to drive him home.  It meant sitting with him for four hours, but after 17 years of friendship, it went by like nothing.  We caught some lunch after the appointment, which was especially important because Ray wasn't allowed to eat for 24 hours before the tests, so he was starving, and I hadn't eaten anything all day, and my thyroid medicine makes me particularly ravenous in my first waking hours (not that I'm not usually hungry all day long, but it was laser-focused at the end of my waiting-room ride of the couch).

After I got home, I whipped up a nice homemade seafood chowder for my lovely wife, who's been suffering with the same type of chest cold that I have for the last week.  She's also been trying to get better *and* take care of the baby, which is no mean feat; you cant' just decide you're gonna take a nap and hope you feel better when you wake up, you have to wait until the baby goes down for *her* nap, and then sleep at the same time if you can.  Consequently, even though I was pretty tired, I got to chopping the celery, potatoes and onions, and then opened cans of clams and packages of crab meat, and got the milk and butter boiling and whipped up what turned out to be a pretty magnificent first effort.  I never made clam chowder or seafood chowder before, so today was a total learning experience.  I'm pretty accomplished in the kitchen, particularly with soups, so I wasn't worried.  I also make a decent vegetarian chili  that I have to say I'm proud of...if you're rolling through Rochester, a knock on my door earns you a bowl (just call ahead, if you don't mind).

After our nice dinner, I passed around a bowl of the chowder to my mother-in-law who had just worked a 12-hour shift at the hospital, and then brought a bowl over to Ray, who I figured wasn't up to cooking for himself and would appreciate some food and company.  When I got home, I spent about three hours playing with Harmony and read every book to her, played with every musical toy, played my guitar for her, and tickled her until she screached.  I also learned that if I make the "pretend sleep snoring" noise, she emits her patented high-pitched shriek.  It was great.  All of the depression I had accumulated when I left home on Wednesday was drowned in a big pool of baby laughter.  Hooray for daddy!

Also, today I learned that I picked up an extra night of work this week, so it's actually fleshed out into a pretty decent week.  What with all the car repairs I have to get on my Toyota, the extra cash will come in handy.  Life is good, dammit!

Treat someone nice today.  The goodwill comes back, I assure you.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Love On The Air

Love On The Air                               3661

February 25, 2006-11:48 A.M.

What do you do with a bad emcee?  What makes a bad emcee?

In comedy, there's a whole lot of different ways to do the job correctly, and a whole lot more ways to screw it up.  The curse is that for every crop of new comics that springs up month after month, there's a plethora of bad comics that move up to emcee based only on their time in the business, and not for quality or ability.

I'm working with headliner "Chili" Challis at Connxtions Comedy Club in Lansing, Michigan.  It's a good club that's been in business over 20 years.  Our first show was a solid affair, with a crowd of about 150 or more.  The shame was that this boat of a club, established during the comedy boom of the 80's, easily holds 300 or more, and currently, half the room is curtained off as to lessen the visual punch of a room that is mostly empty most of the time.

Chili and I did radio Friday morning, on the "new" 97.5 with Dave and Lisa D.  If that's not a generic radio station, I don't know what is.  I offered to go with Chili, because these morning radio shows can be painful chores, with gagging and puking d.j.'s coughing up fake laughter and expecting you to spit out one-liners like a morning-prep jukebox.  Thankfully, it was anything but the case; whereas most shows give you a couple of minutes to plug the show and burn a few of your best lines, Dave and Lisa actually interviewed us like we were proven commodities, were appreciative of our time, and gave us plenty of air to plead our case for the throngs of central Michigan listeners to come out and enjoy our show.

I wound up getting back to the hotel and sleeping another couple of hours, wasted from getting up early, and also from a head cold which has gripped me and I can't shake.  I togged up and headed out looking for cold medication and lunch.  The cold medication, I found at Wal-Mart, which also gave me a chance to clear out all of the deposit empties from the back seat of my car.  I left the store with a pack of Alka-Seltzer Plus cold liqui-gels, which are not my drug of choice, but the store was sold out of the Sudafed Severe Cold Formula, which in my experience, is the fastest-acting product on the market.  I've taken three doses of the Alka-Seltzer since 3:00 yesterday afternoon, and I've only had small periods of relief from the runny nose, which is the most daunting of my symptoms because you don't want to be wiping your nose on stage (or have watery phlegm run down your lip), and the continuous blowing of my nose has left it red and raw, which isn't a good stage look at all.

For lunch, I happened on an Old Country Buffet and a Chinese Buffet right next to each other, and I opted for the Old Country, just because the sanitation at the average Chinese place is always a crap shoot, no pun intended.  I had a nice meal and then ambled my way back to to the hotel, where I got a couple of hours of sleep in before the 8:00 show.  A hot shower and clean stage clothes were just what the doctor ordered, and although I was a little dried out, causing the occassional speck of white foam to come flying out of my mouth while I was speaking on stage, it was much more desireable than the runny-nose thing.

Our regular emcee for the week isn't here, and hasn't been since Wednesday.  The replacement guy isn't an emcee.  He's got some good material, but no stage presence or ability to exploit the funny lines to their greatest potential.  It's unfortunate, because he's in the wrong position on the show; I actually think the show would be better if I opened, did all my time up front, brought him on as a guest, and then introduced Chili.  The guy would prosper, rather than draw the indifference he's been catching from the audiences so far this week.

When I came off stage, Dave, the club manager, pulled me aside and told me that the emcee was mad at me because I was getting laughs and he wasn't.  He took exception with some of my material as being uncreative, and thought he was getting a raw deal from the audience, but the plain fact of the matter is that you can't go up in the emcee role and just be angry, which he does, confront the audience, which he does, and do raw material without couching it to be acceptable by the masses, which he does.  One joke he did was a suggestion that men marry women who are orphans, because when the wife turns up missing, there's no angry parents looking for her.  That's a straight-up woman-bashing joke, and alienates half the audience right away, as well as any man in the audience with any sort of decency.  I like a sick joke, as long as it's done with a wink, and this emcee doesn't do any sort of winking.  In between shows, sitting at the "comic's table" in the back, I played dumb and made comments to our man along the lines of how tight the audience was, and how they really made us work, blah blah blah.  The last thing I wanted to do is rub his nose in it that he's not a very good comic, but ultimately, it's the club's fault for hiring the guy.  I know he's a last-minute replacement, but is he the best talent they could find?

Second show, we had about 60 people in the crowd, and our emcee fared little better with the more intimate group, and begged off from closing the show because he had to report to his day job at 7 A.M. the next morning.  I graciously offered to close the show for him and let him go after bringing the headliner on stage, because there was no value in making him stick around...I certainly didn't think his company would have been cheerful, and after making a back-stabbing remark to the club manager, I already had a a handle on his estimation of me.  I've noticed that this is starting to become an annoying trend, emcees begging off from closing the show.  In my opinion, it shows an impatience that is prevalent in the comedy business...no one wants to pay the dues, wait around, do the job as it's outlined.  Every open-micer thinks they should be a paid emcee, every emcee thinks he should be middling, every middle thinks they should be headlining, and every headliner thinks they should be playing better clubs or working for more money.  There's no honest analysis of ability and what the going rate for that ability is in today's marketplace.  I agree that everyone should aspire to better than they currently have, but why doesn't anyone think they need to work for it anymore?  It really pisses me off.

Today, I'm going to go through some receipts I brought along as part of the never-ending attempt to get my home office under control.  Pam and I have box after box of papers, receipts, flyers, magazines, catalouges, and every other piece of paper you could imagine, and it's choking off our modest living space.  Also, getting the receipts together gets us one step closer to filing our federal income tax, which I want to get done before the April 15th deadline, and with the modest amount of time I have at home, even though it's six weeks away, there's only about half that amount of time that I'm home and can actually attend to financial matters.  Consequently, I have to make as much use of my "down time" as possible, and if I'm going to be holed up in a hotel room (which conveniently has a nice desk in it to work at), then I should be able to make that work to my advantage.

I may try to make the six-hour drive home tonight after the second show, but I think with my cold-medicated state, I'd be better off doing the drive during daylight hours.  I'll make the decision later tonight, and hopefully I'll be feeling better, I'd love to get home early and have the bonus time with Pam and Harmony.  A big factor will also be how sick I am of this hotel room, and unfortunately, the AmeriHost is one of my favorite hotel chains to stay in...the amenities make it a nice place to stay, and it's hard to leave a place like that when you're used to being lodged in not-so-nice places.

If I don't check in tomorrow morning, I'll continue my blog Sunday night or Monday morning...I know you can't wait.  ;)

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Blinded By The Light

Blinded By The Light                           3638

Friday, February 24, 2006-12:10 A.M.

Comedy is my life.  I perform comedy, book comedians, teach comedy, ran comedy clubs, managed a major comedy tour, and have generally immersed myself in the business of standup comedy, and it never ceases to amaze me.

Tonight at Connxtions in Lansing, Michigan with headliner "Chili" Challis, our show was augmented by an open-mic portion.  The first comic was blind, and they didn't tell him he was going on first.  Subsequently, when the mc called his name, the motherfucker was standing with me, way the hell at the back of the room, and they had to play the whole song to get him on stage as he had to assemble his stick and make his way up to the front of the room.  Now, if you were the mc, wouldn't you tell this motherfucker, "Hey, you're first, so why not take a seat like halfway up to the stage and I'll stretch your intro to get you up before the applause dies down?"  No, they didn't tell this man any damn thing, so he's talking to me back by the bar, and all of a sudden, he flips his collapsible cane open and starts ambling his legally blind but semi-sighted ass up to the stage.  And the applause predictably dies down as they're waiting for this guy to make it, so from the back of the room, I "jump start" the applause again so he doesn't get up to dead silence.  He was funny enough, but a rookie and raw, and the other two open micers were also raw and untested, and when I hit the stage to do my shortened set, I just started firing jokes at the audience like I was the last guy in my platoon and I was surrounded by Viet Cong.  I table-danced for three old women sitting up front (and I mean, they were *bingo* old) and really just assaulted the mostly college-aged and largely detached audience.  There was a big group in the back, like maybe 80 people, who were from some fraternity and it was "fraternity date-night" or whatever little thing it was called, and they were much more involved with talking and goofing around and comparing fake I.D.'s than they were in listening to the show, so I just went gorilla on them and subdued them with my manly comedy force.

I was a little worried about my physical health last night...lately, my left leg has been going numb from my hipto my knee.  A chiropractor informed me that it's caused by excess fat around the middle (of which I have no shortage) pushing on the main artery that delivers blood to the leg, causing numbness.  Numbness I can handle, but in some cases, depending on the length of the sets I've been doing, I've had shooting pain.

I decided that I need to shed some pounds just to be able to do my basic job, which is one or two 30-minute feature sets a night.  Today, I put on the sweats, headed for the hotel excercise room, and did 35 minutes on the treadmill.  And while I was excercising and sweating away, my mind started wandering and I came up with a comedy bit that I'm pretty sure will be a sure applause break when I fire it out.  I may try it this weekend, or maybe I'll save it for open mic on Tuesday back home in Rochester, I'm not sure.

After my excercise, I showered, and then went for a long walk to a strip mall across the street from the hotel.  Most of the stores were closed, but I managed to walk for about 45 minutes, in no way as high an impact as being on the treadmill and having to keep pace (I decided to start with 3.5 miles per hour, and as I get stronger, I'll ramp that up), but still nicer than laying in bed, doing Sudoku puzzles, watching CNN and getting mad at President Bush (although I managed to do all of that stuff today, too).

I just saw a promo on TBS for a showing of Swordfish, and they showed the scene where Halle Berry is reading a book, and drops the book when Hugh Jackman comes out on the veranda, and shows her naked breasts.  Somehow, she's wearing a gold bikini top...it ruins the whole movie!  I didn't plan on writing about this, but it just flicked on the TV and I felt it needed addressing.

I have radio tomorrow to promote the weekend shows, so I'm gonna split...morning will come soon enough.  More updates as the weekend progresses.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Daughter

Daughter                                           3621

Thursday, February 22, 2006-10:15 P.M.

Reporting to you live from my little command center at the AmeriHost Inn in Lansing, Michigan, this is Ralph Tetta.  Good evening.

I'm here and in one piece after unusual circumstances.  I scheduled an overnight sleep study at the Sleep Disorder Clinic of Rochester, the second appointment in a three-visit treatment of my sleep apnea.

After my first overnight visit, in which I was monitored as I slept, it was determined that I have mild sleep apnea.  Simply put, sleep apnea means you stop breathing as you sleep, and "choke" yourself away several times during the night.  During my study, it was determined that I stopped breathing eight times in a six-hour period.  No wonder I was always waking up tired and disoriented.  I'd been choked while I slept.

Another problem was that my oxygen levels were dropping below 85%...that doesn't sound too bad, but apparently it's of some concern to doctors and people who actually paid attention in biology class.

So last night, I went back to the clinic for an overnight sleep study.  They fitted me with a small oxygen mask that fit over my nose, sending continuous air down my windpipe.  Then they glued sensors to my head, legs and chest and told me to sleep normally.  Sure, I always sleep like Neo from "The Matrix" before he swallowed the pill and got unhooked.

I woke up around 5:45 this morning, and went home to get ready for my big trip to Central Michigan.  When I got home, Pam and Harmony were up, which I was hoping against.  I didn't want to wake them, as Pam's been sick and Harmony's just a bear to get back to sleep once she wakes up.

I showered, got the glue out of my hair, packed my luggage, and got ready to get on the road.  At one point, Harmony realized where I was going, and for the first time since she was born, motioned to me not to leave.   I've been spending as much time as I can with her when I'm home, playing with her and feeding her and reading to her, as much as my patience will allow.  I hate to say it, but it's hard relating to her because I don't understand what she wants, but when I can figure out what she's getting at, I try as hard as I can to get it for her.  Yesterday we played catch for about ten minutes, which was actually more like "fetch" because she hasn't gotten the hang of catching the ball just yet.

As I was hugging her and kissing her goodbye, she reached up and said "Eat" which is Harmony talk for "Please take me to the kitchen and feed me.  I'll sit in my chair and eat my carrots, green beans, boiled eggs, cheese ravioli, cheddar cheese or whatever you want me to have, and you'll sing to me and wiggle Pinkie Bear at me and do the voice and work her like a puppet and I'll giggle and be your baby daughter forever."  And because I had the car loaded, and it was 9:00 and I had to hit the road, the answer had to be "I'm sorry, honey, but I can't do that right now," which just means "No" and is unacceptable to both of us.  The only difference is that she cried right away, and I cried about five hours into the trip, when I was tired of being in the car, and tired of being away from home, and I paid for gas at the Speedway gas station and when I took out my wallet, and the picture of my little baby daughter looked up at me and twisted my heart like a piece of Silly Putty.

My car's still a mess, but it got me through Canada and across to Michigan, and when I checked into the AmeriHost, I grabbed a two-hour nap.  I thought I slept better without all the sensors and wires, but I woke up disoriented and groggy.  I set three alarms for 6:15, and two of them went off before I could respond.  I don't know what happened to the third one, either it didn't go off, or I didn't set it right, but that's why I set three alarms...I'm not gonna dog-leg it across two countries to get to the gig, and then oversleep...it's unacceptable.

I got to the gig, where I worked again with Bert "Chili" Challis for the second time in four weeks.  We were treated to a grand total of 30 guests in the showroom, but Wednesdays and Thursdays at Connxtions aren't the "money" shows, they're basically just practice.  Still, the folks were good and I actually sold a CD to someone after the show, which I think is good, because I think everyone should hear what my show sounds like when there's actually people in the room.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to sleep in, and maybe later go out and do a little mall walking, or maybe I'll just use the excercise room here.  I think the mall's going to win out because even though I don't feel like using the car any more than I have to, I hate the drudgery of the treadmill....I brought sweat pants, so it's an option, and I'll probably make a game-time decision.

More to report tomorrow.  Sleep well.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Shakin'

Shakin'                                3576

Monday, February 20, 2006-1:01 A.M.

Wrapping up the weekend in Charleston, West Virgina.  I worked with headliner Just June...we'd worked together before, and we had a good time this weekend.  The club was full for every show, which was quite a difference from the last time I played the Comedy Zone there; it was July 4th weekend, and the place was a ghost town.

After the second show, I decided to go out and grab some late chow, which at 1 in the morning, usually means Taco Bell.  Long story short, I was trying to find a Taco Bell in a plaza about 10 miles from my hotel...I had seen it the day before, but that was during the day.  In the night, I got disoriented, went into the wrong plaza entrance and hit a divider, flattening my front driver's side tire.

My AAA membership had lapsed, and I had to renew over the phone.  They sent a driver (after I unsuccessfuly tried changing the tire myself...the lug nuts were on so tight, I had no shot of loosening them...plus, it was about 15 degrees out).

I went to a 24-hour garage, and they hooked me up with a new tire, as well as hammering out my dented rim.  It cost me $70 total, plus another $76 for the AAA renewal.  By the time all was said and done, I got back to the room at 5:20 in the morning, no Taco Bell, lighter in the wallet, tired and pissed.  Plus, I tore the heel away from my dress Oxfords running in the parking lot when the tow truck driver bypassed the Exxon station that I clearly told the AAA dispatcher I would be waiting at, and had to run the 300 yards in the cold so the tow truck driver wouldn't see that I had abandoned my lame car and split.  Oh, and at the same time, about four fire engines responded to some alarm at a Chinese buffet restaurant right near my car....for a second, I figured the bitch caught fire on me, which would have been just my luck.

The kid at the 24-hour garage did the best job he could, but my car still shook like a sonofabitch all the way home today.  I trucked home after about three hours of sleep, and I hit the road at 10:30, and rolled into my driveway right about 5:30...seven hours for what should have been an eight-hour trip. 

Tomorrow, I've got to start back at square one with my vehicle maintenance.  I currently need a new rim, a front-end alignment, a diagnostic on my "check engine" light, a new passenger side seatbelt apparatus, and I need my driver's side rear door lock loosened (the door won't open) and need the trunk lock barrel replaced (I can open it with the latch near the gas cap release, but not with the key...very inconvenient).

At 288,000 miles, I question how much work I should really invest in this vehicle, but I've had it so long and covered so much terrain in it, it really feels like an emotional loss thinking about getting another vehicle.  I suppose it will take a major failure, like the engine dropping out or an accident that demolishes the thing (and probably killing me in the process) to make me replace it.  Ah well.

This week, Lansing, Michigan awaits.  I'm working with Chili Challis for the second time in the last two months, and we have a charity show together at Gary Fields in Battle Creek in April.  I've worked with a lot of people, but never such a dense concentration of dates that arrived at random.

O.K., I gotta go talk on the phone and give President Bush something to listen to.  Have a great week

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Misty Mountain Hop

Misty Mountain Hop                  3545

Friday, February 17, 2006-3:15 A.M.

I rumbled out of the mountains of West Virginia like an avalanche!

There's nothing like four hours of mountain driving to get yourself into the head of the redneck, what he thinks, what he feels, and why he believes the things he does.

I left the hotel in Bluefield, West Virginia and found the bank pretty quick...Bluefield is kinda spread out, so it took a couple of loops around their "downtown" area (all one-way streets) but finally I found the bank, cashed my check and was (cue timpani) OUTTA THERE!

What I didn't realize is that even though my journey was only 168 miles or so, it would take a full four hours to complete.  At the bank, a foreshadowing occurred when I was walking down the block from where I parked my car to the door of the bank, and had to lean back because I was heading downhill at a 45 degree angle.  The mountains of West Virginia are steep and relentless, and rather than plow them flat, the Mountaineers decided to just build on them and have their cities sloped and at an angle.

The drive to Prestonsburg, Kentucky looked like nothing on the map, but the Rand McNally road atlas doesn't tell you that you're going to be driving on corkscrew turns straight down, plummeting like you were sent to the seventh bolgia in Dante's Inferno.  At one point, I saw gasoline for $1.99 a gallon, but I couldn't take advantage because I already filled up at $2.38 (the standard price through much of WV).  I consider it a minor bummer, but I got over it.

The weather today was almost excruciatingly hot for an Upstate New Yorker who has already let his blood thicken up.  It was 72 degrees today, or damn close to it, and I sweat like a death row inmate.  I noticed that quite a few schools had children playing outside (supervised) and I felt a little cheated, because when I was a small child in school, we never got recess, or got to leave the school building until it was time to go home, for that matter.  We had a nice playground area, but really no time to utilize it.  Nonetheless, as a new father, I get homesick when I see the children because I'm reminded of all the wonderful years of school that my daughter has in front of her.  I had a mostly good grade school and high school experience, and I'm going to try to provide that for Harmony.

Another thing I noticed is that in the tiny coal mining towns of West Virginia, the schools look new and great, and the Post Offices are little more than trailers with American flags in front of them.  I guess I feel better that it's that way and not the other way around, but it still made me wonder a little bit.  Also, I saw more commemorative train cars displayed in one day than I've seen in my whole life.  I guess that the trains were a big part of coal transportation (still are....I saw a freight yard with about 150 coal cars, all loaded and ready to go), and so every town has one train car, displayed with a plaque, and every single one of them was on a 20' lenght of train track, like if they just put it on the grass, we wouldn't know what it was.  Thanks, city fathers.

I checked in to the Holiday Inn in Prestonsburg, Kentucky sometime around 3:00 P.M.(the guy at the Holiday Inn in Bluefield said to me, "Kentucky?  Better watch yourself."  Like a guy with New York plates on his car can just slide through West Virginia without getting epithets hurled at him).  After 3 1/2 to 4 hours in the car, I'd had about enough.  The rock station in the area emanated from the town of Williamson, West Virginia, and was smack dab in the middle of my trip, so I listed to them, only they switched over from music to Rush Limbaugh between noon and 3...and it didn't even sound like direct feed...it actually sounded like the guy in the studio had another radio in there, tuned to another station that was playing the Limbaugh show, and holding a microphone up to the speaker.  At first I thought it was bad reception, but the commercials were loud and clear, and then Rush would talk and sound all scratchy and muted.

Another point I would like to make is that I also never saw so many churches in my life.  Considering that the number of houses I saw on Route 52 (Highway To Hell) was small, there were enough churches to accomodate at least triple the population.  The weirdest thing was watching a Wal-Mart store pop up out of nowhere...as I was driving, I saw the sign but not the store, and then I looked to my left and down into a ravine, and there it was....it was like the store that time forgot, like it had just risen up out of the mossy creek that ran along side the road...*very* bizarre.

It seems as though the Southern Man (moreso than any other region) is subjected to only one viewpoint, and dissenters are looked upon as "Godless" and "troublemakers," and lately, "liberals" who "hate America."  And because no one with a college education would really want to live in the rural slums and hollers and mountains, no one is there to call the Southerner on his opinions.  Why is a rock station playing Rush Limbaugh?  Because people want to hear it, and there's obviously some money being put behind the station, or they'd be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd for the umpteenth time for Billy Bob who's dedicating "Freebird" to his cousin Dicky who died when the car he was working on fell off the lift and crushed his chest.  And that's all we need, is Rush Limbaugh being fed to these folks through tinny speakers, trumpeting the conservative viewpoint and banging the drum that is causing the destruction of many of their communities.  Ask the former workers of the manufacturing centers if it's o.k. to maintain stockholder equity by holding down minimum wage and outsourcing jobs to Mexico, India and China.  Ask the families of deceased mine workers if it's o.k. to lobby for smaller government, and to put fewer regulations on mining companies in terms of worker safety.

Ah, let them hang themselves.  I guess it's o.k. to be penniless and destitute, as long as women can't get abortions on demand.  My curse is that I care about strangers, and maybe I should just worry about myself because I can't change the world.  Still, I get so aggravated, I want to go deer hunting with Dick Cheney wearing a pair of fake antlers on my head.

On a good note, I'm working with Just June this weekend, and we had worked together before, so I'm happy...not that I don't like working on the road with comics I haven't met before, but it's just easier meeting up with old friends and not having to do all that ice-breaking shit.  June and I worked in Charleston, South Carolina, and we were down there during shrimp season, and they were having a big shrimp-fest.  June is a black lady who does impressions of Moms Mabely (the old Chitlin-circuit comedian) and closes her show with a Tina Turner impersonation.  So she did the morning radio to promote the show in Charleston, SC, and the radio guys told her that they were going to be broadcasting live from the shrimp-fest, and that she should come down because they would tighten her up with all the shrimp she could eat.

11 o'clock in the morning,my phone rings in my hotel room....it's June.

"C'mon, boy, we're gonna go get some scrimps."

"June, I'm pretty tired....I think I'll pass."

"I'm driving.  Get your ass outta bed."

*giving in* "O.K., June, I'll go.  I gotta take a shower first."

"You ain't gotta wash your ass, boy, just get in the car!"

June is something else, I tell you what.  When we got there, it was piss raining and the radio guys were packing up shop, but June got them to stop doing what they were doing, namely getting all of their high-end radio broadcasting equipment out of the rain, and got them to go over to the shrimp tent and procede to hook us up with several shrimp plates.  They had fried shrimp and big peel-'n'-eat jobbers, along with coleslaw and hushpuppies and the like.  Then after that, we headed to a fisherman's wharf, and by that time the rain had broken, and June pulled a cooler out of her trunk and bought about $75 worth of fresh seafood and barked at these chunky longshoremen like they were hired hands.  June is all of about 5' 6", but her voice is on the starting bench for the Knicks.

Tonight's show wasn't as packed as I thought it'd be, the last time I was here, the lounge was jammed.  Still, it was a good crowd, and a little older than last time...no college kids to speak of, so my marriage stuff went over pretty good.  I sold a few discs after the show, made some lunch money, and they cashed my check, which will save me a few minutes tomorrow from hunting down the bank (not that that's a problem, the whole town is only five blocks long).

Charleston, West Virginia is about two hours and change to the east, so I'm going to sleep in this morning, although staying up writing weblogs until 4 AM isn't really helping matters.  I took a long nap this afternoon, so that's throwing off my sleep.  Maybe tomorrow I'll try to straighten things out.

Peace, wherever you are.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Talk

Talk                                     3528

Thursday, February 16, 2006-8:09 A.M.

Bluefield, West Virginia is trying to kill me!

In spite of that, I hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day, either spending some quality time with the love of your life, or in the absence of that, making it through the day without sucking on the business end of a shotgun...of course, if you did that, you wouldn't be reading this, so disregard if it applies to you.

I got all the maintenance done on my trusty steed, the Periwinkle Toyota Corolla with 287,000 miles on it.  At Jiffy Lube, they informed me that my front tires were filled with nitrous (the new thing in tire inflation....more costly than regular) and I was a little irked because when I bought them at Dunn Tire, they didn't mention that to me....and I do know from the signage in the store, nitrous costs about $5 extra per tire.  I don't feel cheated because I received the product I paid for, but I do feel cheated because I didn't ask for that product, and they took it upon themselves to upgrade me.  I used to swear by Dunn Tire and their service, and now I'm upset because I have to take another look at them.

Valentine's Day, my lovely wife of the last five years (eleven if you count all of our time together) accompanied me to Red Lobster for a nice dinner date.  Mama Davis volunteered to watch little Harmony Rose so we could have dinner undisturbed, which I thought was very nice of her.  We got to the restaurant about 8:00, and it was *jammed!*  They gave us a pager and told us it would be an hour and a half wait, so we went and did some light shopping, picking up some clothing for the infant (she's growing so fast, we needed some new pajamas) and some miscellaneous kitchen items.

We returned to Red Lobster in time to hear our name being called, and we were whisked to our table.  Our server was flying around like a plastic shopping bag in a windstorm (like all the other servers), and we got our order in quick-style, as to keep things efficient.  We got our bread but no plates, and I spotted a stack on a server station across the dining room.  Rather than sit and steam about it, or wait for our server to reappear, I walked over and retrieved a couple of plates for Pamela and myself.  I was dedicated to the idea of having a nice time with my wife, and we get so few opportunities that I didn't want a little inconvenience to spoil the evening.

Pamela was in rare form....she's as funny as she could be, but she really made me laugh.  There was a party of four seated a couple of tables away, and we had seen them come in...it was two young guys, either Hispanic or Italian or some cocky ethnicity, dressed in fur coats (that's right....fur coats) and their dates.  Pammey called them "Poser Mobile" ("Fees, shorty, fees!") and I about fell out of my chair.  She's getting good and vicious in her (old) middle age...I think I'm rubbing off on her.

I wound up not getting to sleep until almost 3 A.M., and I had a 7 A.M. alarm set to hit the road by 8...I have a bad habit of getting insomnia the night before a big trip.  There was extra pressure to be on time, because I was picking up fellow comic Mike Dambra to shuttle him to Buffalo where he's playing the Comix Cafe this weekend, and I didn't want to be late.  I managed to get to his house only a few minutes late (and after five years, I think he expected that).  We hit the New York State Thruway and I dropped him off at the comedy condo, and continued south.

I passed through Buffalo and Erie, PA, and then down through Pittsburgh.  I was happy as hell to make it to Morgantown, West Virginia at the northern border of the state, but my trip was only half over at that point.  The next five hours was a steady mountain drive, pushing uphill and coasting down the other side for what seemed like forever.  I got to Bluefield around 5:30, and slept the sleep of the damned.  Originally, I thought I had an 8 P.M. show, but further examination of my itinerary indicated that showtime wasn't until 9:30....a bonus of an hour and a half to sleep and rest.  I needed it.

Bluefield is a nice room....the bar is called Kelsey's in the Holiday Inn, and it's always a bonus to be performing right in the hotel you're staying in.  I used this room as a vehicle to get back to New York State from Florida in September of 2004, the time of my infamous abcess injury.  I also had the flu the last time I was here, and barely made it home alive.  Every time I've played here, I've been tired or injured, and I was hoping to break the cycle last night.

Unfortunately, even though I was rested and ready (two cups of coffee helping me along), the crowd was mostly disassociated.  I did my contractual 35 minutes, but it was clear about 15 minutes into the show that the crowd of 50 or so would rather talk at their tables than listen to anything I had to say, and even though there were a few tables that were clearly into the show and laughing, it was too difficult to overpower the group in the middle of the room that just didn't give a damn.

Headliner Brian T. Shirley, from Charleston, South Carolina, fared little better, and after the show, Laurie the lounge manager paid us and apologized up and down for the substandard audience.  Normally, I don't blame the crowd, but I pulled out every trick in the book, and got no love whatsoever.  Brian, who is a very funny comic, actually walked a table of four, which made no sense because they were one of the tables that were actually paying attention during my show.  It was surreal and weird.

Today is Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and another one-nighter in a Holiday Inn.  I had a very good show the last time I was there, and it's only a three-hour drive from Bluefield.  I'm looking forward to it, because at least I know what to expect...it's a real rabble-rousing type room...the only way I survived the last time was to pick out the drunkest guy in the room and start picking him apart.  They liked that, and while it's not my favorite type of comedy to do, I'll not die the death of a dog....not like last night.

O.K., so it's back to sleep for a couple of hours, cash my check, and then head on to the Bluegrass State and get settled in for the show.  I'll report back tomorrow, or maybe later tonight with the show report.

Stay healthy.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

 

Doctor, Doctor

Doctor, Doctor                                  3486

Monday, February 13, 2006-8:43 P.M.

Greetings from the frozen tundra of Rochester, New York....we barely escaped the Nor'easter that is currently burying or has buried a great number of the capitals of the East, with only a few inches of snow accumulating, but with great cold and significant wind chill.  It's days like these that I question the wisdom of my grandmother, who, upon arriving in this fair country from sunny Italy, landed on Ellis Island, started on her way via the New York State Thruway, and got as far as Rochester, and declared, "This is it."

I drove home from Toledo on Sunday, and didn't have any car trouble, thank you Lord.  I'm taking her in to get checked out tomorrow, and I think a trasmission power-flush may be what the doctor ordered for my precious  Toyota Corolla, now teetering over the halfway mark between 286,000 and 287,000 miles.  I'm getting an oil change tomorrow as well...I use Quaker State Synthetic oil in the car exclusively, and Jiffy Lube does the work every time, and I was rewarded for my loyalty with a $10.00 rebate check in the mail while I was away, so that's nice.  The synthetic oil really helps alleviate engine wear and I credit it with the good condition of my engine despite the high mileage.

Today was a day spent taking care of myself, which is why the car isn't getting checked out until tomorrow.  I had my three-month checkup with my personal physician, Dr. Megan Terwilliger, and while I'm not exactly the picture of health, my overall physical condition is improving.  I took my lovely wife and daughter with me, as Pamela is considering switching physicians and thought it might be nice if we both had the same doctor, plus, I've talked Dr. Terwilliger up as being very good, and Pamela met her today and liked her and felt comfortable talking to her.  Dr. Terwilliger is impressed with the condition of my feet, which based on my job (standing and driving) and propensity towards diabetes (the enemy of all feet) should mean that my peds would have a number done on them, but I'm very fastidious about my podiatric care, washing, keeping nails trimmed, checking for athlete's foot and any dermal breakdown.  I guess the first time I heard that someone lost their feet due to diabetes, it put a pretty bad scare into me, and I decided long ago that that wasn't going to happen to me.  One bad habit that I will confess to is that I usually walk around barefoot like some sort of monkey or hillbilly because I just don't like slippers, and socks make my feet sweat.

Today, we picked up lunch for Pamela's grandmother at Arby's (yes, we had a coupon) and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of roast beef sandwiches, with Pamela taking advantage of the limited time offer of the fine Arby's fish sandwiches (not being a consumer of beef or beef by-products).  Harmony brightened Great-Grandma Ciuffini's day, and we had a nice afternoon watching Harmony run around the house and pick up everything that wasn't nailed down, when she wasn't enjoying her "fwies."  I regaled Mrs. Ciuffini with my tales of the road, and made her laugh, which is the best medicine, although at 92 years of age, she wasn't willing to give up the medications that her doctor prescribed for her.....ha ha.  I'm a stitch.

This week I'm on the way to West Virginia and Kentucky, and I'm looking forward to returning to West Virgina after a hiatus of over a year.  I'd much rather work West Virginia and Tennessee than South Carolina and Alabama....I think those states are different because they actually have some light industry rather than just depending on a farm economy...the folks seem a little more enlightened, or at least less encumbered by singular viewpoints.

Now Kentucky is another case entirely....it's moonshine, hillbilly, shit-kicking time.  As soon as they hear "New York," it's bring out the bare knuckles and the brown liquor.  Last time I was there, it was a clinic in heckler-killing and crowd control....no subtelty, just bash 'em over the head.

Let the games begin.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Message of Love

Message of Love                                   3462

Sunday, February 12, 2006-2:49 A.M.

"We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars...."

They only threw out three tables at the late show tonight....that's good isn't it?

Submitted for your approval, the weekend wrap-up here in Toledo, Ohio, and my week-long engagement at Connxtions Comedy Club; Friday night was pretty tame as far as Friday nights go.  Headliner John Roy, mc Kate Brindle and I were joined by a guest spot kid, Anthony PleaseDon'tThinkIllOfMeBecauseICan'tRememberHisNameAsHeWasLargelyUnspectacular.  He did spots on both shows Friday and the late show Saturday, causing my time in all instances to be shortened.  As it were, I took a low estimation of the youngster, also that he was wantonly ripping of Dane Cook and had all the style with no punchlines to speak of.  Also, he was crowding the merchandise counter as John and I were hawking our stuff, and he had no merchandise but was merely milking the audience for some of that "I'll shake your hand because you were good, too" love.

I stayed up late Friday night and alphabetized all of the comics I brought with me, and found out that I bought a lot of stuff twice...I had a lot of duplicates, which makes me feel bad, as comics are $2.50 each and up nowadays.  I remember (yeah, I sound like my dad) when I used to buy comics back in 1974 for 20 cents, and they went up to 25 cents in 1976.  The jump to 30 cents was 1977, and by 1978, Marvel comics were up to 35 cents and DC decided to go a different route, made their comics 8 pages bigger than the competition, and jacked the price up to 50 cents.

By 1980, the madness had subsided and comics were 40 cents across the board, and then the jumped to 50 cents, 65 cents, 75 cents, and then right up to a buck.  Somewhere in the early 90's, I lost track.  Now they're up to $2.50, and as high as $4.95 in some instances.  It just doesn't seem right, but to be fair, they're not using that crappy pulp paper they used to use...it's all coated, semi-glossy paper, and the art and stories are much more mature.  They're still just comic books, though, and it seems weird to think that they've increased in price 2000% over a 30-year period...I guess I'll be bitching when postage stamps finally jump over $1.00 each...with the advent of e-mail, it's got to be coming in my lifetime (and I'm really not counting on living but another 25 years or so).

So I was up late alphabetizing comics, and I finished my little project, looked at the clock, and it was 6 A.M.!  I slept pretty soundly, and didn't get up until bout 2:30, and by the time I showered and shaved and went out foraging for food, it was 4:30.  I got sent up the street to a Chinese place (not a buffet, but good) and had a nice Hunan Beef, with an eggroll and a bowl of hot 'n' sour soup.  Also, I had the tea, which I almost never do.  Dinner (lunch?  breakfast?  It *was* the first meal of the day) was good, and I had some leftovers, which I took back to the room.

On the way back to the hotel, I saw a restaurant named "Ralphie's," and I stopped in because my father, also named Ralph, likes things with the name "Ralph" on them.  Back when the movie "King Ralph" starring John Goodman was in the theaters, he gleefully snapped up any paraphenalia pertaining to the film, in particular, the New York State Lottery instant scratch-off game tickets called "King Ralph" that were available in conjunction with the theatrical release.  So, knowing that my dad enjoys that sort of thing, and has a birthday coming up in May (he'll be 73), I went in and wanted to pick up some memorabilia from the joint, maybe a take-out menu, some matches, or something nice.  Come to find out, they had shirts with the restaurant logo!  And they were nine bucks!  I got him a nice grey T-shirt with the logo, and the nice servers who were helping me grabbed take-out menus and stuff for me, once they learned what I was up to (of course, I shared the whole story with them).  I find that people are generally very nice and want to help others, especially when you're from out of town and looking to do something nice for your elderly father.

After a quick stop back at the room to put my Chinese leftovers on ice, I went next door to the Maumee Antique Mall.  I had a nice walk, and looked at many old collectible artifacts, including comic books that apparently no one really knew the value of, because they were all priced as though they were signed by Abraham Lincoln, wrapped in gold, and came with a scoop of Beluga caviar.  I did find a couple of "Champions" comic books from the 70's for $2 each, which isn't a bad price.  Plus, I'm pretty sure I don't already have them....o.k., I'm sure about one of them, but I'd rather guess wrong and have two copies then guess wrong and have no copies...I can always give one away to Shaun.

Tonight, it started snowing, and they had been calling for the Northeast to get a good amount of the fluffy white stuff, and it brought the folks out in droves.  First show was very healthy, with only a few empty tables, and the second show was *jammed.*  First show was a typical Saturday 8 PM show, older couples, not real comedy fans but just people who wanted to see a show and decided to come out.  I gave them some of the easiest comedy I had, no real "thinker" type jokes, and they laughed heartily, bought souvenir CD's and DVD's, and I shook many hands.  It's that thrill of knowing that the audience came to be entertained and I was able to serve it up nice for them and exceed their expectations that keeps me going in this business.

In between shows, Kate and I did the pal-around thing, I brought in the zodiac book that I bought and she checked out her combination sign.  The book is called "The New Astrology" and makes up 144 different combination signs by taking your conventional zodiac sign (Aries, Taurus, Pisces, Scorpio, etc) and combining it with the Chinese zodiac sign of your birth year (Dragon, Rabbit, Horse, etc)  Needless to say, she felt that it described her to a "T."  Most people who read their description in the book are floored by how accurate it is, which is why I was so bummed about losing the book.  I loaned it to a co-worker when I was bartending at the Aja Noodle Company in Rochester, and the co-worker left the company's employ one weekend when I was on the road, and I never saw him again to get the book back.  Luckily I found a copy at at thrift store only a few blocks from the hotel, and for only $1.99.  I consider it a fortunate coincidence; I wasn't even planning on going into that store, but I made a wrong turn trying to get to Kinko's and saw the store and decided to go in to look around.  I wound up coming out with three books and a tape copy of Christopher Cross' debut album.  "Ride Like The Wind" is still one of my favorite songs, and that's just because a British heavy metal band called Saxon covered it and I have the 12" single of it.

Second show was a car sliding on black ice headed towards a man on crutches with a blind dog on a leash in one hand and an infant in the other.  It was a disaster waiting to happen.  On the way in, an early-arriving couple struck John and me up in conversation, and it was clear that they were both drunk, he of the quiet, smiling variety and she of the obnoxious, "look-at-me,-I-can't-shut-up" variety.  Amazingly, even though the young lady (o.k., she wasn't that young) tried her level best to interject her voice into my act, but everytime she started to talk from her sixth-row back seat, I started talking fast and loud and just ran over her.  And at the same time, three other tables wound up getting the elbows and knuckles from the club's bouncers because their table talk was disturbing the paying customers around them.  In the lobby, as they were buying my CD's, they all seemed like nice people, but then again, this was away from the showroom crowd, so it was a whole different circumstance.  I wound up moving a few dozen units for the week, the cheaper CD's mostly rather than the DVD's which all of last year and the year before, customers were complaining that I didn't have....Gol-dang-it!

Tomorrow's the six-hour drive home, and I'm hoping the car won't have any major problems, as I was unable to get the transmission serviced this week.  It's job one on Monday morning, and as long as I can make it home, I should be o.k.  I'm also hoping that the weather isn't too intrusive, or at the very least, that the DOT's from Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York are on point with the snowplows and salt.  Otherwise, it could be a torturous trip.  And I believe I've suffered enough.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all, my friends.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Welcome To The Working Week

Welcome To The Working Week                               3443

Friday, February 10, 2006-4:41 A.M.

It's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

For instance, today, I didn't leave my hotel room.  I had foodstuffs in the room, and cooked a variety of meals with my electric wok, kept stuff cold with a nice styrofoam cooler and ice (courtesy of the Red Roof Inn), and communicated with the world via my laptop and cell phone.  It was like I was running an actual business or something.

I sent out avails, the comedy term meaning open dates available for booking, around 8:00 this morning.  I put a call in to Joel Pace at the Comedy Zone and didn't quit calling until I got him on the phone.  I secured three weeks of work with him, and then moved on.  I got dates in Greensboro, North Carolina, Panama City, Florida, and Johnson City, Tennessee, the run where a redneck guy stuck his tongue in my ear on stage in Paducah, Kentucky.  I vowed never to go there again, but apparently that's where the money is, so I'm going.

I got a couple of e-mails back from some bookers who had ones and twos to offer, but the best score of the day came from Ken Muller from Comedy Productions in Sioux City, Iowa.  I sent him a tape a couple of years ago, but the sound was bad (my deck-to-deck VCR system wasn't duplicating the sound very well) and I never wound up connecting with him.  He's still on my list of bookers that I e-mail with avails, and he responded back with an offer to fill my remaining open week in April.  I called him right away, and he gave me the week (a decent paying week, at that) and offered me two more weeks.  I almost single-handedly booked the month of May today (I'm still short a week), and took big bites out of June and August.  By my estimation, I scored over $4000 worth of work in one morning!  Imagine if I really put my mind to this stuff on a regular basis instead of striking oil like Jed Clampett and a random shot.

The funny thing about the Muller discussion was that I sent him a copy of my DVD this week, and I couldn't tell if he was responding to my e-mail because he got it and watched it, or if he was just throwing the work at me because he heard good things from other comics who have worked with me in the field.  He threw a couple of names around which leads me to believe that there are individuals out there who are advocating on my behalf, but he wasn't sure who it was exactly, which means my policy of being nice to everyone is paying off.  I think that being funny may help a little, too.

So I spend the day in the room, working on comedy stuff, updating my AOL homepage with my newly scheduled appearance dates, doing Sudoku puzzles and just killing time until showtime.  I got to the club just a little before headliner John Roy and mc Kate Brindle, and we talked about comedy, career goals, traded stories and anecdotes from other comedians that we knew in common (Jef Brannan, if your ears are ringing, it's not the Crown, I was talking about you, brother....all from a place of love, though).  It was open mic night before the regular show, so my set got cut to 20 minutes, but I still had a good time and sold a decent amount of product after the show.  It amazes me that merchandise sales are good after short sets, I think there's an enormous amount of pressure to introduce myself and make an audience like me in such a short amount of time, and I'm really pushing this week because I want to sell enough stuff to get a transmission service done on my car (there's a Toyota dealership right up the road from the hotel) to minimize the chance of dropping my tranny on the way home on Sunday (or Saturday night, depending on the weather and how rested I feel).  If I do well with the merch on Friday night (2 shows, I think I have a pretty good chance), I can get the work done Saturday morning and breathe easy on the way home.  If not, then I'll have to white-knuckle it home.

My wife Pamela, the brains of our marriage, worked very hard and came up with a bumper-sticker design and a T-shirt design from my act that I may develop into a new merchandise item to offer after shows.  I don't even know how to test-market them, anything I've put out in the past usually sold itself and there wasn't a lot of thinking involved.  I have mixed feelings about offering a T-shirt, bumper sticker, CD and DVD after a show, which is what I would probably do; on the one hand, there are people who are predisposed to wanting a T-shirt over a CD or DVD, and vice-versa; older people generally would want the shirt over the electronic media, and in the South, I also find that the shirt is more popular as well.  Also, a bumper sticker is lower priced, and is often more attractive to folks who want a souveneir but don't want to spend a lot of money (or don't have much to begin with).  On the other hand, it seems a little bit whore-ish (it's a word, look it up) to tote the walking garage sale into the lobby of the club after your set, especially if one or both of the other comics also have merchandise...then it's just crazy.  Bottom line, I have a family to support, and I'm going to do what it takes to provide for them, and if that means toting the garage sale, well then, let the games begin...I'll find a reason to hold my head up.

O.K., I haven't been to bed yet, I think I may have overdone it with the caffeine, even though all I had was half a Diet Coke from before.  Maybe I'm still percolating with the excitement of the day, but I need to get some sleep.

I hope today is fruitful for you, gentle reader, and you get closer to your goals and dreams.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

The Breakup song

The Breakup Song                                                3426

Thursday, February 9, 2006-8:21 A.M.

Good morning from the Red Roof Inn in Maumee (Toledo), Ohio.  I'm here, a scant 370 miles from home, and lucky for it.

My best-laid mice-like plans of leaving and arriving early were sent awry courtesy of my circadian rhythm which lately hasn't allowed me to get to sleep until 4 A.M. each morning, which is inconvenient at best.  I wound up getting up a couple of hours later than planned, and hitting the road at noon, rather than 10:00 A.M. as hoped.

The gist being that for a six-hour drive (which I could shave down by speeding), leaving at 10 A.M. would allow me to roll into town at 4 P.M., time to have a nice nap, shower and a meal before the big 8 P.M. show.  Leaving at noon meant no nap, and no wiggle room for bad weather, traffic or unforseen car trouble.  I didn't anticipate any of these things, but the car trouble thing was on my mind because my AAA membership lapsed and I haven't renewed it (nothing like needing it and not having it) and my "check engine" light has been on...signs point to transmission issues, which due to the high mileage of my vehicle dictates that I need to have the system serviced by the dealer rather than my beloved Jiffy Lube, purveyors of all manner of car care and located conveniently all over the country (they said they could service it, but could not guarantee the work due to the 285,000 miles I previously drove).

So at noon, I hit the highway and sped happily through the metopoli of Buffalo, NY and Erie, PA, on my way through the I-90 corridor towards Cleveland, OH (the most boring patch that Interstate 90 offers) and I experienced a little snowfall in Buffalo, but nothing to be concerned about.  Little did I know that the horrors of lake effect snow, which denizens of the Great Lakes will understand to be hellacious, unrelenting and merciless, were about to be unleashed upon me and my battle-scarred Toyota Corolla.

I rolled into and through Cleveland around 4 P.M., and I was hoping for the best, to beat rush-hour traffic, when the snow started falling.  And when I say falling, I mean a whole winter's worth of the white stuff started coming down and even though my fully-warmed car windshield melted every fluffy Christmas flake as it hit, the cold road just allowed it to pile up, causing slick bobsled tracks with tire ruts cut into them from the vehicle before.  It wasn't long before we were slowed to 10 miles per hour, which with 90 miles to go, I calculated that my trip would take an additional nine hours, putting me in Toledo about 5 hours after showtime.  Plus I had to pee.

Thankfully, the traffic broke and by the time I entered the toll portion of the I-90 in Ohio, the roads were clear of both frozen crystallized precipitation and other travellers and their vehicles.  I shot happily down the road, my "check engine" light cheerfully twinkling back at me from my dashboard like the star of Bethlehem.

I arrived at the Red Roof and checked in without incident (always a plus, in my book...sometimes the club forgets to make the reservation, which I never understood....if you're a comedy club, and you know you have at least two comics coming in from out of town EVERY WEEK, how exactly do you just forget to make the reservations?  I'm not accusing Connxtions, my employer this week, of ever being guilty of this, but with other clubs, believe me, it's happened), and got to the business of showering and shaving and made it to the club with a few minutes to spare of their requested 7:30 P.M. arrival time.  I don't know why they insisted that I be at the club a half-hour early, but the printed itinerary threatened a docking or cancelling if that criteria was not met, so I complied.  When I arrived, the staff sort of mulled around in that listless way that I hate to see, the way that indicates that no one wanted to be in charge, and they all just wanted to go home.  I attempted to be friendly to a couple of them, and one of them was friendly back but not very talkative, and another just walked past me like I hadn't said anything at all, so I just chose a seat in the back of the club and sat quietly until showtime.

A little before 8 P.M., I decided to press my luck and ask for coffee, to get a little caffeine in my system and stave off the effects of a six-hour, bad weather drive with no afternoon nap, and when coffee wasn't available (they offered to make a fresh pot, but I didn't want them to do that on my account), I settled on a diet coke.  As I was exiting the service bar area, comedian Jimmy Hamm, a performer who had appeared in Rochester several times when I was General Manager of the club, whisked past me, and as our eyes met, a recognition sparked, even though Jimmy had changed considerably, his hair several shades darker, his clothing less conservative, and a few pounds lighter all around (I'm sure I looked different, too).  We exchanged greetings and wound up sitting down and catching up with the last couple of years, which for Jimmy included a divorce, a move from Detroit to Toledo, and a radio job.

Jimmy's jocking for KISS-FM here in Toledo, and he's the morning show host and the host of the Wednesday night comedy show at Connxtions, which drew a little bit better than the last time I was here.  We started a little late, but not terribly late, and I was asked to do 20 minutes.  I think I went over, but had no way of knowing because I forgot to look at my watch when I hit the stage.  They didn't flash the light at me, so I figured I was o.k., and after I left the stage I checked with Jimmy and everything was fine.  The set went well, and then headliner John Roy, formerly of Chicago and now living in Los Angeles, had a good show and really made me laugh with his act, which I had never seen before.  He has a good blend of laughs and message, which is something that I really respect...it's exactly what I'm aspiring to do with my show.  After the show was over, we set up our merchandise, and sales were soft, but acceptable.  We had a lot of nice comments, and before Jimmy split, we arranged for me to do a call-in on his show on Friday morning.  We're going to do a prank where I'm going to call in and say that I'm planning on breaking up with my girlfriend before Valentine's Day, and I'd plannned on doing it before Christmas, and then New Year's, and didn't want to be mean but now it's turned into this long, drawn-out thing.  The purpose of the call is to rile up the mostly female listeners of the station and get them to call in and lambaste me about my insensitivity (which of course, most women love).  I'm really looking forward to doing it, I think it's gonna be a blast.

I hit Meijers after the show and picked up some groceries, and I think I'm going to just stay in the room today.  I've got my wok and kitchen stuff, along with a cooler to keep my cold stuff, so I can do some hotel-room cooking.  I might venture out to get some copying done, I have CD's and DVD's this week, but noinsert cards, so I might get that done or just gamble that the ones I have that are completed will satisfy tonight's after-show sales.  Frankly, I can't believe I'm up this early to begin with, so depending on when I wake up from my afternoon nap (and oh, I'm getting one, believe you me), I'll decide whether or not that's a today task or a tomorrow task.  I brought along a box and a half of comic books, which represent the stuff I've purchased over the last year or so, and it all needs to be alphabetized and filed in amongst my main collection.  Several of the books I got are going to be farmed out to my wife's "nephew" Shaun, who has a birthday coming up, so I want to get those separated so the young lad doesn't get stiffed.  And Lord knows, there's nothing better than a big box of comics for your birthday when you're 15.  I'm 39, and that's what I would want.....

I think I'm going to enjoy a nice chilled can of pineapple and a look at this morning's USA today to check out the Grammy winners, seeing as I missed the show last night, and only got to see the finale, which included Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Dr. John, and some other folks I couldn't identify.  I think Bonnie Raitt was singing backup and playing guitar, but I can't be sure.  Also, I'm pretty sure the Edge from U2 was on stage.

Have a nice day, and get some rest.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Masters of War

Masters of War                                       3403

February 7, 2006-3:40 P.M.

As chronicled below, I've been in "housekeeper" mode today, doing lots of good, mindless cleaning chores, like laundry, taking out the garbage, doing up dishes, and letting my mind wander.  One of the things I like to do is listen to talk radio while I'm working, it's good background if nothing else, and also if some breaking news event happens, I won't miss it.  This technique allowed me to see the second plane crash into the World Trade Center live on television, unfortunately.  It's one of those minutes I'd trade you in a heartbeat, but I'd probably regret not seeing it....it's the JFK assassination "where were you when it happened" moment of our generation, or at least right up there with the Challenger exploding after takeoff.

So I'm listening to commentary on the White House wiretapping program, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony to that end, and my mind floats away, and I realize that the current activities of the Bush administration ring familiar, and then I make the connection; these are the events of the 1992 film "A Few God Men" starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson.

To summarize the film, Tom Cruise, Kevin Pollak and Demi Moore are Navy and Air Force attorneys assigned to the case of two Marines who are charged with inadvertently causing the death of a fellow Marine in a practice that is called a "code red;" a code red being an extracurricular disciplinary action levied upon a fellow who has fallen behind, causing difficulty or dishonor to the others in his platoon.  In this case, a rag was stuffed in the Marine's mouth and covered with duct tape, which while meant only to scare the Marine into catching up with the rest of the platoon, to stop slacking, actually caused his death.

Code Reds do not exist in the handbook of military conduct of the Marines, it is a hazing, a discipline outside of the law, deemed necessary to keep the quality of the troops up to snuff by any means.  It is also illegal, and therefore, unspoken to preserve it's effectiveness.

Currently, this storyline parallels what's happening in the Bush White House today.  J.T. Walsh's Colonel Markinson, the subordinate to Jack Nicholson's Colonel Nathan Jessup, commits suicide rather than testify to Jessup's wrong-doings.  Is it far-fetched to draw a line to the resignation of Secretary of State Colon Powell?  Powell lied on the floor of the United Nations about WMD's, and calls it the biggest regret of his life.

How about Nicholson's tirade on the stand, when asked for the truth?  "You can't handle the truth!" he wails, continuing with "Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to."

Could this very well be the thinking, the rationale of a man like Bush, who had decided that his authority is preeminent, and above question, and that his end very well justifies his means?  It's scary sometimes how life imitates art rather than the other way around.

Luckily, the film ends with Tom Cruise's Lt. Daniel Kaffee goading Jessup into admitting his breach of law on the stand.  My question is, how can we get Bush, or Cheney, or Alberto Gonazales on the stand, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, or any of the conductors of this heinous war to testify, and stoke their arrogance to the point when they will slip up and admit the horrible truths?  That we do wiretap innocent Americans, that we torture captured enemy combatants, that we went to war with a predisposition to attack, and not to "defend" our nation, that the President knew about 9/11 before it happened, and God help us, may have orchestrated those events to usher us into the Middle East, that the current price of oil is a reward to the oil companies who contributed mightily to Republican campaign funding?

The level of corruption, lies and outright swindling of the American people has reached levels that make Richard Nixon look like Dwight Eisenhower.  Where is our Tom Cruise, our Daniel Kaffee, who can look Bush in the eye and stare him down and make him admit to his grievous sins, for which the Christ to which he so ardently claims to worship will most certainly judge him with terrible wrath?

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

The Pretender

The Pretender                                                3400

February 7, 2006-11:07 A.M.

Well, it's been exactly one year since I started blogging here on AOL.  In that time, I've garnered 3400 page views.  I'm pretty impressed; in lieu of actually having a webpage (which I really have to get on the stick about), I've received a lot of attention, which I guess is good when you're in showbizness.

I woke up early this morning, my wife was up late doing crafting, and when she came to bed, she woke me up, then the baby woke up, and I had to get the baby to go back to sleep by playing "Baby Einstein" DVDs over and over.  It worked, and now everyone's sleeping but me.  I leave for Toledo tomorrow, so it's actually good that I'm up earlier than usual, I got some housework done, laundry and preparation for going away for four days.  I also got Joel Pace from the Comedy Zone to answer an instant message, but so far, no bookings out of him.  I work for them quite a bit, but I got canceled out of Jacksonville, Florida last year and never got the week replaced, and I want to go there.  I was there once, and it's a nice town.  Also, the manager of the Greensboro, North Carolina room likes my stuff and wants me to come there three or four times a year, so I'm trying to get a return date.  It's hard dealing with Comedy Zone because they're so busy all the time, you have to get them at exactly the right moment or you get told to call back about half a dozen times, and it can get to be demoralizing.  Still, I've never had any problems getting what I needed from them once I got through, so I guess it's worth the effort.

I'm an avid Air America listener, and I just found out that WKBW in Buffalo picked them up....I always have a problem when I'm leaving town because the WROC signal here in Rochester fades as I head west, and then there are no Air America stations for quite a distance....just another case for picking up sattelite radio, but until then, at least I have "terrestrial" options.

We got a bunch of snow here in Rochester yesteday, and it seemed to have all fallen in less than an hour.  They're calling it an inch of snow, but I hate that measurement system....it's predicated on melting the snow!  I want to know the actual depth of the snow, which in this case, is a few inches...it's that light, puffy "Christmas" snow that's easy to shovel and just makes everything slippery....a slight nuisance, really, unless you're an out-of-towner who doesn't know how to drive in snow.

I made some dynamite crab salad yesterday....I used that imitation crab....until yesterday, I didn't realize how "imitation" that stuff is....it contains less than 2% crab!  It's flounder with red paint!  Still, the salad was good.....I found out that the ingredient I'd been missing all this time was "Old Bay" seasoning, which is predominantly celery salt and cayenne pepper.  Still, it was great, and with some wheat mini-pitas, it made a really nice dinner.  I washed it down with diet ginger-ale, and then enjoyed an evening of doing nothing, and taking all night to do it.

O.K., I'm tired now.  Maybe I'll append this journal entry if anything exciting happens later, so keep checking back.  And thanks for reading!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Philadelphia Freedom

Philadelphia Freedom                                                           3371

Sunday, February 5, 2006-12:46 A.M.

Well, I wrapped up another Saturday night with two great shows, courtesy of my co-stars, Maria Walsh of NYC and headliner Buddy Fitzpatrick from the great state of New Jersey.  We really complimented each other, and I think the shows were some of the best I've been a part of in a long time.

Last night's one show was excellent...I sold quite a few copies of my CD and DVD, and tonight's sales really paled by comparison, but I made enough money to underwrite the gas it took to get me here and home, and didn't have to dig too deeply into the profit to eat, so that makes it a successful weekend, as far as I'm concerned.

I went out today for lunch, and there are two shopping malls directly across the street from the hotel.  One of the malls has an Old Country Buffet (a personal favorite of mine), but it literally was a 35-minute wait to get inside and get a table.  There was a line!  I never saw such a thing.  It was piss-raining, too, which made getting around a little tough.  Here in eastern Pennsylvania, you can't make a left turn *ever.*  They have these "jug handle" exits where you go off a ramp to the right, and it swings you around in a perpendicular angle to the road you were just on.  It ok once you get used to it, but when you miss a jug handle, it's a bitch because you have to drive all the way up to the next one.  I hate that.

I'm getting ready for the big 5-hour ride home, and I'm not excited about it, but it has to be done, and better later than sooner.  It's almost 1 AM, so I'll be rolling back into Rock-Town around 6 AM.  I'll sleep, and maybe later in the day, I'll watch the Super Bowl, but to be honest, I'm not too jazzed about the matchup.  Everyone down here in Philadelphia Eagles territory are actually pulling for the Steelers, which I think is gay.  If anything, pull for the Seahawks, because you don't want to throw bragging rights to the other side of the state...I was driving through Philly a few years ago, and the Eagles were kickingthe Steelers ass, and the Philly faithful were loving every minute of it.  There wasn't a car on the street, everyone was either in the stadium or at home watching the game on TV.  Don't give up on that spirit now!  If the New York Jets or Giants were in the Super Bowl, I'd root for whomever was playing them....I'm a Buffalo fan, so screw the other two teams in New York State.  As a matter of fact, the Giants don't even play in New York, they play in New Jersey, so let their team plane go down in a fireball and cook marshmallows on the embers.

Capish?

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Allentown

Allentown                                               3353

Friday, February 3, 2006-2:47 P.M.

I'm in Allentown, PA, at the Ramada Inn (actually, this is the town of Whitehall), home of the Allentown Wisecracker's comedy club.  I came in last night about 2 A.M., and did the radio station promotion this morning with Bearman and Keith on WZZO.  They were amicable guys who basically let me come in and shanghai the whole show.  I badgered every caller, questioned every guest, and somehow took over every discussion with my personal opinion.  They loved it!  Hopefully, my wit will draw some folks out to the club tonight 'n' tomorrow.

One of the best callers was a guy who chimed in about a local case of a student who was being censured because he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at his school.  The caller took the position that "...if he was my kid, I would have kicked his butt, slapped his head and put him on a mule out of town."  Bearman and I jumped on him like a Baptist on a sparerib at a church picnic...I told him that our soldiers who fought and died for our freedoms (his words) fought for the freedom to dissent, and as long as the kid sat quietly and wasn't disruptive during the Pledge, he was totally in line.  Keith was right on time with the patriotic music in the background, and this guy spun a 180 like the Dukes of Hazzard at a police roadblock.  It was fun to take some self-important bastard and rip him to ribbons for being wrong, instead of being that guy for a change.

The show's at 9:00 tonight, so I have a few hours to kill.  I'm going to try and hit the post office, do a little mall-walking and have a nice dinner.  I'm probably not going to go to the movies, although there's a theater right across the street.  Movies suck today, and that prompted me to go to the American Film Institute and look up their Top 100 films of the 20th century (yeah, I've got that kind of time) and I ranked them chronologically (yeah, I've got that kind of time, too) to see how many of them I've actually seen.  Here's the actual list:

American Film Institute’s Top 100 Films (Chronological List

1910’s

44. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)

1920’s

74. THE GOLD RUSH (1925)

90. THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)

1930’s

54. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)

76. CITY LIGHTS (1931)

87. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)

43. KING KONG (1933)

85. DUCK SOUP (1933)

35. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)

86. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)

81. MODERN TIMES (1936)

49. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)

97. BRINGING UP BABY (1938)

4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

6. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

29. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)

73. WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)

1940’s

21. THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

51. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)

58. FANTASIA (1940)

1. CITIZEN KANE (1941)

23. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

2. CASABLANCA (1942)

100. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

38. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)

11. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

37. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)

30. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)

57. THE THIRD MAN (1949)

1950’s

12. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

16. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)

17. THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

45. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

68. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)

92. A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)

10. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)

33. HIGH NOON (1952)

52. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)

69. SHANE (1953)

8. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

42. REAR WINDOW (1954)

59. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)

82. GIANT (1956)

96. THE SEARCHERS (1956)

13. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)

61. VERTIGO (1958)

14. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

40. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

72. BEN-HUR (1959)

1960’s

18. PSYCHO (1960)

93. THE APARTMENT (1960)

41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961)

5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

34. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)

67. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

26. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

91. MY FAIR LADY (1964)

39. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)

55. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)

7. THE GRADUATE (1967)

27. BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

99. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)

22. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

36. MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)

50. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)

80. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

88. EASY RIDER (1969)

1970’s

56. M*A*S*H (1970)

89. PATTON (1970)

46. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

70. THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

3. THE GODFATHER (1972)

77. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)

19. CHINATOWN (1974)

32. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)

20. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

48. JAWS (1975)

47. TAXI DRIVER (1976)

66. NETWORK (1976)

78. ROCKY (1976)

15. STAR WARS (1977)

31. ANNIE HALL (1977)

64. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

79. THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

28. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

1980’s

24. RAGING BULL (1980)

60. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

25. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)

62. TOOTSIE (1982)

53. AMADEUS (1984)

83. PLATOON (1986)

1990’s

75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)

94. GOODFELLAS (1990)

65. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

98. UNFORGIVEN (1992)

9. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)

71. FORREST GUMP (1994)

95. PULP FICTION (1994)

84. FARGO (1996)

 By my count, I've seen 48 of them, several of them courtesy of a film appreciation class I took in college (seriously, who goes to Blockbuster and asks them if they have "Birth of a Nation?"  And what Blockbuster carries it?)

By contrast, though, just flipping through the HBO schedule for last month (way to go with the update, Ramada), today's movies are schlock and dross...."Million Dollar Baby?"  "Love, Actually?"  (God, deliver me from Hugh Grant) "Ocean's Twelve," "Miss Congenialtiy 2-Armed and Fabulous?"

Hollywood today doesn't have the creative talent to produce a "Rear Window," much less an "Unforgiven" or a "Fargo."  Instead, we have "Big Momma's House 2."  Even the most recent comedy on the list, "Tootsie," was made 24 years ago, in 1982.  So basically, there hasn't been a remarkable comedy movie since then, speaks the American Film Institute.  And do they have a case?  What could your rebuttal be if you chose to disagree?  "Ghostbusters?"  "Ace Ventura Pet Detective?"

Maybe I'll just read a book.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY