Predictable

Predictable                               4855  (895)

Saturday, June 24th, 2006-2:00 P.M.

Good afternoon from the Flower City, Rochester, NY!  It's the first Saturday that I've slept in my own bed since I can remember...O.K., I'm over-romanticizing it...I worked Buffalo three weeks ago, and slept in my own bed every night, but work with me here; I usually don't.  We had two excellent shows last night at the Comix Cafe here in Rochester with headliner Jamie Lissow and headliner-turned feature for the week Steve Burr and myself ably and willingly filling out the m.c. spot.  I've mc'ed that club a thousand times if I've done it once, and I eased into it like an old suit.  Instead of trying to spritz the crowd and work the room, I just did a standard "opening" set both shows, did the announcements, and brought the other two guys on stage.  I laid out mostly new material, because my attitude was that after playing my home club so much, everyone's heard my core material five times or more.  I went mostly political, and it flew pretty well, and I even sold merchandise out of the m.c. spot...pretty much unheard of for me up until this weekend.

Jamie had a college gig to do between shows, which meant Steve and I had to stretch the second show a little until he got back, which was no problem...we both have headline sets of our own, and we padded it out with no discernible problems.  Unfortunately, when Jamie hit the stage, he drew a heckler who just started making "goat" noises, and uncharacteristically, the club did nothing about it.  Now, I'm not bragging, but back in the day when I was running the place, we would have had that guy holding his bloody lip in the parking lot if he did the goat thing twice, but last night, security seemed a little...absent.  Come to find out, one guy had the night off and there was only one manager on the floor, which explained the short-handedness, but the manager was MY bouncer when I was GM!  I guess I would have expected more, but I'm not going to speculate why nothing was done.  There were actually two managers working in the club last night, and both of them know their jobs, so maybe there was some other distraction that I didn't know about.  Still, the interruption left Jamie in a bad place, where he's being sabotaged during setups, and key points in his act, and when I came back into the showroom from the lounge, he was fed up enough where he told the guy he was about to kill him.  There were another group of loud rowdies in the back giving him the business as well, and it's only Jamie's savvy and experience from working the road, clubs and colleges that kept him balanced and allowed him to still finish  strong.  Jamie's a talented comic, and I feel bad for the folks who came to the late show to see him, because they didn't get the full benefit of his performance.  Friday late shows suck most everywhere you go.

Afterwards, Steve, Jamie and I hung out in the lounge and got to talking, just like old times, and V.J. Stanley, a student of mine, came in from his show in Buffalo and hung out for a bit.  Other Rochester comedy alumni Matt Rohr and Ryan Kemp stopped in to pay their respects, as well as former showroom manager (and my right arm) Natalie Gould.  It's always nice to see people I've had close relationships with, because as Natalie pointed out to me, we used to see each other every day, and then suddenly, BAM, nothing!  The road is a bitch inasmuch as that you only get to hang around with other comics, and usually comics you've never met before, and while that can be cool, it's only a band-aid to socialization.  Thank God I'm married, or I'd be constantly re-telling my backstory; Pamela is the only person I get to see on a regular basis, and she's heard all my stories twice (or more) so she knows where I'm coming from.

Speaking of Pamela, I got yelled at last night, too.  She's a crafter, and she had a show today in Syracuse, complete with a 7:30 A.M. departure time, and she was plenty mad that I didn't come right home after the second show.  Seems that Harmony was having a "cranky" night and wasn't getting to sleep,and she was wide awake when I got home at about 3 A.M.  I got her settled, playing Maisy blocks on the computer and reading to her on our brand-new sofa-bed that we had delivered yesterday, and by 4 or 4:30, she was out for the count.

Until about 10:30...then she started crying and howling at me.  I changed her and gave her some grits and cheese and a few chocolate cookies (her favorite), and then we watched a little Charlie and Lola (British import cartoon from the Disney Channel) and she drifted right back to sleep.  We're going in a couple of hours to pick up my mother from the airport; she's flying in from Florida and staying with us for a couple of weeks, and that should be fun.  Depending on if she's tired from the flight, she may come with me to the club tonight-she hasn't seen me work in about a year, and I'm sure she'll be glad that I've replaced a lot of the smut in my act with some political material, although she and my father could give a crap about such things, whereas I'm ready to start shooting politicians left and right everytime I read the paper.

Don't get me wrong...I support the troops.  They come to my shows and buy CD's and DVD's to take over to Iraq!

Have a great weekend!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY