I Walk The Line

I Walk The Line                            6783  (2743)

Wednesday, January 31, 2007-2:45 P.M.

Well, I have one more day with my father and mother down here in Florida, and so far, things are going well, except for the fact that Dad's in pain a lot more than I would like to see.  Mom's doing a great job of tending to his needs and she's very strong and the fact that she hasn't unraveled yet is a testimony to what she's been through, from years of tending to my father's mother who lived with us for years, and then her own parents' bout of failing health which eventually became terminal.

I've been doing what I can, fetching this and that to make Dad comfortable, telling him jokes (so far I'm an amazing 20 for 20....I guess I've got him pegged pretty good after all these years) and I wish laughter was the best medicine, but apparently this morphine/ether/heroin combo they've got him on is just a little bit better.  I think comedy clubs are missing the boat selling alcohol....they ought to be selling painkillers.  Hell, even open mike would be funny then.

Yesterday, we had two nurses visit, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  The one in the morning was busting my balls about being a northerner and being used to the cold that is gripping Florida right now.  It's really only in the 30's, but that's damn brisk compared to what they're used to.  The woman identified herself as a true Floridian and I said "What are you, an orange?" and that got a little chuckle.  For the most part, no one here is actually from here....last night in Panera Bread as I (unsuccessfully) tried to check my e-mail using their wireless internet, a table of folks next to us were having a conversation and one of the guys mentioned he was from Rochester, and that got Mom's and my attention...we wound up chatting with them for a few minutes as they left the place.  Down in Florida, it's big fun when you meet someone from your neck of the woods, even though practically everyone down here is from Upstate New York, Chicago or Detroit, with smatterings of Pittsburgh and Philly thrown in for good measure.

We tried to get Dad to lay down on a bed today, and he was alright for a little while, and then the pain in his back from the tumor that's taken up residence on his spine started shouting at him, and he begged to go back to his sitting position on the couch with his heating pad.  He's been sitting there and sleeping there for the last three weeks or so, and last night I popped in a tape of "Walk The Line" for him to watch (he's always been a big Johnny Cash fan, and my lovely wife taped it for him from HBO) and he enjoyed it, but the music put him to sleep like a lullaby.  That was actually good, because he was able to get some sleep finally.  He slept somewhere between 8 and 10 hours, which is the most I've seen in the few days since I've been here.

Before I came down here, I got some great advice from folks who had gone down this road before, and they all said the same thing, which is basically enjoy my father's company, don't concentrate on saying "goodbye," just comfort him and be there for him.  Right now, I'm about to head home, I've picked up the smokes he asked for (no sense in quitting now) and I'll enjoy one more night with him before I take off tomorrow for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

I'm scheduled to come back to Florida in May and I don't know if Dad will be around then, or if he is, what state he'll be in, so I guess I'm happy that I made the trip this week.  Pam sent me pictures of Harmony and Snax The Cat who he used to take care of for me when I was on the road.  I hope he'll enjoy them (I'm sure he will) and make him smile.  I fear I'm running out of jokes, so I need all the help I can get.

Thank you all for your prayers and best wishes.  On behalf of my father, I appreciate and accept them.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Drive South

Drive South                  6744  (2704)

Sunday, January 28, 2007-1:00 AM

It's almost unfair to call what I do a "roadtrip"....usually, when I think of a roadtrip, I think of getting in a car with a specific destination in mind, and letting the good times roll in between.  When I get in the car, I pack like a hitman....I only take what I'll need, nothing more, stick to a previously determined route, stop for food and rest room breaks only when I need to gas up the car anyway, and return home as quickly as possible.  It's not really traversing the country with a gypsy soul when you can say you've been to Washington D.C. three times and never saw the Lincoln Memorial.

This week has been a little different as I head south to see my father in between two weeks of work for the Comedy Zone in Charlotte, North Carolina and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  I picked up a Wednesday night show in Clemson, South Carolina, just a couple of hours southwest of Charlotte, only to have my Thursday night canceled when the club tightened up their show schedule due to flagging attendance.

No problem, as I would just drive in early, get a hotel room for the night off, and cool my heels.  There are books and newspapers to read, malls to walk and TV to watch, killing a day should be no problem.

Heading to the show at Pitcher's at the Clemson Marina, I ran into fellow comic Ward Anderson (www.wardanderson.net) in the parking lot of the hotel, just heading out himself.  He motioned me to jump in the car, and off we went.  The gig was a small bar but the room filled up pretty quick, and rather than being college or military folk, the showroom was comprised mostly of young townies and some older redneck types.  Jack Daniels was doing a liquor promotion in the bar, and I indulged in a shot, as I am a whiskey guy to people who know me, and Ward drank about the rest of the bottle while he was on stage.  We really let loose with it, and the show was good, and afterwards, we hung out and nearly closed the bar.  I did a cold read on the bartender, which is a skill I picked up from my good friend Mike Dambra.  I pegged this chick as basically being the patient type, and the type of girl who would look past the obvious deficiencies in her beau in favor of the task of "straightening him up."  After the read, she confessed that she had just broken up with a guy after a 5-year relationship, and she had to leave because he had no drive or goals whatsoever.  This girl was working her way through school and she was in the medical field, which is very strenuous (and expensive) and I think it offended her that buddy boy was basically a couch potato.  Big fun ripping people's souls out like I'm doing a card trick.

The next day, Ward invited me to tag along with him to Greenwood, South Carolina, where he was doing a one-nighter booked by Julie at the Comedy House Theater in Columbia, South Carolina.  He offered to let me crash with him rather than coughing up money for a hotel room, which sounded like a great idea.  We got headed toward Greenwood and basically got lost about seven times due to the poorly labeled road signs in South Carolina.  We took what should have been a two-hour trip and stretched it into about 4 1/2 hours.  After a Chinese buffet dinner that wasn't bad, we headed to the club, the Sports Break tavern.  During our little drive, I got a call from Joel Pace at the Comedy Zone inviting me to come down and play basketball with the guys from the office (a favorite pastime of theirs) and I felt annointed in a strange way.  I guess they didn't know I was fat and 40...not much use on a basketball court without a mascot uniform, to be perfectly honest.

Ward was working with a comic from Columbia named Mo Dixon.  Mo was funny, and his closing bit was stripping down to thong underwear and shaking his ass to music.  The crowd went wild, and I felt a little bad that Ward had to follow that.  I mc'ed the show, and flirted around with waitresses to pass the time.  Ward didn't start clicking with the crowd until he really started getting into their ass, ripping on a group of lesbians and an Asian girl who was drunk and heckling him.  After the show, he was basking in his headliner glory and I wound up hanging around with Tyler, one of the managers of the club.  I regaled him with stories of the road and my own comedy background, and I think I may be invited to play the club sometime in the future...he like what I did during my short mc set, anyway.  He gave me three club shirts, one for my wife, daughter and myself, and then gave me a card for two comped meals which Ward and I used the next day.  I let him buy me O'Douls' until he had to get back to work, and then struck up a conversation with some folks who had seen the show who were big Phish fans.

The next day, we headed out towards Charlotte, and after a few cock-ups in the directions (which I didn't have pre-printed, because I had no idea I was going to Greenwood), we got headed in the right direction and Ward and I managed to both get speeding tickets in a little town called Whitmire, South Carolina.  We finally made it to Charlotte, and we stopped off at the Comedy Zone offices and I met Joel Pace, who I had spoken to several times in the past, worked for dozens of times, but never actually met.  He was quite busy, so we puttered around the office and I came across a stack of Chris Wiles' promo packs.  Chris is the house mc at the Greensboro, North Carolina Comedy Zone, (www.chriswiles.net) and he is a nice guy albeit with a dubious reputation in the business.  His promo packs included a copy of his DVD and a package of microwave popcorn and a box of Milk Duds, like a cute way of saying "enjoy the show."  I ate a box of Milk Duds and not only were they old, but they weren't his.  HA!  Chris is a buddy, just kidding around.  Ward and I then proceded to get lost again on the way to the Microtel due to Yahoo's crappy directions.  We made it in time to iron a couple of shirts and make the show.

The Comedy Zone in Matthews is a nice little weekend room, and I was working with Skip Martin and Grandma Lee.  Skip and I had met several months ago (he interviewed me for a local paper, I think) and I had just seen him in Fayetteville, North Carolina last month.  Grandma Lee is a legend but we'd never crossed paths.  We had a very good first show (packed house) and then second show was a little sparse and weird.  Ward did a guest spot and then almost got into a bar fight out in the lounge.  After the show, Ward, Grandma Lee and I headed out to Waffle House for some late-night eats and suffice to say they might have been serving soup, but we were the only crackers in the place, if you get my meaning.  Grandma Lee picked up the check, and I liked her even before that, but that was the cherry on top of the sundae.  She's a classy lady and a good comic, and I enjoyed chatting with her about the business.

Today, Ward and I hung out, hadlunch, talked shop and then parted company.  I got over to the Comedy Zone at Starz Tavern just a little before showtime, and the place was packed.  We had two sold-out shows, and my comedy buddies Kurt Green and Steve Caminiti stopped in to say hi, they were working a country club gig up the road.  We hung out and talked some more shop (it's what I do, people) and we took some pictures which I will try to post on my new website www.ralphtetta.com.   Keep an eye out for them.  The crowds were excellent, and I just let myself go, did my material in whatever order I felt like, riffing with the people as I saw fit, and it went great.  If ever I felt like I was truly ready to headline, that I trusted myself and my abilities, tonight was the night.

Tomorrow I head down to see my parents in Florida, it's 8 1/2 hours down there and I'm not looking forward to the drive, but I am looking forward to seeing them.  Once I get there, I have four days to basically say goodbye to my Dad, and I don't know what I'm going to say.  I'm sure the time in the car will be plenty to prepare for it, but can you really prepare for such a thing?  I don't think you can.

I'll do my best.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Those Shoes

Those Shoes                            6702 (2662)

Wednesday, January 24, 2007-6:15 P.M.

My periwinkle 4-door Toyota Corolla is no more.  I drove up to St. Paul, Minnesota from Rochester, Minnesota on Saturday and collected my personal items from the vehicle in anticipation of it being junked.  I thought I would be very emotional about it, but as my wife said, "That car didn't owe us anything."  It died at mileage 329,525, a ripe old age for any vehicle, and I'm sad to see it go, but it was time to let go and start over.

The weekend at Goonie's Comedy Club in Rochester, Minnesota, was excellent.  We had four sold out (or nearly sold out) shows to work with, and the staff was just wonderful.  After the show, Mike and I packed out our luggage and drove home overnight, trying to beat the snowstorm that was threatening the Chicago area.

I started the driving shift while Mike slept, and got us down through Wisconsin and into Illinois.  We stopped for gas outside of Rockford, and we switched so that Mike could drive and I could sleep.  I folded my glasses up and put them in my inside coat pocket, reclined the seat and went to sleep.

It had started to snow a little coming down through Madison, Wisconsin and Janesville, but by Beloit, it had started to let up.  By the time we went through Chicago, it was nearly 6 in the morning, and the roads were sloppy and unplowed and covered with slush.  The lines were invisible and truckers weaved back and forth like they were drunk, but Mike did an excellent job of navigating all of this, thanks to his time working in Western Canada for Yuk Yuk's, where I'm certain it snows all year long, especially up in the mountains.  Our plan was to switch driving after burning a tank of gas, but I offered to switch with him in Indiana as he had done more than his time at the wheel, and with horrible driving conditions as well.  I took the wheel and almost immediately got pulled over for speeding.  My bad luck had continued to become an issue.

While I just sat there as the officer took my license and rental car info (I have no registration in such an instance), I shook my head and tried to figure out why I'd been tested so much these past two weeks.  In the first stroke of luck I'd had since we left home, the officer gave me only a warning, printed on a green form that looked like a speeding ticket, and asked me to slow down and be safe as I headed east.  I went on my way and drove until we reached Ohio.  Oh, did I mention my glasses were broken?  When I fished them out of my pocket in Indiana, the right stem had separated itself from the hinge and I managed to find where it had slipped out, but could not get it to stay.  Finally, after finding my eyeglass repair kit in my shoulder bag, I got it to stay a little bit, but worried about it until I got home.  A little super glue did the trick, but it was just one more thing in this horrible, horrible tour.

During the ride home, Mike counseled me as best he could, but it was a discussion I needed to have with truths I needed to hear.  I need to make massive changes in my act, the way I do business, the way I treat others, and the way I approach my family situation.  My passivity has created a situation of stagnation, and that stagnation threatens the security of my household, particularly the raising of my beautiful little daughter.  I'm a good comic, but I've allowed myself to become a parody of Mike, who I always looked at as a blueprint for success.  The simple truth is that I'm not Mike, and audiences are giving me the fish-eye because they don't buy it coming from me.  Along with his mannerisms, I seem to have co-opted his attitude, and that's not me, it's not genuine.  I'm a good writer and a nice person, and that should be enough.  I'm not going to convince anyone that I'm a gunslingin' tough guy, a badass or a rebel...I'm a soft-hearted family man who loves his wife and daughter and wants everyone to know it, and to ditch their own negativity and enjoy life.  I know that I'm going to face rejection initially, as comedy club patrons seem to thrive on negativity, but I'll grow into this and can't be afraid anymore.

We got home and Mike dropped me off, and I had to be let into the house because we got a whole new door, complete with new deadbolt lock, and I didn't have a key yet.  Pam wasn't home, but my mother-in-law was, and she was watching Harmony.  When she opened the door, Harmony was standing just behind her but came around to look and she smiled at me when she saw me, but I swear she changed so much in the two weeks I was gone.  It was a hollow, empty feeling in my stomach that such a big part ofmy life had been eclipsed by so much misery and bad circumstance.

I went to work putting away my luggage, dropping laundry and trying to ramp back into civilian life.  I fixed my glasses, changed into clean, comfortable clothing and fell on the bed to sleep.  Pam got home a little while later, and we just took it easy while she tried to explain to me everything that I missed.

Well, two days of really nothing to report have led to this; I'm gone again, writing at the desk of a hotel room in Clemson, South Carolina.  I have a show tonight and then run up to Charlotte, North Carolina for the weekend, and then go to see my father for four days before heading back north to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  My brother and sister had gone down to see Dad, and they overlapped Tuesday night, and as I drove out of a Western New York snowstorm, I talked with them for about an hour, trying to glean any information that would make my visit more pleasant (or less painful).  I'm tied up in knots about the prospect that my father doesn't have much time left in this world, and I'm upset that it seems like a "Hollywood ending" is coming; my brother visits, then my sister, and my father's spirits perk up and his dementia subsides.  Then I visit, as I have every year for the last three years, and spend the better part of a week with him, and when I leave, the realization that no more visitors are coming sets in, and my father nods off to sleep and doesn't wake up.....and I'm the last one to have left.  It's an enormous burden that I carry that I'm convinced that everything that happens around me is my fault, and I read that once in some horoscope book and now I can't shake it.

Things are going to be different, that's all I have to say.  I'm going to spend time with my father and still plan to visit when I work in Florida in June.  I hope that he'll still be alive, but if he isn't, then it's just his time.  He's going to be 74, he's had a full life, and he doesn't owe me anything. I am going to honor him by being the man he tried to raise me to be, and instead of letting fear and uncertainty rule my life, I'm going to have a plan and work towards concrete goals rather than just be happy with whatever happens to float my way.  I'm not going to eulogize my father here, because he's not dead, but suffice to say that he was not a man who sat idly by and waited for things to happen.  He got up, took action, and made his life what he wanted it to be.  And when he retired, he continued doing that, even though it meant a life largely spent sitting in front of the television, watching movies that he taped round-the-clock with a glass of Coca-Cola at his side, taking time out to have a smoke break out on the porch.  He was his own man, and I need to learn by his example.

I'm going to enjoy my visit this week.  But tonight, I have business of my own, a show in Clemson, South Carolina, and they're getting a good one...the best I have to offer, the best ME that can possibly take the stage.

Today I'm going to start to learn how my own shoes fit.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

The End

6647  (2607)

Friday, January 19, 2007-7:00 A.M. CDT

I feel like everything's falling apart right now.

The tour has taken a turn for the worst.  Mike Dambra and I left our cozy hotel in Lakeville, Minnesota on Tuesday morning, headed north to Duluth.  The temperature that day was ridiculous, like a high of 9 degrees or something like that, and my faithful
Toyota Corolla couldn't stand it anymore.  We were tooling along I-35, thinking nothing of anything but getting to the gig, and suddenly the temperature gauge on my dashboard was into the red.  The next thing we knew, we were sitting on an off-ramp in the coldest place imaginable.  I popped the hood to look and see if there was some visible thing that I could correct, and when that didn't present itself (and I'm no auto mechanic, so why would it?), I got on the phone to AAA for a tow and rescue.  While I was doing that, Mike jumped into action and called a friend of his who works in front of a computer all day, and he rented us a car for two days.  We got towed to Burnsville Toyota, where we left my car, and they graciously shuttled us to the airport, and off we went.

During the ride, there was speculation as to what happened to the car, and all fingers pointed at my overdue oil change.  The AAA driver didn't so much believe that to be the case, based on where the smoke was coming from under my hood, and I maintained my innocence.  Regardless of the circumstance, it was an 11-year-old car with 329,000 miles giving up the ghost in sub-freezing weather.

The gig in Duluth at The Tap Room was what it usually was...lots of college kids who trickled in during the show.  I hit the stage with as much energy and positivity as I could, but I have a dead car and a dying father, and frankly, there wasn't much left in reserve to work with.  After the show, we hung around with some kids who were celebrating a buddy's birthday, and then we stared a near-fruitless search for after-hours food in Duluth, having only stopped for a Wendy's lunch earlier in the day due to our mini-version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles that we launched into by mistake.

We gathered up some Taco John's and headed back to the Voyager Lakewalk, which features the coldest guest rooms in North America.  I was in a room with two double beds and even though I had set my thermostat for 85 degrees, the temperature didn't rise above 68.  I pulled all the covers off the bed I wasn't using and put them on mine.  They managed to keep me warm until morning, when the bad news came in.  My car was officially dead, the radiator had ruptured (probably due to a combination of the bitter cold and road salt eating away at it) and when all the fluid leaked out, the engine overheated and blew.  There was no way to get the car back on the road without a new engine and radiator, and that was thousands of dollars I didn't have, nor wanted to spend on such a high-mileage vehicle.

I called Mike, and when we checked out, he sprung into action.  I had no plan, was scared, and didn't know what to do.  Mike had ripped the rental car page out of the phone book and we started calling companies and asking for rate quotes.  We had to get to Stevens Point, Wisconsin for our next gig, so I started working the cell phone and my AAA discount.  We finally got a good rate from Hertz and arranged for a car to be picked up in Minneapolis for Thursday.  The only problem was that I don't carry credit cards, and in order to reserve on my debit card, I had to have $100 over the rental price, and my current checking account balance wasn't going to cover it.

The solution was a money transfer at a Wal-Mart store.  For a fee of $11.46, you can send $200 anywhere in the country where there's another Wal-Mart.  You pay at the customer service desk, they give you a reference number, and then you call the person who will pick up the cash with the reference number, they go into a Wal-Mart and get the money.  I called my wife and told her that I would be doing such a transfer and that she needed to get the money and go put it in our checking account.  The money had to be posted by 2 P.M., or else it would qualify for the next day's business and not be available to me.

Mike and I hit the Wal-Mart in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, sent $600 to Rochester, and got back in the car headed for Stevens Point.  My wife had an hour and 20 minutes to get to the Wal-Mart, get the money, and get it deposited into our checking account by two.  The only problem was that she hadn't driven her car in a few days and it was covered with ice, and somewhere along the line, her mother got involved and convinced her that she would take her and Harmony to go run the errand in her car, which was already warmed up.

30 minutes later, I called to check on their status.  It was 10 after 2, their time, and they were just getting in the car.  They had 50 minutes to accomplish the task, and Mike and I were getting mad and frustrated, to say the least.  If Pam had just left when I first called, even though she had to warm up her car and clear the ice, she'd already have been most of the way there. 

When Pam got to the Wal-Mart, they started giving her grief about picking up the money.  Time was ticking away and the clerk was saying something about a $300 limit, and that they could do $300 in cash and $300 in a money order, which was unacceptable because the money order needed three days to clear when deposited in a checking account, much too late to be of any good.  Pam realized the desperation of our situation and called a manager, who finally got things cleared up.  Meanwhile, in our car, Mike was getting madder and madder and I was getting sick to my stomach.  I didn't want to think about being stranded 1,200 miles from home, and didn't want my wife's inability to perform what was supposed to be a simple task to be the reason.  Of course, we didn't realize that she was having customer service problems at the time, so it just seemed like she was dragging her feet, and I had no defense.  Evertime I would call her to get information that would calm Mike down, Pam would hang up on me and Mike would get madder.  I'd never been so gripped with worry and fear before in my life.

Pam finally got the money, and they were heading towards our bank.  We had 8 minutes to go, and temperatures were high.  Pam finally called with three minutes to go, clutching the deposit receipt in her hand, mission accomplished.  You couldn't have scripted a Jack Bauer moment any tighter, with Pam clipping the blue wire just seconds before the bomb went off.  She didn't call me back all day, and I didn't get the details of what happened until way later. I wanted to give her credit for handling things with the manager, but taking the extra time ate up 30 precious minutes that we really didn't have.  Thank God everything turned out alright, or there was going to be hurt feelings all around, plus I'd be on a bus right now headed back to Rochester.

The gig in Stevens Point was good, well attended and there was a girl named Tiffany who seemed to have brought the whole room.  It was her birthday and she made no bones about flitting table to table to tell people that it was, even folks that she hadn't brought.  We were pretty sure that she was going to interrupt the show and make it all about her, but she was well-behaved and that was a big plus.  They paid us by check (yet another hurdle) and we were spared with the information that we could cash them at the bank branch located in the supermarket right next to the hotel.  The next morning, we got coffee, headed over, and were treated to a $6 transaction fee for cashing the checks.  Boots kept dropping with every turn of my head.

We got out early enough that we arrived at Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport in plenty of time to return Mike's rental car and to go pick up mine.  I had never rented a car before so this was all new territory, and Mike briefed me on all the information I needed to know.  15 minutes later, we were climbing into a nice Kia Spectra with South Carolina plates.  The car is small but good, and only had 17,000 miles on it.  We drove through a small snowstorm on our way to Mankato.

Arriving at the Budget Host in Mankato, Minnesota, the fun never stopped.  We were informed at the desk that the owner of the club hadn't made reservations for us.  We called him, got his machine and left a message.  Wealso called the Funny Business Agency and got them into the act, and apparently they had better contact phone numbers than we did.  When the owner arrived at the Budget Host, things were not fine as the Hindu desk clerk chided him for bouncing a check, and told him in no uncertain terms that they would not accept his checks anymore.  This didn't seem good, so we went to lunch and gave the guy our cell phone numbers.  While at lunch, he called and told us that we were moved to Microtel, which is definitely an upgrade from the aformentioned Budget Host.  We didn't have a very good feeling about the whole "bounced check" business, but it was just par for the course for this tour from Hell.

I had a nice, fitful sleep for about an hour after lunch and then started ramping up to get ready for our show, which was scheduled for 8:30 PM.  I had good directions to the gig, and just needed to shower and possible shave, and maybe iron a shirt rather than using one of my permanent press ones that I always pack just in case there's no time to iron one.  I happened to look through the local paper to see if our showwas listed, and it was, but the start time was listed as 8:00 P.M.  So now, I'm a half hour late, and I haven't even started getting ready.  I called Mike, changed our departure time, and got ready in 15 minutes flat.

We got to the club on time, only to find out that the show was supposed to be at 8:30, but they usually push it back to 9. The owner was there, but he was leaving....not a good sign.  He told us that it would be the first show that he hadn't stuck around for, and Mike and I have been in this game long enough to know that something was up.  It's like a sort of radar, when you know damn well that the gig is going to try to get out of paying you.  Mike had overheard the owner talking to his bartender, and asking her if she could "handle it," and she said that she could, which we took to mean that she could handle the task of telling us that we weren't getting paid, or weren't getting our full amounts, or worse, that she was going to give us checks which is the worst of all, because you're getting screwed but you don't know it until 9 o'clock in the morning the next day, when the bar's closed and all the rats have retreated to their holes.  We hung out, and I played games on the touch screen machine at the bar while Mike talked to some friends that he had met on MySpace.  Our mc showed up, and we talked shop a little bit, and then the show started.

The show was good enough, for a small crowd in a new bar in a college town, and thankfully all the tables were full, except for the front row, and I hit the 30 mark quicker than I imagined I would, and got off the stage.  Mike did his thing, and one of his MySpace friends got a little rowdy and I guess she went up to the stage and laid down on it, but I missed it because I was talking to the bouncer and the bartender in the other room.  The bartender paid me my full amount, in cash, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  During the ride home, Mike told me that the bartender had said that it was a good thing that we were funny, because if we weren't, her instructions were not to pay us.  There are comics that are scheduled to perform there for the next couple of months, and some of them might run into problems.  I didn't need any more problems, I've had plenty of my own this week.

Today we run to Rochester, Minnesota, home of Goonies Comedy Club.  We have two shows tonight and two shows tomorrow, and tomorrow during the day, I have to run up to St. Paul and retrieve the last personal effects from my Toyota Corolla, the car that Pam and I called Scooby, and discuss the disposal of the car with the folks at Burnsville Toyota.  Mike and I are probably going to try to beat some of the weather that they're predicting for the weekend by leaving after the show Saturday night, so I'll also have to get some rest Saturday during the day.  It's a busy one, and I don't know how much sleep I can realistically get.  When I get home, then I have other problems to contend with, such as securing another vehicle for the upcoming road engagements I have.  Renting is fun and all, but it really isn't in the budget.

Also, I have another problem to contend with.  My father has taken a turn for the worst, and according to my mother, he's talking to people that aren't there, and asking her questions like did she let the cats out, even though we haven't had cats in 15 years or more.  His brain is setting up defense mechanisms, and we don't know how much longer he has.  My brother and sister have both made plans to get down to Florida to see him, and my plans are to use my wife's car next week to get to Charlotte, North Carolina, where my next engagement is, and then head on down to Florida to see him, and then back up to Harrisburg, PA for my next weekend of work, and then back home.  I couldn't be more stressed if you hired a guy to sit next to me and zap me with a cattle prod at random points during the day, and I can't even guess where my blood pressure is.  I'm not at all interested in seeing my father to say goodbye, because it's going to hurt tremendously, and I guess the only thing that would hurt worse is not to go because I didn't have the money.  That would be guilt I would carry to my grave, and I've got enough of that.  I spoke to my mother yesterday and she said that I shouldn't worry about it, that she would help underwrite the cost of my trip, but the source of a lot of my problems is that I've let others sustain me when I should have been concentrating on standing on my own two feet.  I'm going to be changing that soon, as I see my habits and ways have left me helpless and afraid.  Or as the Bible says:

I went by the field of the lazy man,
    And by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding;   
   Andthere it was, all overgrown with thorns;
    Its surface was covered with nettles;
    Its stone wall was broken down.   
   When I saw it, I considered it well;
    I looked on it and received instruction:
   A little sleep, a little slumber,
    A little folding of the hands to rest;
   So shall your poverty come like a prowler,
    And your need like an armed man.
   
                                 Prov 24:30-34

I can do better than what I'm doing, and my father would want better than that for me.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Power To The People

Power To The People                         6618  (2578)

Tuesday, January 16, 2007-7:45 A.M. CDT

Faithful readers of this blog have probably picked up on my tendencies; I'm good to write every few days, waiting for something eventful to happen.  Well, sometimes events make me want to go into literary hiding until I can properly do the autopsy on what happened and how.

Saturday was a pretty miserable day, as far as things with me were concerned.  Mike Dambra and I were in St. Peters, Missouri, a northern suburb of St. Louis, and had just gotten back from lunch at our favorite Chinese buffet.  Lunch kinda sucked, the sushi was made with mushy rice and was barely edible, quite a disappointment.  When I got back to the room, my sister had called me with news about my father.  We've been watching Dad since before Christmas because he hasn't been doing well, with episodes of forgetfulness bordering on dementia.  Well, a visit to his regular doctor and his oncologist have revealed that he's had a relapse with cancer, with tumors ocurring on both lungs and also on his spinal cord, which seems to be the reason that his third vertebrae is out of place.  He had been medicated for back pain, and we thought that his lapses in memory were due to the medication, but it's probably due to the unwanted visitor that has taken up residence in his central nervous system.  So now all I have to contend with is figuring out when I can get down to Florida to see him, and more urgently, how I do two funny shows with this bullshit on my mind.

Mike is a tried-and-true road warrior and comedy professional.  His advice to me was that I had to leave it out of the club.  I thought he meant not to mention it on stage, but he meant that I shouldn't discuss it at all.  Two shows later, I got into an altercation with a young lady in the lounge who used to work there.  She was inebriated, but I was very angry and physically threatening, and even though she no longer worked there, she was much beloved, and any argument about who said what to who was going to find me on the short end.  I went from being one of their favorite comics to being the guy who will "never work here again," but save for Mike going to bat for me.

The lesson was hard learned, and the drive of shame back to the hotel was difficult but necessary.  I need to learn the value of the words "walk away" and to watch my tone and be more aware of how I treat people.  I was certainly in a poor frame of mind and that didn't help, but they didn't come up with the phrase "the show must go on" for nothing.

When we returned to the hotel, the power was out thanks to the ice storm that has caused a lot of death and damage to the midwest, and we had no electricity.  I carry plenty of matches with me but no candles or flashlights, so I navigated my room as best as I could and got a decent night's sleep.  Early in the morning, around 6 or 7, the lights flipped on and then off again, giving me hope that I wouldn't have to shower in the dark, that crews were working on the electricity, but that turned out to be false hope as checkout time loomed with no power.  I showered using reflected daylight from my open curtains, packed and loaded the car.  Thankfully I had charged my cell phone and used the alarm feature to wake or I would have certainly overslept.

We drove in what I can only explain as terrible weather as we made our way northward, stopping off to eat at Golden Corral (great buffet style country cooking) and then stopped into Terrible's Mark Twain Casino.  Mike likes the nickel slots, and I'm an addict, so it was the perfect place to stretch out and waste some of our first of two days off.  We checked in, signing up for casino cards, which we couldn't enter the gaming area without.  The check-in ladies must have been wooed by our charms, because they gave us free hats and t-shirts when we were only supposed to get one or the other.  I took that to be a good sign.  Mike searched out the "Deal or No Deal" machines, and we found six back by the cage in the very back of the casino.  He sat down at an end machine, and I didn't want to "jinx" him, so I took the center of three machines directly opposite.

Well, these weren't even nickel machines, they were two cents a spin, and I don't know if you know anything about slot machines, but they have what they call "pay" lines.  When the reels spin, they show fifteen cards, three horizontal rows of five each.  Pay line one is the middle five cards in a row.  Pay line two is the upper line, and Pay line three is the lower line.  Then they start getting fancy, maybe starting at the bottom left and going diagonal to the top middle, and then diagonal down to the lower right.  Regardless, they have a choice of up to 21 Pay lines, and if you play one credit (two cents), it would cost you 42 cents a spin, with 21 possible payoff patterns, ranging from five credits (which would make you a 37 cent net loser) all the way up to the big jackpot of a little more than $1,200.  You also then have the option of playing one, two, three, five or ten credits per spin.  I chose the 15 pay line option, and was playing one, then two, then three credits each spin, then would return back to one and repeat the process.

Now, if you were lucky enough to show three suitcases on the board for any one spin, you would get to "play the game," and this being a video machine, the touch screen would go to a mini-version of the TV game show "Deal or No Deal," and you would pick a suitcase and then eliminate suitcases and then be made an offer by the banker on how many credits you would get.  Long story short, I cashed out my original $20 for just a little over $80.....a $60 profit!  And while that doesn't sound like a lot of money, I did that on a two-cent machine!  I was happy just to have not lost.

I resisted temptation for quite a while after that, choosing to watch the NFC divisional playoff game between Chicago and Seattle, and while I was pulling for Seattle to hand lunch to those Chicago chumps, the Bears pulled it out in overtime, which to me says they aren't the strong team that everyone says they are.  I got bored quick and wound up playing another machine called "Road Trip" and won another ten bucks, and then won another ten at the roulette wheel.  All in all, after tipping at the cash-out cage, I made $80 and some change.  Which was good, because two hotel rooms for our two days off wound up costing just a couple of bucks over that, so it was an expense I didn't have to absorb.  Again, my trust in God is valid as He provides me what I need.

We drove into Iowa, and battled some of the crappiest weather you're ever gonna want to see.  It was freezing rain and the roads were icy and slick, and we slogged it out to Cedar Rapids, got to the Motel 6 and called it a night.  We ate at a Chinese buffet across the way (they're everywhere!) and the food was fresh, hot and good.  My leg, which had been bothering me for several days, was feeling back to normal after the day off and subsequent short drive.  I sortedclothes, anticipating laundry day, and watched snow fall on my car, the first of the year for such a thing.

The next morning, it was cold and crappy, and about two or three inches of snow covered everything.  My car doors were frozen so we had to do the old "bucket of hot water" trick, which released the locks, which would freeze up on us again as we ate lunch.  We checked out early, and were treated to the rare pleasure of watching a hooker argue with the desk clerk about being let back into a room where her clothing and etc. was.  The "John" or "Johns," we have no way of knowing how many their were, skipped out and left her there without paying for the room.  The desk clerk said, "O.K., but this is the last time," leading Mike and I to believe that this sort of thing happens a lot.  It opened my eyes a little more to the cold, cruel world.  We drove to Cedar Falls, home of an amazing comic book shop called The Core.  I treated myself to a couple of new comics and chatted with the owner.  Then we grabbed some lunch, poured hot water on the car doors, and headed north into Minnesota, stopping at another Motel 6.  We got as lucky as you could possibly be, because there was a 24-hour laundromat right across the parking lot from the hotel, and a Subway restaurant, which meant we wouldn't have to go searching for our creature needs in an unfamiliar terrain.

As I write this, the temperature outside is -17 degrees Fahrenheit.  I have never experienced weather this cold, or for certain, don't remember it very well if I have.  I went outside at 7 to make sure my car would start, because a couple of years ago in Wisconsin, I had to call the Auto Club for a jump because my engine wouldn't turn over, and it was wicked bitter cold like this.  Thankfully, the car started right away, but the door locks are frozen into the "open" position, so we won't have to do the hot water trick to get in when we leave today.

Tonight, it's Duluth, Minnesota, home of the Tap Room, and the start of another five days on the road.  I don't know which is going to get to me first, the wicked cold, the homesickness, or the worry about my Dad.  I know that one of them is going to get me, and I have to stay strong and do my job, make people laugh, and then take whatever comfort I can after the show.  I was mean to Pam on the phone yesterday, and Mike made me call her back to apologize, which was the right thing to do, only my head is so clouded I didn't even realize I was being sharp.  I had to use the bathroom really bad, and I was concentrating on getting to a McDonald's or a gas station, and I wasn't paying attention to what I was saying, and that's not right.

I'm going back to sleep now, trying to remember what I've learned.  The initials are H-A-L-T....don't get too hungry, don't get too angry, don't get too lonely, don't get too tired, because that's when you're most susceptible to losing control.

And I'm not so much interested in that happening...I have people who need me, my wife, my daughter, my friends, and father and mother right now.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

That Smell

That Smell                                                6588  (2548)

Saturday, January 13, 2007-12:15 P.M. CDT

It is Day 5 of a 12-day tour, and I'm in a great deal of pain.  I have a muscle cramp in my left leg that my traveling partner, Mike Dambra, feels is a sciatic nerve issue.  Regardless, it hurts like a sonofabitch, and I can't even take Tylenol because my liver can't take it.  So it's stretching, massaging and gritting my teeth until this thing works itself out.

We started our big tour at 6 AM on Tuesday when I picked Mike up at his house.  Mike and I have been friends for years, and best friends since we toured together incessantly through the early 2000's.  We had both had about three hours of sleep each, and by 10 AM, I told him his parents were never married and punched him about 50 times.  The punches were of the "little brother" variety, but I'm twice his size, so I think I may have cracked his ribs.

Things got off to a rocky start as we passed through Buffalo and then down into Erie, Pennsylvania.  The sky darkened, snow began to fall, and pretty soon, the roads were absolute shit and twice the car fish-tailed and Mike began confessing his sins to God.  By the time Cleveland came around, things cleared up and we continued southward to Columbus, Ohio, moving on to Indianapolis and finally arriving in Terre Haute, not really sure what time it was because of Indiana and their happy-go-lucky attitude towards Daylight Savings Time.  It was, indeed, 4 o'clock, same as Eastern Time, and we had hours to prepare for our 8 o'clock show, which for me meant a good long nap.

The show was at a bar called the Dawg House and it was like a bout of Deja Vu for me, because Michael and I had been here before, but not performing.  There used to be another comedy night at a place called Stable's Steakhouse, and after the last time we performed there, (August 14th, 2003), we were invited by folks to come over to the Dawg House for drinks.  Well, I wasn't in a drinking mood, because that happened to be the big Great Lakes blackout, and my wife Pamela was home pregnant with our daughter, Harmony, and I couldn't get in touch with her because her cell phone ran out of charge and there was no way to charge it up.  I sat at the bar and watched CNN, hoping to get some information on what was happening, and finally Pam was able to call me from her grandmother's house a few blocks away, when she discovered that they had power over there.  During all this, Mike met a girl named Shamani (her yoga name) who taught yoga (her yoga job).  He totally fell in love with her, or at the very least, wanted to talk to her or see her again, but she never returned his e-mails.  I was hoping that she'd show up at our show on Tuesday, but not only did she decide to stay away, but a lot of people did.

We wound up doing the show for about 25 people, and they explained that it was there first time doing comedy after a one year layoff, and that school at Rose Hulman University had just gotten back into session after Winter Break, so they weren't expecting a big crowd.  I got up there and tried my best, but it felt like milking a pigeon....too much effort for not enough results.

The next day we had a short jaunt to Carbondale, Illinois, a room that I had played more than a few times before.  We got into town a little too early to check into the hotel, so we sought out a comic book shop that we knew of that was up the street between the hotel and the gig.  I splurged a little, buying about $16 worth of new comics, including an issue of the Flash that I didn't remember I had already picked up.  All the other books were really cool, but when I realized I already had the Flash book, I was more than a little upset.  It's only thee bucks, but you can't really return it and more than that, how did I not remember that I just got the damn thing less than a week ago?  I guess I was just going comic book crazy and picking things up willy-nilly.  I griped about it all the next day and Mike diagnosed me as being burnt out.

The show at Mugsy's in Carbondale was not as good as it could have been, somebody decided that they should put a six-foot service aisle in the middle of the audience horizontally, which created a comedy "moat" that cut off most of the room.  The stage itself is six feet off the ground, so the only way I could have been more detached from the audience is if I stood out in the parking lot and yelled the jokes through an air intake.  I got heckled, and I could see that it was going to be a chatty crowd, so I raced through my set, and later, Mike told me that I told the audience to go fuck themselves about four times in the first ten minutes.  Well, no wonder I didn't sell any CD's after the show.

In the car the next day, Mike gave me the lecture about doing comedy too many days in a row, too many weeks in a row, creates burnout, and that it happens to everyone.  I felt a little bad about it, but a little better that it wasn't just me.  The diagnoses of burnout requires the prescription of figuring out how to keep it fun and fresh, whether it's changing up your act or figuring out better ways to kill time during the day.  I thought I had a pretty good system going, and I probably did because it took me five years to get to this point.

I had left my phone charger in the hotel room in Terre Haute, and we happened to be driving back through on our way to Thursday's show in Muncie, Indiana, so I called the hotel and asked them to check their lost and found for it.  They told me they had a phone charger, but it turned out not to be mine, so I have to go out and find one, or else keep charging my cell phone in the car with the cigarette lighter charger I have.  In Muncie, the big deal was the network premeire of "Armed and Famous" on CBS and the whole town was going to be watching the show because it was taped there.  Consequently, they pushed our 8 o'clock show back to 9 o'clock because everyone else was going to be concerned with watching the show to see their friends and neighbors.  The club had a big screen TV with the show on it, and we caught the last 45 minutes of it which featured a local guy, an older fellow that Mike named "Kung Fu Crazy Man."  He's a guy in his late 60's, early 70's who is a professional bar-hopper, and wherever he goes, he has to go through an intricate display of quasi-karate moves.  When he was on screen, people went ape-shit because he was in the bar watching the show with them!  Mike figured we were in big trouble if this guy was getting three applause breaks.  After the show was over and it was our turn to take the stage, a bunch of people got up and left.  We wound up performing for about 30 people, who were nice as could be, but a little redneck scary at certain times.

Friday morning, we grabbed breakfast at the hotel, which featured a free breakfast buffet of eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, coffee, and the regular assortment of bagels, muffins and donuts, as well as biscuits 'n' gravy.  I doubled up on the biscuits 'n' gravy and had some sausage and eggs as well, and we started off on our 5 hours plus drive to St. Louis.

As we started getting closer to St. Louis, I mentioned to Mike that there was a good comic book shop in Collinsville, Illinois.  We stopped at a convenience store and Mike thought he lost his wallet.  I left him at the car to go through his luggage to step inside and use the gentleman's porcelanin convenience.  I thought I only had to uirinate, but biscuits and sausage had other ideas.  I committed an act of treason in that bathroom that could only be called a crime against humanity.  Now, nobody's crap doesn't stink, but I guess I'm a different animal, because even when I was a teen, I had been banished to the bathroom in the basement that the rest of the family rarely used....I can talk about it, but a man still hurts inside.  Still, out of compassion for my fellow man, I usually relegate my bathroom action for facilities that will cause the least disturbance to others.  Unfortunately, when I finished, who's outside the door waiting to get in but Mike with his thankfully found wallet.  I passed him without a word, figuring he's going to learn what happened to me the hard way.  I would have suggested that he use the women's room instead, they were both facilities for one with locks on the door, but when I mentioned it after the fact he said it was out of the question.  I personally have no qualms about using the women's if some guy is taking too long in the gents'.  You gotta go, you gotta go.

So Mike treated me to a ranting soliloquy about how I caused global warming, extinction of animals, and was an alternate for the Jews at the Nazi gas chambers.  I guess I'm also a little upset when I walk into a cloud of someone else's making, but maybe Mike doesn't also deal them the way I sometimes do, so it's harder to accept.  Long story short, he lived, and mocked me onstage Friday night late show.

We had delicious Ponderosa for lunch around 4 PM, and got to the Comedy Forum good 'n' early.  There was an ice storm brewing and a lot of people heeded the warnings to stay home, and our shows were sparsely attended.  There is a story going around right now about two St. Louis area kids who have been missing for years, and they were found and returned to their families, and the club asked me to do a toast for them, which I obliged.  I shouldn't be drinking the whiskey, but I do enjoy it so it was a  white man's burden, I guess.  I thanked God for the return of the kids and prayed for the safety of those still missing, and the crowd loved it.  It almost made up for the rookie mc making the mistake of bringing me to the stage with Mike's intro.  When he saw that it was me coming up the steps to the stage, he realized his error and asked to start over, and he went back to the first joke in his set, which got the laugh while I stood over at the side of the stage.

Second show was a wild 'n' wooly affair, and I had already met several of the guests in the front lounge before the show as I was set up with my CD's for sale.  I had a good second show, keeping in my mind to have fun and not just be funny, and it was uplifting.  I did the toast again when they brought me the shot, keeping mindful to do it in the middle of the set rather than at the end so that Mike didn't have to follow that....it was a better choice, rhythm-wise.

During Mike's set, almost toward the very end, he said something to a young kid who mouthed off, and one of his buddies threw a beer bottle at the stage.  The club staff and many members of the audience converged on the guy, and when we went to throw him out, Mike said "Keep him here, I want to press charges and when I get off this stage, I'm going to kick his ass!"  The kid bolted out the door and hauled ass, and the police never came.  One kid stood up, ready to kill, and later we found out that he punched a guy in the head who looked like he was being abusive to his wife in the parking lot.  He was obviously looking for somebody to pound....it wasa weird evening.  I broke my merchandise drought by selling exactly one CD, and I gave vigilante guy a CD for sticking up for my friend, and I gave a DVD to a guy who was telling me that his 13-year-old son wanted to be a comedian.  It's always nice to spread the good will.

We have two more shows tonight and then two days off.  On the docket for today, there's an excellent beyond words Chinese buffet that we always go to when we're here, and I can hardly wait.  The weather's still a little iffy, but I think the worst of it is behind us.

Have a great day, and recycle your bottles, don't throw them!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

All Apologies

All Apologies                            6407  (2467)

Monday, January 8, 2007-12:01 A.M.

Wow, where does the time go?

Reporting after my three-day weekend and a jaunt through eastern Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania, I am positively exhausted.

Physically, I feel fine, but mentally, I've been through so much drama I've considered renaming my balls Damon and Pythias.

I left at a decent time on Thursday to get to my gig in Tuscarawas (actually, Uhrichsville), Ohio.  It was an 8 PM gig, and I wound up getting there in time to shower, shave, and then enjoy a nice meal with headliner Carol Pennington (of Hysterical Management).  The crowd was small, and I found out that we were the last show the club was going to be presenting for a while, and I considered that unfortunate, because I'd played there twice before and the room had always been packed.  I still had a good show, but the showroom was so cold, I wore my winter coat onstage.

The next morning, gripped by a bout of insomnia, I logged onto the internet on my laptop and got an instant message from Annette Lorenzo, a comic friend and student of mine.  She was basically looking for work in February.

Well, she currently has an outstanding problem with another comic friend of mine, Mike Dambra.  I replied that I thought she should make things right before I would consider taking her on the road, and she expressed her feelings that she was guilty of no wrongdoings and didn't need to apologize, and that I should call the other comic that was on the bill the night of the alleged wrongdoings.  I said that I would, and logged off the internet and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, I'm on the road, and Mike Dambra calls me and tells me that he just got a threatening e-mail from Annette's boyfriend, saying that he was going to boycott all of Mike's shows in North America, sic lawyers on him, and other such threats.  Out of the gate, the first thing the boyfriend did was call Mike a racist (Mike is white and the boyfriend is not).

Well, I'm in the car for the next six hours, so I can't read the e-mail, which Mike wasted no time in forwarding to me, but he's reading the thing to me word-for-word, which made for an interesting day.  The next six hours became a constantupdating of this communication, and talking to my mother about my dad, who is experiencing some mild dementia, as well as the possible recurrence of lung cancer, which he was operated on for a few years ago.  I also contacted Danny Brown, the comic that Annette asked me to speak with, and he, too, backed up Mike Dambra's story.  So much for the only other material witness, Annette.

So I roll into Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania around 7:00 P.M. for a 9:00 P.M. show after getting more lost than I can ever remember being in a town I've been to so many times before.  I grabbed a hot shower, got into my show clothes and performed with mc Larry DeFelice (great impressionist and shortest guy I've ever met in my life that wasn't actually a midget) and Joe Moffa (who I'd been scheduled to work with several times in the past, but had always wound up working with someone else, instead).  Both comics were great guys and a lot of fun to hang around with.  I had been interviewed for a local alternative-type newspaper called the Electric City/Diamond City Weekly.  I got a third of a page using my photo from my MySpace account and a nice write-up that only got one thing wrong (they called me biracial instead of my wife...no big deal, as far as I'm concerned).

After the show, I used the wireless internet at the Best Western hotel adjoining the club (just perched myself in the lobby and hung out) and by this time, Mike had drafted a response to the original e-mail and posted both the original and the response on his myspace blog.  For interesting reading, check it out at blog.myspace.picklesplace and prepare to read about 60 or so responses to the blog.  I mocked Mike because he always gave me a hard time about writing a blog, because in the past I've mentioned his name, and casual readers who don't know that he's one of my best friends in comedy or otherwise take my comments to mean that I'm somehow mad at him, and now here he is, writing a blog, and he's got more comments for one entry than I get in thirty.

Saturday, I woke up early, around 5 A.M.....my room was hotter than the employee cafeteria at a crematorium, so I got up and walked across a vacant lot to a McDonald's, bought a paper and some breakfast and tried to lull myself back to sleep.  I wound up getting up around 3:30 in the afternoon, which was good, because I was going to attempt to drive the 5 hours home after the second show, so it was to my advantage to sleep in to "set my clock" forward a few hours.

I ate lunch at a pizzaria called Mimino's that I had eaten at before...it's a couple of blocks away from the club in a Main Street Square sort of area, with coffee shops, newsstands and diners.  They make a great submarine (which they call a hero), but they always get a little happy with the Italian dressing and you wind up with a paper plate full of soggy lettuce and onions that slid off your sandwich.  They don't have a website, unless you count the one the spiders built under the booth near the bathrooms.  Bada bing!

Our first show was jammed, and I utterly killed, and I'm not one to say that; I prefer others to mention it, but they were just "my type of crowd."  The show was good all the way around, and the attendance was due to the "Anniversary special" the club was running, basically half price admission.  Still, it paid off because even the second show was strong, and the crowd was a lot younger than they were used to getting, and I told them they should consider a college I.D. discount or some sort of late show special to encourage attendance.  I'm always like that, switching hats and offering clubs advice from my deep managerial experience.

I made the trip home without incident, rolling in at 6:30 in the morning, and finally wound down and hit the rack around 8.  I didn't have any plans today except for one; hit the mall and pick up a pair of those Stephon Marbury $15 sneakers I'd been reading about.  Well, long story short, I got them today, and they are definitely a value.  They are well made, look good, and they are comfortable.  Congratulations to Stephon Marbury and a big thanks to Steve and Barry's for carrying this fine product.

My only other business of the day was to send Annette Lorenzo an e-mail expressing that I'd spoken to Danny Brown and that he backed up the original telling of the story I'd heard from Mike Dambra, only for Annette to call him a liar and impeach his credibility...so much for that, I guess.  I decided to recuse myself and investigate the matter no longer, but I'm not happy that the incident is now like the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.  Really, all she needs to do is apologize, but she's maintaining that there's nothing to apologize for, so it's an agreement to disagree.  What else can be done?  Nothing, I guess.

I leave with Mike Dambra Tuesday for Terre Haute, Indiana, the first date on a twelve day tour.  I promise you, my loyal readers, that I will not steal drinks, put shot glasses in my purse, tell the club owners to go fuck their mothers, or put my feet on the bars and tell the bartenders what sexy fucking feet I have.  I also promise not to get booed, go over my time, and scream at the other comics on the bill because I can't find the weed I stashed in my purse.

Have a wonderful week, I'll check in as the "Sturm Und Drang" tour with Mike Dambra rockets across the midwest, with stops in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Life Is A Carnival

Life Is A Carnival                         6368  (2428)

Tuesday, January 2, 2007-5:35 P.M.

Hungover still?  Yeah, me too.

But not hungover from alcohol, just the pace of trying to be a standup comic during the busiest time of year, New Year's Eve weekend.

My shows with Ray Salah at the (now defunct) Comix Cafe in Syracuse were canceled, and we were redeployed to the Rochester room.  Ray hosted for the weekend and I helped out in a management capacity.  We still got our full money, but it was a bit less satisfying than headlining my own show.

Sunday, New Year's Eve, we packed up the minivan and headed to Binghamton, New York, to perform as the Inner Loop Improv Troupe for the First Night celebration.  My wife Pamela and our good friend and protege, Phil Sherman, rounded out the troupe.

We had two good shows and managed to get back to Rochester around 2 A.M.  I then spent the night and most of the next day resting and recuperating.  I fell off the stage at one point, leaving a small gash in my left leg, and I didn't even realize the skin was broken until the next day.  Ouch.

So enough of all that, I promised a year-in-review report, and I will be as good as my word.  Here we go....

January started out with an engagement at the RiverCenter Comedy Club in San Antonio, Texas.  I almost didn't make it because my flight from Buffalo to Chicago was delayed, which meant I missed the flight from Chicago to San Antonio....I wound up flying standby, and made it to the show with 20 minutes to spare...and performed for 30 or so people.  January also featured my first cancelation of the year, an engagement at the Lake Ontario Playhouse in Syracuse, which canceled a Thursday show on me, leaving me with shows on Friday and Saturday.

February, I was booked by Comedy Zone to play Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for Valentine's Day.  The show was canceled.

March, I was scheduled to play the House of Comedy on St. Patrick's Day weekend.  The booker forgot he gave me the dates, and I was canceled.  I picked up a one-nighter in Medina, NY and still worked.

April, I did a banquet for the Rochester Transportation Council.  It was a great paycheck for a small set in front of a corporate-type group, and they brought meup after doing a tear-stained tribute to their Executive of the Year, a man who just got done battling cancer.  His widow accepted the award, and then I followed that.  Thanks a lot.  Also, I was canceled for a Thursday show in Utica, NY and gigs in Muskegon and Petoskey, Michigan.  I did a cancer benefit in Battle Creek, Michigan, hosted by John Face, a comic from Albion, Michigan, and the show was attended by Mark Kolo from Funny Business.  I had a great set, and it has paid off as Funny Business has started to offer me headlining work.

May, I was canceled for a headlining show in Syracuse, NY....does that town not like me or something?

June, I was cancelled by Comedy Zone for a two-day run in Virginia, and had to cancel another date I picked up because it would have been stupid to drive to Virginia and back for just one day.  Also, gas prices were peaking at this point.  I wound up hosting at my home club for $120, but I actually sold some CD's while I was there, so it didn't suck too bad.  Also, I made my first ever appearance at Catch A Rising Star at their location in Providence, Rhode Island.

July, I was canceled for a weekend, and did a Diabetes fundraiser that week....it seems that everytime I do a fundraiser, I get canceled, but then again, everytime I don't do a fundraiser, I get canceled.  Also, I made a showcase appearance at the Cleveland Improv, and was booked off the strength of that showcase.

In August, I had a headlining week at my home club, the Comix Cafe in Rochester, get canceled.  I rescheduled it to the previous week and wound up co-headlining with Mike Dambra, and we both got screwed on the money.  The following week, I hosted at the club for Aries Spears (who bumped me) and we had a good time.  Then I got canceled by Comedy Zone for a weekend in Johnson City, Tennessee, so I went to Florida a few days early with Pam and Harmony.  This was the month of the big Florida trip for Grandpa Tetta to meet his granddaughter.  The return trip, August 31 and September 1 and 2 were one-nighters for Comedy Zone, which were canceled because of the Labor Day weekend.

September was my first full weekend at the Cleveland Improv, and opening week of the NFL season.  I also got a standing ovation (my first ever) at a show in Topeka, Kansas.  Other than the September 1st and 2nd gigs, no cancelations to speak of, but a couple of gigs that I wish were; a gig in Spicer, Minnesota where they told me to "go back where I came from," and a gig in Watertown, South Dakota where they either didn't understand me, or understood me and just didn't like me.

October, I was supposed to work at the Syracuse Comix Cafe, but the club didn't open, so I was canceled.  That was two weeks worth of work.  I wound up picking up some one-nighters, but for the most part, I didn't get on stage.  The following week, I was scheduled for a weekend of work, and got canceled.  I hosted at my home club, thanks to the generosity of my friend Ray Salah who stepped aside.

In November, I was scheduled to work a Friday-Saturday in Jackson, Michigan, and the Friday got canceled.  I still did the Saturday, because the drive wasn't that bad.  I headlined, and worked with Kate Brindle and Jesse Lundy.  We had a good time, even though the crowd was sparse.  Then I got canceled for a Thursday in Belmont, North Carolina at the Comedy Zone, but they paid for my hotel on the night off, so that's o.k. with me.

December, I was supposed to work at Traverse City, Michigan, but the staff didn't want to work, and I got canceled.  I managed to replace the work in Toledo, Ohio, but I had to move a date back from 2007, which I managed to replace with other work the same day (phew).  Which leads to last week, getting canceled in Syracuse when the Comix Cafe closed.

So what have we learned, students?  Cancelations happen.  If you work a job and you know where you're working each day, count your blessings.  Some days I feel like Russell Crowe in "Cinderella Man" standing with the rabble at the docks hoping to be chosen.

I performed in 21 states and one Canadian province, and got canceled every month this year.  And I still made more money than last year.

I'm gearing up for this weekend, Thursday in Tuscarawas, Ohio and Friday and Saturday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  I have both itineraries in hand, so no cancelations!  But 2007 is a long year, so I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.

Here's wishing you the very best!  Hope your year is cancelation-free, prosperous and happy!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY