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