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