The Relay

The Relay                                                     7571  (791)

Monday, April 30, 2007-6:00 A.M.

Well, good morning.  I'm up with the birds and about to hit the road home from Battle Creek, Michigan, fresh off the 4th Annual Relay For Life Benefit Comedy Show for the American Cancer Society.  I headlined the affair, and the good folks at Relay For Life were nice enough to dedicate the event to my father, whom they called Ralph Tetta, Sr., and even though we never did the Sr./Jr. thing (I have a middle name, William, and my father had no given middle name), it didn't make the evening any more special.

I worked this weekend at Gary Fields' Comedy Club with headliner Greg Morton, and our crowds were disappointing to say the least.  The Relay show on Sunday was sold out, however, 250 tickets and they turned about 80 people away.  When I pulled up to the club at 6 PM for the 7 o'clock show, there was a line outside the club like Wrestlemania was in town.

I got into the club and said hello to my fellow comics, all of whom I'd met before and worked with except for Kathie Dice from Ohio.  Our bill tonight included Kathie, Mark Knope and Dave Glardon from Ohio, Dwayne Gill, John Face (the event organizer), Chris Young and Barry Fuller from Michigan, and lil' ol' me from New York

After saying my hellos and setting up shop in the green room, I set up my borrowed video camera to tape the show.  John gave me a copy of the program for the evening's show, and even though I knew that at some point in the evening I was going to become weepy and let the emotions take me over, I didn't know it was going to be so soon.  The program reads as follows: 

This year we send our support and love to comedian Ralph Tetta, who is performing tonight for his second year in a row.  On March 18th, 2007, Ralph lost his father, Ralph Tetta Sr. to cancer.

Ralph, Thank you for coming tonight, and know we all will be praying for you and your family.

Well, that pretty much did me in right there.

The show was amazing, with everyone turning in just a magical set.  I wasn't so impressed with my own performance, as there were a few things I think I could have done differently, and I tried to do new material, or at the very least, older material that I hadn't trotted out so much lately, and the set was a little uneven, but I got the laughs and nobody knew it wasn't what I exactly planned.  After my set, I came back out on stage and gave a weepy speech about my Dad and how I was happy to come back and do the event, and how nice everyone was to me and what it meant to me, and then all the comics were called back out onto the stage and we were given these neat little awards for contributing our services to the event.  I don't know how much money was raised in total, but it felt like it was a lot, from all the accounts I've heard so far.

We all shook hands with everyone as they left the show, and a lot of members of John's family came out and hugged me, and it was nice, and John's sister said to me that I was there for them last year when John lost his mother, and this year, they were here for me.  I felt overwhelmed in the evening as I'm usually pretty comfortable giving help to others but not so well versed in receiving it.

Afterwards, Mark, John, Kathie and I retreated to the AmeriHost where we were being put up, ordered some pizza and talked shop.  I was going to try and drive home but I was exhausted and was pretty sure I couldn't do the eight hour drive without crapping out somewhere in Canada.  I did some preliminary packing and caught about three hours of sleep (a good nap, I don't care who you are), and I'm up now.  I'm going to catch a shower and hit the road, and with the right combination of coffee and peppermint gum, I should be o.k.

This week is Knoxville, Tennessee, at the Comedy Zone, one of my favorite rooms in the country, and then it's three weeks working close to home, so that will be a nice change.

In closing, I just want to mention that if you're interested in donating to Relay For Life or the American Cancer Society, you can do it here; ACS :: Relay For Life  The spirit of wanting to help doesn't require any special skills, you can just send a couple of bucks to the cause.  I did the first Relay show, never knowing that a year later, my father would be gone due to cancer.  I will keep doing shows like this as many times as I'm asked, and if someday I can look and see that someone didn't have to go through what my father went through, or their family didn't have to go through what my family went through, then it will all be worth it.

God bless you, everyone.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey

Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey                               7520  (740)

Saturday, April 28, 2007-1:45 P.M.

I got a bulletin in my "MySpace" box today from someone on my friends list named [NAME DELETED BY REQUEST].  Now, I have over 700 friends, many of whom I've met through comedy shows and some who have just surfed on to my page and thought I would be a good friend.  I'm not sure which one this guy is, but he is not someone I call friend in "real" life.  He posted this diatribe, and I thought I would share it.

Date: Apr 28, 2007 12:47 AM

Proud To Be White

Someone finally said it.

How many are actually paying attention to this?

There are African Americans, Mexican Americans,

Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Native Americans, etc.

And then there are just Americans.

You pass me on the street

and sneer in my direction.

You Call me "White boy," "Cracker," "Honkey,"

"Whitey," "Caveman" ..

And that's OK.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ... You call me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you,

So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

You have the United Negro College Fund.

You have Martin Luther King Day.

You have Black History Month.

You have Cesar Chavez Day.

You Have Yom Hashoah

You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi

You have the NAACP.

You have BET.

If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) . We'd be racists.

If we had a White Pride Day ..

You would call us racists.

If we had White History Month

We'd be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites

to "advance" OUR lives

We'd be racists.

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,

a Black Chamber of Commerce,

And then we just have the

plain Chamber of Commerce.

Wonder who pays for that?

If we had a college fund that only gave

white students scholarships

... You know we'd be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed

Black Colleges in the US ,

Yet if there were "White colleges" ..

THAT would be a racist college.

In the Million Man March,

you believed that you were marching

For your race and rights.

If we marched for our race and rights,

You would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're Not afraid to announce it.

But when we announce our white pride ..

You call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us.

But, when a white police officer

Shoots a black gang member

or beats up a black drug-dealer running

From the law and posing a threat to society .

You call him a racist.

I am proud.

But, you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites

can be racists?

There is nothing improper about this e-mail.

Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.

This is not a RACIST bulletin. I have nothing against any of you, but I am proud. Pass it along.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I thought I should respond, but after writing my response, I realized that there is probably precious little I could do to change this guy's mind.  He has some problem with black people, probably a bad experience early on, and that sort of conditioning is hard to overturn.

Despite that, I thought I made some pretty good points, so I'll share my response with you.  I hope you enjoy it.

Dear Ringmaster,

The problem with your logic is that white Americans do not identify themselves primarily as "white," we identify ourselves by national origin, ie "Italian-American," "Irish-American," et al.  Unless the individual is a complete mutt, in which case there is usually some American Indian floating around in the mix, which would not make them exclusively "white" anyway.

I have no problem with the institutions you list, the NAACP, black colleges and the like, because they are necessary social remedies to even the playing field for blacks in America who have never really socially recovered from slavery and the Jim Crow policies that followed.

And let's face it, being called "cracker" by a black person is WAY less hurtful than being called "nigger" by a white person.  There is a social inequity in the deliverer of the invective and the receiver that renders "cracker" light and meaningless.  "Nigger," however, is pushed downhill and has much more weight and causes much more emotional damage.

White people generally feel that race isn't even something they possess, it is a quality that only blacks, Latinos, Asians and others are imbued with.  You never hear discussions of "white-on-white" crimes, although they happen every day and are much more common than any other kind of crime.  Whites only use the term "white" when it is necessary to distinguish themselves from other races.

Any discussion of race, as you intend to start with this bulletin, must consider that our shared goal must be the acceptance, tolerance and equality of all races.  Unfortunately, for whites, this means the insistence that blacks assimilate into white culture, which is akin to asking Jews who survived the holocaust to speak German and eat schnitzel.

I believe in an America that is truly a melting pot and embraces Italians and Irish and Germans and Asians of all types, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Native Americans and yes, even African-Americans, Jamaicans and other ethnic groups that call themselves "black."  And I am no less proud of my Italian background in the face of Martin Luther King Day and BET and other "black" institutions.

You need to get over whatever negative feelings there are in you that prompted you to write this bulletin, or they will eat you alive.  America is always going to be a melange of different races, ethnic groups and religions, and the freedom of these peoples to worship, enjoy their national heritage and practice their customs is guaranteed by our Constitution, and you'll never change that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get into my Japanese car, put on some blues and go get some Chinese food.

Ralph

 

Raining in Baltimore

7502  (722)

Friday, April 26, 2007-12:15 A.M.

Just checking in from the lobby of the Grand Inn in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Tonight's show in Rockford, Michigan, about ten miles north of here, was one of the worst attended shows at the Crazy Horse Saloon that I've ever seen, and that joint usually packs 'em in.  I turned in what I thought was an above-average show, despite being tar-whupped from driving two hours out of my way to Battle Creek so I could pick up copies of the newspaper;  they featured me in an article about the Relay For Life show I'm doing at Gary Field's Comedy Club this week, and I wanted copies to send to my family.  So I headed all the way down there from Mt. Pleasant (in the pouring rain) and got them, and then when I got to the hotel, I found the article was posted on line.  I'm an idiot!  Anyway, here's the article: Battle Creek Enquirer - www.battlecreekenquirer.com - Battle Creek, Mich.

I'm working with one of my favorite guys in the business this week, Mr. Greg Morton, and on Sunday, I'm working with a bunch of comics including John Face, Mark Knope and Barry Fuller.  I'm looking forward to doing the pal-around thing with the guys and this year, I've actually got the time to hang out, versus last year when I did the show and then had to skedaddle right away.  The show is sold out, which is mega-cool, and I'm really excited about it.

Not a lot more to mention, but I haven't checked in and I want my regulars to know that I'm o.k.  Hope the weather's cooperating with you wherever you are, it's rainy and crappy here and not doing anything for my diabetes-fueled depression.  I want a chocolate bar so badly right now I'd beat up a kid to get one, and that's not good.  I think I'll just watch a movie and get some rest.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

It's Inevitable

It's Inevitable                                  7461  (681)

Sunday, April 22, 2007-4:30 A.M.

What do you do when the thing that should mean the most to you feels like despair?

I'm still up, 4:30 in the morning, winding down from my one and only show tonight at the Castel Grisch Winery in Watkins Glen, New York.  I hosted the show, with feature Dennis Ross and headliner/booker Danny Liberto.  The show was well attended and the people who ran the place were great, even after I busted a vase coming out of the men's room....I was walking past a fireplace, decorative, I think, and they had two large clay pots, not really vases, and I brushed across the fake flowers in one of them, spun the pot around, and it fell and busted.  I offered to pay for it, and the owner waved me off, telling me she got it from Michael's, which made me feel a whole lot better.

This week I was supposed to be in Greensboro, North Carolina for Comedy Zone, and I was victimized by a double-booking.  Happily, I was able to score the work I did on short notice, or I would be completely broke this week.  I don't mind getting canceled, but with only two weeks notice of the cancelation, I was lucky even to get the gig that I got, never mind that it didn't in any way come close to replacing the work I lost.  I think it's unfair that two headliners get to fight for the position, and as a feature, I took the booking in good faith only to get pushed out because someone couldn't keep their calendar in order.  But that's a discussion for another day.

Pam and I took Harmony to the mall on Friday night and let her ride the carousel four times....two with Pam escorting her, and then two times with Daddy.  She loved it, which I thought was great because when she was a little younger (two vs. three....wow, what a difference), we put her on a small choo-choo train at the Strong Kid's Museum and she hated it....I think the train whistle may have been too loud and scary for her.  Afterwards, we went and had a nice Olive Garden dinner, and then went home and played games and spent time together, and I was wracked with despair over being unemployed on a Friday night.  I should have been ecstatic that for the first time in months I actually had some quality family time with my wife and daughter, and all I could think about was that I wasn't on stage, I wasn't making any money, and I couldn't enjoy myself.

I'm a workaholic.  I know that.  A long time ago, my buddy Ricky K. and I used to stay up late, drinking coffee and talking about comedy.  We used to talk about "regular" people and how shallow they were, that we were different, we didn't "go out" on the weekends, we got on stage and the "regular" people paid to see us.  We mocked their dance clubs and pithy Top 40 music, and a part of it was probably that we lacked the proper skills for socialization, and comedy was a vehicle to get us to some area of cool that we thought we deserved.  Our whole clique of comics were basically misfit toys with no place else to go...if we weren't doing standup comedy, we would have been shambling, mumbling homeless men, straight-job working drones ticking down until the day we went postal, and substance abusers fistfighting our way through half-days of normalcy.  We didn't want to do comedy, we needed to do comedy.

And this dovetails perfectly into a commentary on the Virginia Tech incident this week.  The shooter, whose name I won't even pretend I know how to spell, idolized the Columbine shooters, from what I understand.  And this means only one thing, and that is that he felt disenfranchised, that he didn't feel "normal," and that he had to lash out.  He probably would've been a damn fine comic, although I read one of his "plays" as reported by AOL, and frankly, he would have had to have hit a few more open mics to work the material out.

Regardless.....there are a LOT of people out there who feel that they don't fit in....you don't have to look very far to find them...just go to a performance of an improv group and you'll find a dozen of them right there.  There are people who are dangerously close to blowing their top, and they don't have the outlets that as comics, we are blessed with.  That kid needed an outlet, or at least a girlfriend.  I'll say this....there aren't many college-aged guys who are getting laid regularly that are going out and buying weapons and shooting up the place.  They're writing faggy love poetry and walking around with cartoon love-hearts flying out of their heads!  Ladies, of either high-school or college age, if you see a potential shooter at yourschool, FUCK THAT YOUNG MAN!  Or at least suck his dick once or twice.  A guy getting his dick sucked will not be shopping for guns on the internet!  He will be looking for ways to please you, and heed your beck and call.  Ladies, the life you save could be your own, and several of your instructors and classmates.

Before I did comedy, Friday nights were a perfect example of quiet desperation for me.  I worked, and made a lot of money, managing a convenience store in the '80's.  Every Friday, at 6 PM, I was turned loose on the streets with a car and a pocket full 'o cash.  And before I discovered Rochester's one comedy club at the time, I didn't know what to do!  My big Friday evening usually consisted of getting a big takeout container of hot wings and plunking down in front of the TV to watch HBO.  I can't imagine living that static lifestyle ever again.  I was never a bar person....maybe I'm an elitist or something, but bars always sucked to me.  They were for hooking up, and I didn't want a hookup, I wanted to meet someone.  And it's hard to get to know someone when the music's so loud you can't hear the person next to you, but you know they're talking to you because they have a concerned look on their face, and that's only because a blood vessel in your eye just burst.

After comedy, I had everything a sane person needs....a group of instant friends (the other comics), an outlet for getting the things that iritate me off my chest (stage time) and some attention (also the stage time).  I've also managed to wrangle it into a career, so now I have an income based on it, albeit a small one, and I also get to travel, which I love to do.  So I don't want to do comedy, I need to do comedy.  In May, I celebrate 19 years from the first time I ever did open mic.  To contrast, Pam and I will be married six years come this November, and we've been together for 13 years.  No matter how you slice it, comedy came first and has been with me the longest, and I'll probably never be able to give it up.

So this week I go back to work, with a five-day tour through Michigan ending with a cancer benefit at Gary Field's in Battle Creek.  Tomorrow, I'm probably going to hit Danny Liberto's open mic and try out some new stuff, and I've also got my own open mic at the Comix Cafe on Tuesday.  That leaves only Monday night with no comedy. I think I'll try to convince my wife that I'm going to buy a gun and shoot up a school, maybe she'll save the day.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Pressure

Pressure  (Billy Joel)           7430  (650)

Tuesday, April 17, 2007-6:15 P.M.

If you want to really see where your relationship is with your spouse or significant other, sit down and file a joint tax return with them.  You'll find out quickly where you stand.

Last night, tearing ourselves to the core and tempting the last minute deadline of what seems to be an ever-expanding income tax filing date, the lovely Pamela Ruth and I sat down with the H&R Block Tax Cut tax preparation software and tried to muddle through our statements for the Federal and New York State governments.  Because we made more money than the year past, we got a smaller return, but it's a return nonetheless and I'm going to take it.  During the course of running the numbers, we hit each other, cursed, spit, and I'm not sure but I think Pamela mumbled something anit-Semitic (Family Guy reference....I'm not Jewish).

I'm off this week so we're going to spend the rest of the time trying to reclaim our living space which has become choked with detritus, the baby and her clothing and toys notwithstanding.  We've lived together for 12 years and have never thrown anything away (it seems) that we acquired in that time, and now we're in a small two-bedroom apartment with just too damn much stuff.  I'm mostly to blame, as I'm a collector of items, in this case, heavy metal records, books, magazines (mostly music oriented), comic books and God knows what else.  I have Slinkys, Spirograph sets, puzzles including Rubik's Cubes, 3D jigsaw puzzles and various brain-twister games, and that's just what's jammed in my closet.  I have a box of Micronauts toys (popular in the 1980's) that are in pretty good condition.  I have a cornflakes box with my picture on it (courtesy of the Kellogg's museum in Battle Creek, Michigan-Harmony calls it "Daddy's Cereal") and a box of Flutie Flakes with former New England Patriots/Buffalo Bills/San Diego Chargers/Toronto Argonauts quarterback Doug Flutie on it (flakes not included).  I have piles of cassette tapes (yeah, I still use 'em) of every artist imaginable, although I just donated about 300 of them to the Salvation Army (yes, I took the deduction on that this year), and piles of CD's from mostly unsigned artists because I can't figure out a way to sell them online.  This week is going to be a cleaning of the stables, or as much as I possibly can, before the tour resumes in Michigan next Wednesday.  I'm going to be eBay-ing a lot of it, so if you're interested in this type of stuff I've mentioned, keep your ear to the ground.

I hate to have days off, but they are inevitable, so the dutiful thing is to put them to good use.  I honestly don't think that we'll be able to get everything done this week, but as long as we can clear out enough space to make the apartment more maneuverable, I'll consider it a blessing and a gift.

Keep the sunny side up!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Can't Find My Way Home

Can't Find My Way Home                               7391  (610)

Thursday, April 12, 2007-5:30 P.M.

The watchword in comedy today is the same word it has been for the last 20 years....routing.  You try to match up your gigs so that you get the most fortunate use of motor miles, accumulating as much money as possible with work that happens to be close together.  The best routing I was ever able to hook up was a couple of years ago when I played Daleville and Dothan, Alabama, back-to-back, and they are only about 20 miles apart.  A masterstroke of routing, I must say.

I'm working in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this week, and it is snowing.  I managed to hook up a gig in Brantford, Ontario, Canada last night, which is right on the 403 expressway across Ontario that I would have traveled anyway to get to Michigan.  Sweet, huh?  The gig itself was a bit of a knife-fight, where the denizens wanted to be picked on moreso than listen to finely crafted material, but that's what they wanted, so that's what they got.  I'm no Don Imus, but I threw a good number of "kill" lines out there and trashed a guy pretty hard, but he was hammered and wouldn't shut up.

It rained all the way here....I grabbed a hotel in Flint (I am a Motel 6 whore!) and took off today at noon....the snow started coming somewhere between Lansing and Grand Rapids, and I decided it must be lake effect.....damn that lake effect snow.

I got an e-mail from my friend John Face, a comic from this neck of the woods, and he informs me that the Relay For Life benefit show that we're doing later this month is sold out.  Relay For Life is an agency that concerns itself with cancer, and that is a cause that is close to my heart, because I lost two of my grandparents and recently, my father, to the disease.  I did the benefit last year, and this year, John tells me that they are adding my father's name to the event as a memoriam.  I am deeply touched and so glad that I can be a part of this show, comedy is what I do and in the regular course of my life, I'm not going to find a cure for cancer or bring medical aid or comfort to cancer patients, so this is my way of contributing.  The show is at Gary Field's comedy club in Battle Creek, Michigan, and I'm performing there that week as a part of their regularly scheduled shows for the week, and then doing the benefit on Sunday.  That's some routing, huh?

Next week, I was supposed to perform in Greensboro, North Carolina for Comedy Zone, but I got bumped due to a double-booking.  The problem with this is that it leaves very little time (in reality, no time) to schedule something else.  I still managed to find something courtesy of Danny Liberto at the Comedy Company.  It's a gig in Watkins Glen with Danny and Dennis Ross, a friend of mine that I worked a tour with a while back.  It's only a one-nighter, so it won't replace the full week that I lost, but it's enough to put some groceries on the table and the rest of the week, I'll get a good amount of time with my family for a change....I probably need it at this point.  So, thank you Danny, for the work.  You're a good guy and you saved the day!

I still have a few hours before showtime at Dr. Grins, so I'm gonna stretch out and read a little bit.  I'm three chapters into "Fargo Rock City" by Chuck Klosterman, courtesy of my friend Pat Duffy who lent me his copy.  It's excellent, I've always enjoyed Klosterman's work, and the journey down nostalgia lane to the heyday of metal in the 80's makes it a real good read for me.  I'll probably finish it this week, what with no more long drives in front of me until I have to get home on Sunday.

Such are the benefits of routing!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

 

New Thing

New Thing                               7331  (550)

Thursday, April 5, 2007-12:30 A.M.

I have climbed down from the cross.

Today is a day off, my third in four days, and I spent most of it in the car, driving and thinking and driving and talking and driving and listening to talk radio.  I settled down in Bristol, Virginia, a good four hours from tomorrow night's show, and just decided to relax in my hotel room and enjoy some television.  Only I didn't relax so much as get myself jazzed.

C-SPAN was airing a special taped last month at the Cooper Union that featured Tim Russert hosting a Lincoln-Douglas style debate featuring Newt Gingrich and Mario Cuomo.  I was riveted by what both speakers had to say.  They both made my eyes well up with tears, they spoke so clearly and with such a love for our country and with such dismay over the way it has broken.  I followed up by watching "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO, and even though it was a repeat, I enjoyed it anyway, and then I watched the Jerry Seinfeld Comedy Arts Award show on HBO.  It featured some of my favorite comics, Robert Klein, Chris Rock, Gary Shandling and Seinfeld himself, discussing standup comedy which is something I could watch (and talk about) for hours.

Lately I've been running myself through the mill with questions....questions about whether I should keep doing standup comedy or not, questions about getting involved in politics (I really was considering that for a while), and questions about what I could do to help improve the situation in our country, how I could give aid to the less fortunate and hope to the hopeless.

I believe that the answers to my questions are slowly taking shape, but just like a streetlight in the fog looks like a streetlight because even though you cannot see it's form, you can pretty much guess what it is not and by previous experience guess what it probably is, the answers are pretty clear.  I need not change what I am doing, but how I am doing it.

I love doing standup comedy, and watching Klein and the others discuss it just drove it home for me.  I'm not going to be happy doing anything else, and damn the consequences.  I can work harder to make better business decisions, and throw my rope at the better paying work, and that certainly means working harder.  Right now, I'm in with about five major bookers that keep my schedule full, but at club-level money which is a one-way ticket to the poverty line.  Corporate events pay much better, as do cruise ships, casinos and the like, but they require a different kind of comic.  Well, the only thing stopping me from being that type of comic is the willingness to change the type of material I resort to.  I wrote three great bits this week, all clean and funny (the Kool and His Friend joke got lots of compliments, thank you all) and I know that I can work that way.  Any notion of being a "sell-out" because I would work a gig where I can't work blue needs to be dismissed.  I've come to find that working blue is a lazy man's trap for me...it's so simple to take what I consider to be a well-developed joke writing talent (19 years spent developing it come May) and apply it to a scatological concept.  Not that I don't enjoy working blue....I like working on that edge and saying the things that shock and get the women shrieking, but it's an evolutionary dead-end for me.

Last night at Tippers in Clarksville, Tennessee, which is a college-age/young guys and gals from Fort Campbell Army Base type establishment, I started the change...not on purpose, but I dropped some of the blue material that I had developed that was staple stuff for me, and I killed.  I did cleaner stuff, and as luck would have it, there were actually some older people in the room, sitting front row, and I think they appreciated the cleaner stuff, although I need to ween myself off the "F" word, which I think I use some times way too gratuitously.  People have been responding to me better off stage as well, and last night folks actually sent me drinks on stage.  I'm not the kind of comic who gets drinks sent to him on stage, let me tell you....and it seems that I'm venturing into new water, an area that I've never been before, and the possibilities are really electrifying me.

I'll be honest, I wish I could get on stage RIGHT NOW, because I'm that jazzed up about standup.  I have five shows this weekend, so I'll get my fix.  And I'm looking forward to it, to be sure.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?              7297  (515)

Monday, April 2, 2007-1:30 A.M. CDT

Should I quit comedy?  An interesting question, is it not?

I'm at the Radisson Star Plaza in Merrillville, Indiana, just a stone's throw from Chicago.  I headlined this weekend at the Wisecracker's comedy club located in the hotel, and just before I was about to take the stage for the Saturday late show, the ticket booth girl announces to me "We need your address because we have to Fed-Ex your check because the checks are locked up and we can't give it to you."

Uh, no fucking way, thank you very much.

So basically I'm stuck here until Monday morning when the accountant gets in, and to put a silver lining on the dark cloud, they comped me a hotel room for my trouble.  That's good, because I had two days off before my next gig in Clarksville, Tennessee, so there was one less night off I had to pay for a hotel room.  Still, questions abound...when the accountant left for the day on Friday, did he think there wasn't going to be any comedians for the weekend?  Did no one else have keys to the office or the safe combination or whatever access they needed to have?  Couldn't they have just paid me cash and ripped up the checks, or marked them "For Deposit Only," and deposited them?  Maybe these answers are too simple, and an indication of the reason I don't work in a corporate setting.

So they comped me a room that runs $150 a night, for which I shouldn't really complain, and I was able to use the laundry facilities on premises to do my laundry as I'm in the middle of a two-week tour.  My plan is now to meet the accountant in the morning, pick up my check, waltz it over to a bank that is virtually across the street, and get my money.  Seems like an awful lot of trouble for something that should be an easy transaction, huh?  Oh, well, I don't pretend to know everything about the business.

I should mention that this facility is hooked on to a huge theatre, the Star Plaza, which has played host to some of the biggest entertainers in show business, among them Jay Leno, George Carlin, ZZ Top and B.B. King.  This weekend, the theatre hosted the 70's Soul Jam, featuring The Stylistics, The Chi-Lites and others.  It seems that whenever I'm here, they have some sort of Motown revue, and that's cool, but some of the bands don't have all their original members because of death or retirement.  One upcoming show they're going to have The Isley Cousins and opening act Kool and His Friend.

So I had a long talk with my sister today, about 90 minutes, and she basically asked me to think about what I'm doing.  I'm 40 years old, running around the country for what amounts to bullshit money, I have no savings nor own any real property, and live basically check-to-check.  And while I don't plan on maintaining this level forever, I'm moving up, although slowly, the fact of the matter is that only 5% (if that) of the folks in the comedy industry really get to the point where they're making really good money.  The rest of us sweat and toil and get in our cars and shlep for 9 hours to take the stage in Nowhere, USA for a couple hundred dollars and lodging.  Is that fair to my wife, to be gone so much, is it fair for my child, to provide in such a meager manner?   Is it selfish to continue pursuing my dream after so many years of investment, or am I running after smoke and cheating my family?  If I left comedy, what would I do?  Would I be a good employee in a straight job?  Would I be able to concentrate on that job without looking out the window all the time?  Would a company want to take a chance on a guy who's 40 years old, been doing comedy for half of that, and proudly carries a two-year college degree in Liberal Arts?  What am I suited to do?  These are the questions that keep me awake some nights.  I feel things are beginning to change, and that scares me a lot, because I feel like I only know one thing.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?