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