Pigs On The Wing (Part One)

Pigs On The Wing (Part One)                                        7936  (1156)

Saturday, June 2, 2007-2:00 A.M.

Good morning from Florida, where it's raining on the second day of Hurricane Season.  Can I book a tour, or what?

I took off from home on Tuesday afternoon after a thousand hugs and kisses from my wife and daughter.  Seriously, when you could die in a flaming car wreck at any point during a road trip, is any number of kisses and hugs ever enough when they could be your last?  I think possibly I need to think a little more positively.

I got as far as Knoxville, Tennessee, and called it quits after about 13 hours in the car.  I was just up to the point where I knew I would start hallucinating about animals jumping in front of the car, and I'd seen enough dead deer on the the way to err on the side of caution.

Wednesday, I dog-legged it the rest of the way to Daleville, Alabama.  I didn't have far to go, but I opted to stray from my RandMcNally.com directions and bypass Atlanta, which has notoriously bad traffic.  Instead, I drove through rural Northeast Georgia, where every police officer looks like Broderick Crawford but I didn't get to meet any of them, because my New York State License Plate-having ass was driving nice and sloooooooooow.  I was heading down into Alabama and on the final leg of the drive, through the army town of Dothan, Alabama (on my way to yet *another* army town), when I saw what I thought was a pack of feral dogs running across the highway.

All of the cars in front of me saw them, too, and we all begun to slow down.  The group crossed in front of me, and I was able to get a close look, because I was the second car in the line...they weren't dogs at all, but a wild boar and her four little piglets running across the road.  When I tell you that the last little piggie, the slowest of the bunch, was possibly the cutest thing I ever saw, I'm not lying.  Walt Disney couldn't have made them look any cuter, these little porkers running after their mama into a field of high sawgrass.

Well, if those pigs had turned into people and came to the show Wednesday night at the MVP lounge in Daleville, it wouldn't have made a difference, I can tell you.  It seemed that the whole base was on leave for the Memorial Day holiday, and except for a dozen or so townie regulars, the place was empty.  I worked with Jesse Pangelinan from Texas, and we had a decent show considering what we had to work with, which is to say, not very good of a show at all.  We failed to reach a critical mass where there were enough people emotionally invested in hearing standup comedy, and you can do your show under those circumstances, but you're still basically the piano player at the whorehouse...nobody came to listen to you, they are there for other reasons.

Thursday night was the Loft in Columbus, Georgia, yet another army town.  Sometimes I think the South is peppered with military bases in case they get the idea to secede again.  I feared a replay of the previous evening's sparse crowd situation, and was pleasantly surprised when the first show sold out, and the second show nearly did.  I worked with Matt Davis, who reminds me of Bill Hicks (his dirty material, not political) and he was quite amazing.  After I saw his first show, I decided to open up and do my more coarse material, which the second show people loved.  They were basically like a second-show Friday crowd; young, liquored-up and ready to succumb to any of the baser instincts that sexually graphic material would awaken in them.

The funny thing about both evenings is that both headliners wanted to get something to eat (which I'm always up for), and we wound up at a Waffle House both times....boy, Southerners sure enjoy their waffles, I must say.  I'm still getting the hang of ordering the hash browns, saying scattered, smothered, covered, peppered and chunked (which means with cheese, ham, jalapeno peppers and onions....they also offer mushrooms [capped], tomatoes [diced] and chili [not sure what the word for that is], but I've so far passed on those options.  You can get the whole shebang and save about 26 cents, which is the cost of any one topping, but at that point you should probably just shit your pants in the booth to save yourself the trouble.

I'm off until Thursday, so reports will probably be light.  Enjoy your summer, and stay out of the hot sun.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY