Evil Woman                                   8371  (1591)

Friday, June 13, 2007-10:30 P.M.

Enjoying a little Summer break at home with the wife and daughter, I decided to add another blog.  It's been 11 days since my last one (according to no less than a few adoring readers), so I guess I owe you all one.

When last I wrote, I mentioned that I would possibly detail all of the new changes at the Comix Cafe, my home club in Rochester, NY, and how I thought these changes would lead to the demise of the club.  Well, I have deliberated on this for quite some time, and I decided that facts speak for themselves, so I'll just lay the facts that I know, and I'll let my opinions fill in the blanks.

I headlined the Comix Cafe from Thursday, July 5th through Sunday, July 8th.  In the months prior to the booking, I received three itineraries listing the showtimes, location, etc, and most importantly, my pay for the week.  The first itinerary showed us performing on Wednesday, July 4th, a holiday.  The second itinerary showed a removal of the Wednesday show, and my pay went down accordingly.  I have no problem with this.

Then a third itinerary was issued, and the pay went down again.  I spoke with a comedy buddy who had headlined the club within the previous few weeks, and he concurred that the pay had indeed went down.  I was having my pay cut for no other reason than the whim of the club.

Well, there's no written contract, you're basically an employee at will at that point, and your choice is to either take the reduced pay, or allow yourself to be righteously indignant and be replaced.  I decided in favor of my wife and child, and took the reduced pay, because they cannot sustain themselves on my righteous indignation.

I had requested a feature act, Laura Lu, formerly of the Detroit area, and Laura was replaced (or to be honest, never scheduled to begin with) by Annette Lorenzo, who I understand is the new "financial advisor" for the Comix Cafe.  To me, new manager means another managerial paycheck, so I have my suspicions as to where my cut in pay was reallocated.

As the new Financial Advisor, Annette has put some new rules into place.  For the first rule, comics no longer get subsidized food and drinks at the club.  That's not a big deal for me, as I live in Rochester and I can shop and cook for myself when I'm home, also I don't drink alcohol anymore because of medical concerns and health.  But it's pretty chintzy to take that benefit away from out-of-town acts, especially in the light of their pay being cut.  I consider it niggardly and cheap.

When I worked for Ed Bebko, the founder of the Comix Cafe with his partner Rob Lederman, Ed explained it to me; comics are an underpaid lot to begin with, and many of them roll into town without a dollar to their names.  The clubs pay them the smallest amount they can get away with, which is a business decision, not an idictment of talent or ability.  Given that, Ed would say, the least we could do is feed the poor bastards.  We would give them a $45 stipend a week for food and beverage, and anything over that amount, they would be expected to pay for themselves.  Over a five day period, that would allow each comic $9 a day to feed themselves, and soft drinks were no charge, as they are ridiculously inexpensive to begin with.  And that $9 worth of food isn't even $9, it's more like $3 when the actual cost is counted and retail markup is eliminated.  So the decision to eliminate that benefit to comedians costs the club $3 a day, times two comics, times five days...$30 a week.  If the club is so desperate that $30 a week, levied on the backs of the performers, will bail them out of dire straits, then I would predict it is a club that is faltering closely towards closing, wouldn't you agree?

Annette supposedly maintains, if reports I hear are true, that "No club in the country provides food benefits to comedians," and that means that all the clubs I've been playing, that provide meals to their out-of-town comics at either complimentary or reduced costs, are hallucinations of my fevered imagination.  And while I don't want to pat myself on the back, I feel I've worked more clubs than Annette, which is to say, more than the one that I know currently has any use for her.  The industry standard seems to be one that allows the comics at least the same food deduction offered to the restaurant staff, which ranges anywhere from a 15% discount to free.  The Comedy Zone in Jacksonville, Florida is particularly generous, offering a 25% discount on top of a $30 gift card for the week, meaning that food is discounted, then comped, and anything you spend over $30 is discounted as well.  At Dr. Grins in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the comics receive a 25% break on foods and beverages.  In Battle Creek, Michigan, Gary Fields would rather break off one of his own fingers before he charged me for a hamburger, he'd be so insulted.  The Cleveland Improv offers a meal every night you're working, and soft drinks are always no charge.  And at the Laugh In Comedy Cafe in Fort Myers, Florida, Joe Galanis treats the comics to a meal on him on Thursday, and then on the weekend, a discount goes into place.  Every club is different, and offers what they think is fair, but they almost always offer something.

Ready for more?  There's a box of bagged snacks in the bar, the kind of snacks that you can buy at a supermarket or wholesale club and throw a small portion of chips or chee*tos into your kids' lunchbox, the kind that retail (RETAIL!) for about a quarter a bag, if that.  Annette has them in the bar selling for a buck each.  And I counted them each night I performed, and they haven't sold not a one.  Part of that reason, I think, is that the bags sit in the box, tops up, and the box is leaned over at an angle, meaning you can see the colors of the bags, but not read the brand names of the snacks.  Some of the staff, I heard, wanted to get a rack to help display the snacks, but Annette ranted that they were fine the way they were.

Well, in my opinion, they're not fine.  The Comix Cafe is a paper house.  In the business, that means that they give away the door, offering free tickets for non-special shows, in the interest of selling food and beverage to their clients.  Comix Cafe offers a full menu.  In the years past when I served as a manager at the Cafe, I asked Ed about snacks in the bar, and his exact words were "Why should we compete against ourselves?"  The wisdom was correct then and it's correct now, but no one is wise enough (no pun intended) to eliminate the chips in the bar (actually, that's a great fucking pun, and I will let it stand).  Even if the whole box sold out every week, that's another 50 bucks in the register, minus the cost of the chips.  Not exactly high finance, eh?

How about this one, then?  There is a server at the Cafe, and her name is Petra.  Petra is a cute girl, and she's been there for a while.  I heard that Annettespecifically forbade Petra to wait on a stage-side section the week that she was featuring at the Cafe, because Petra makes her look ugly by comparison.  I won't even go into this in detail, because it smacks of discrimination, and frankly, it's an issue for the attorneys to discuss.  Petra told me that she was not told that specifically, but through management, and of course, no one is going to freely admit to making those statements, as they are actionable in a court of law.  The front sections of a comedy club are the first sections to be seated and are the sections where a server can make the best money, especially when the servers in a comedy club face the extra challenge not confronted by their conventional restaurant service peers; unlike a regular, family-style restaurant, a comedy club server's section only gets seated once per show.  Their grubstake, their ability to make an income, is rooted solely in what they can farm out of their section, and when the show's over, what they got is what they get.  Front section people are the folks who arrive early, order dinners, and drink throughout the show.  Back section folks arrive later, and maybe have a few drinks, and then disappear into the night.  The club tries it's best to rotate servers through these sections in an attempt to make an equitable run at offering servers the same opportunities to make money, but I guess under the new Financial Advisor's rules, you aren't allowed to make a decent living if you're too pretty.

As a performer, Annette has pretty much become an "in-joke" with all the bookers I work with and speak to.  She currently doesn't work the road and has irritated many bookers to the point where they won't even take her calls anymore, much less put her into any of the rooms they book.  Annette's major fault is impatience.  Building an act, and a rapport with the audience, is a skill that takes time, and nothing but time.  Through no fault of her own, she was introduced to the road early, and now has a differing opinion of her skills and talents that other, nonobjective parties do.  Nonetheless, she has found nothing but dead ends in her attempts to get booked, and now has found a vulnerable partner in the Comix Cafe.

Annette used her position as tax preparer and financial advisor to become my middle act this past week.  All but two of the shows were unwatchable, and I think after Friday's lateshow, if she didn't leave the building in tears, she is in more self-denial than I can even describe.  As she left the stage after her Friday late show set, she walked past me and said "good luck," and I said "thanks, I think I'll be o.k." and got an applause break within the first minute.  I've only worked 19 years to develop that skill, and when I take a booking, I feel it's because I've earned it, not because I've done someone a favor in another resepect and I deserve something in return.  She's loud, caustic, and picks on people in the audience for no reason.  She comes off as very unlikeable, and wonders why she's not getting the response she thinks she deserves.  Tape your set, Annette, and play it back at normal volume.  You'll want to stab your eardrums out with steak knives, if you're not already completely deaf.

The latest rumour running around the grapevine is that Annette is putting the kibosh on any out-of-state feature acts at the club.  This is going to open opportunities for some New York City folk, but probably not the New York City comics that should be getting the look; it's most likely a clique of comics at Annette's level and the whole thing is a "gig-trading" scheme whereby you book me and I'll book you.

Normally, I wouldn't care what kind of machinations the club would deem worthy to participate in, but this is a policy that is going to directly affect the comics from Rochester who work elsewhere.  Our good names are going to be besmirched because comics from Michigan or Ohio or anywhere else can no longer perform in Rochester.  Would comics, who suddenly find themselves blackballed in Rochester for no other reason than their place of residence, be wrong if they went back to their home clubs and expressed some dismay?  Would those clubs be wrong if they started treating Rochester comics like pariahs in return?

I say no, and sadly so; that one comic who finds herself painted into a corner by her impatience and arrogance would cause other hard-working comics to be shaded in such a way would be unconscionable, unchampionable, and evil.

One of the more interesting exchanges that Annette and I had this week concerned a post I wrote on Roadcomics.com about a sitcom based on a comedy club.  I wrote that the first character I would write would be the "damaged female" that most comedy clubs seem to have, who has gone through a divorce, bad life or whatever, and becomes like the mother to the waitstaff.  In her arrogance and paranoia, Annette actually thought I was writing about her, forgetting that I have 19 years in the business to draw upon and reference.  Every club in Rochester for the last two decades (wait, let me list them....Yuks Yuk's, Funnybone, Zinger's, Hiccup's, Comix Cafe) has had one female working in it that was the mother hen to the waitstaff, and the day I call Annette the waitstaff's mother at the Comix Cafe is the day I eat my keyboard...not only is she not the waitstaff's mother, they fucking hate her.

Will this blog arouse Annette's rage?  Absolutely.  Moreso because the allegations are true and irrefutable than any sort of wrongdoing on my part.  In a previous blog, I intimated the details of Annette's misbehavior at a gig booked by Mike Dambra, and related that my statement to her, when she asked me "You're headlining, take me with you as your feature," I replied "Not until you make things right with Mike Dambra."

This refusal lead to a potchkeyed response letter, supposedly penned by Annette's boyfriend Charles, promising a boycott of Mike's North American tour and other hollow threats.  If you would like to read the letter, and Mike's response, they are posted at www.myspace.com/picklesplace under the title "I'm a raciest!" which is "racist" mispelled.

Regardless, Annette has it in her mind that Mike and I have somehow blackballed her from comedy, which is as far from the truth as could be.  In real life, neither of us are willing to put our professional standings on the line and reccommend her for comedy work or take her in a supporting role, and that is somehow interpreted as being "blackballed."  It is a paranoid way to look at things, an arrogant and selfish way, born of the statement "I want" and in no way respectful of the statement "I deserve" or "I earned."

You make your bed and you sleep in it, I say.  And God forbid the club one day closes and you have no bargaining chip with which to work, and you find yourself and your numbers, cold and alone, your dreams shattered on the rocks of your own ego and pride.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

P.S.  Oh, and did I mention that the "Funniest Woman in Rochester" contest was fixed?  Two seperate judges told me that they were told they could vote for any of the four finalists, as long as they voted for Annette.  So now she has a credit to hang her hat on.  Now all she has to do is get a hat.