With Teeth

With Teeth                     8219  (1439)

Tuesday, July 3, 2007-11:30 A.M.

Wow, I'm back home from the big Florida tour and frankly, I don't even know how I made it.

The weekend at the Laugh-In Comedy Cafe was great, and we had decent shows despite rainy weather and an early week wildfire that threatened nearby Cape Coral, Florida.

The weekend was not without it's "comedy moments," those little episodes that seem like they could only happen around a comedy club; why there's never been a sitcom about a comedy club, I'll never know.  Anyway, my favorite moment was called "The Case of the Missing Teeth."

I was at a merchadise table outside the club when an elderly couple came out of the club, fixing to call it a night.  It was first show Friday, and Al Romero, the headliner, was still on stage.  The couple smiled and shook my hand, told me they enjoyed the evening, and then headed to their car.  A few minutes later, the gentlemen, clearly perturbed, came back and spoke to one of the security guys.  It seems his wife had lost her lower set of dentures and thought she might have left them in the club.

The security guy disappeared back into the club and the gentleman began to speak to me, venting about his wife and how stupid it is to lose your teeth, and that she must have left them wherever her brains got lost to, and things of that nature.  Then he pointed to my CD's and asked me how much my "tapes" were.  I ignored the irony and sold him a couple.  Then the wife appears and starts asking me for help, and I have to explain that I'm the comic, I don't have access to the kitchen or the lost and found, or wherever her teeth might have toddled off to.

As she's walking away, I notice a semi-circular bulge in her front shirt pocket.

Are you with me?  I grab the husband and tell him, "Check her shirt pocket."

He grabs her, spins her around, and reaches into the pocket, and lo and behold, voila, the TEETH!

"Here's your teeth, DUMMY!" he says, clearly frustrated, embarassed and wanting to get home with his very drunk wife.

Now, I'm not for public humiliation and name-calling, but the woman was very drunk...she was doing that drunk crab-walk where you're moving but not going forward, just scuttling side-to-side.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful compared to this.  I split the drive up from Florida to Rochester in two chunks, doing half the trip on Sunday and stopping over in Wytheville, Virginia, and finishing the trip home yesterday.  It seems like some sort of a dream that I made it home through thunderstorms, traffic backed up due to traffic accidents, negotiating scores of police cars taking advantage of one of two July 4th weekends this year, and gasoline prices that fluctuated anywhere between 2.69 (Virginia) and 3.11 (New York and Pennsylvania) per gallon.

Tonight, it's back to work at the open mic at Comix Cafe, and maybe tomorrow I'll gather my thoughts and start detailing the events that are unfolding at the club that in my estimation, as a seasoned comedy club professional, will certainly kill the club just as dead as it's late, lamented predecessor in Buffalo.

Stay tuned.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY