What If God Was One Of Us

What If God Was One Of Us                          3130

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007-2:00 A.M.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  If you celebrate Christmas, I offer you the best Holiday wishes I can.  If you don't celebrate Christmas, I still wish you a Merry Christmas, because the holiday doesn't discriminate.  It represents the birth of Jesus, and despite what some folks (mostly Republicans) would like you to think, it represents the birth of the Messiah, the salvation of the human race, and the spirit of forgiveness.

Jesus is often thought to represent love, or peace, and in the worst of times, prosperity, but I believe in Christ as salvation.  He is our forgiveness, our bail money for our sins.  And we all are with sin, although some larger than others.

Got under-charged at the store and didn't say anything?  You're a thief.  Doesn't matter if it was $500 or 50 cents, it wasn't yours, and you stole.

Did you ever tell a lie?  Or better yet, did someone tell you something you knew was incorrect and you didn't say anything to save yourself or someone else's skin?  You bore false witness.

I'm not even gonna ask if anyone ever murdered anyone...those are relatively few and far between these days, although my neighborhood is getting to be like the Old West...there are so many make-shift monuments to people who have been killed unnecessarily that a drive up my street looks like a carnival midway, there's so many stuffed animals, ribbons and candles.

Have you coveted your neighbor's wife?  I'm a coveting bastard, and some days I don't even know why.  I think it might be part of the male brain, but enough women do it also that I can't just say it's a manly problem.  I had a discussion today with a friend who told me that a mutual friend of ours is actually cheating on his wife, and we were both stunned, but his defense is that he can't help himself.  Well, actually, it seems that he has been helping himself, and that's the problem.

It's a rough world today, and it's starting to get my goat.  I want to cling to my religion, cling to hope, cling to the idea that things are going to get better, but I'm surrounded daily by reminders that the world is a mess, and it looks as though greed is going to win the day.

We're greedy people, we are.  Maybe I'm just talking about Americans, but maybe all of us are.  I think in this country that Capitalism has gone beyond an economic system and turned into some sort of wicked game.  It's not about free enterprise, it's about seeing how much wealth the staggeringly rich can accumulate, to the duress of the peanut-eaters at the bottom of the cash-flow ladder. 

We've forgotten the ideas of charity and good will.  We've forgotten the lessons that to give out of our abundance is fine, but to give out of our scarcity is to be truly blessed (the widow's mite).  Would our country have to maintain public assistance programs if everyone reached out to their neighbor to make sure they had enough?  No, they wouldn't have to.  Would there be violence in the streets if everyone had a job, a nice place to live, a sense of purpose and community?  No, they wouldn't have to, people only commit violence when they are mentally ill, scared, desperate, hungry, angry or tired.  Folks who are stable in their mind and body, social situation, housing and family structures are usually peaceful.  Can we strive for that?  To make sure that everyone is warm, safe and secure, and able to pitch in to the system to work together?  Isn't that what cities and counties and countries are for?

I don't pretend to have all of the answers.  I used to consider myself pretty well-educated, and recently, I've been discovering that I don't know half of what I need to know, and that half the knowledge I'm carrying around now is either outdated or can be categorized under music or movie trivia, with a little English Literature thrown in for good measure.

But I *do* know this;

Whether you believe in the Bible or not, or the divinity of Jesus Christ, or any god, for that matter, I have found that the Bible contains a lot of good information.  If you were to follow the teachings of the Bible and not concern yourself with the person of Jesus Christ or the history of his life and teachings, you would still live a better life than one led by leaning on your own understanding.

Christ preached humility, poverty, meekness, pureness of heart, and righteousness despite persecution.  And I believe He will save the world, each of us.

It is the most curious of things, that the Lord would come to us, as a child, born in a manger among the beasts, in absolutepoverty, a King who loves us so much that he came down from His throne to be one of us, the meekest, weakest one, and allowed himself to be stoned, whipped, beaten and killed for our sins, as payment for our sins that we would come to the Father and have everlasting life.

Can we save ourselves?  Can we humble ourselves, treat the least of ours as the best, can we be charitable, forgiving, meek?  Can we change our world from a society of "Get as much as you can" to a world where no one goes without, no one hungers, no one shivers, no one cries out because there is no love?

That would be the best Christmas present of all, wouldn't you say?

What If God Was One Of Us

If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with him
In all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?

*And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that
you would have to believe
in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints
and all the prophets (*)

Trying to make his way home
Back up to heaven all alone
Nobody calling on the phone
'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome(*)

Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Shake & Bake

Shake & Bake                                      9785  (2995)

Saturday, December 8, 2007-11:00 A.M.

It's funny how much difference a day makes.  On Thursday, I was writing about how upset I was because my friends at WCMF radio in Rochester were getting downsized, and then the next day, I received news that put everything in perspective...one of my good friends had died.

It was one of those deaths that come out of nowhere...the guy wasn't sickly at all, from outside inspection, he wasn't old, there wasn't any terminal disease he was being treated for.  He was my age, 40, about to turn 41 in just a few weeks.  Matter of fact, based on the bag of prescription medication that I tote around with me on a daily basis (I'm on about eight different types of medication for everything from thyroid disease to cholesterol to high blood pressure...I even take a generic Claritin to clear my sinuses so that my sleep apnea constant air machine I wear when I sleep will work), if I had to bet who would go first, me or him, I would've put the money on me.

But it didn't work out that way.

Mike Glosek was a good guy.  He was a comic from Buffalo, and a friend of mine.  If you want to read up on him, there's a small memorial that was written on him in the Buffalo News, and there's a link to it on the front page of my website at www.ralphtetta.com that will take you right to it.  But that memorial tells about the things that Mike accomplished and doesn't really tell you about the man.

After I left the management team at the Comix Cafe in Rochester back in the summer of 2001, a series of managers came in to run the club.  Mike moved from Buffalo at the request of Ed Bebko, the owner, to be one of those managers.  By the time 2004 rolled around, Ed had taken on a partner in the business who would one day buy him out, and during that time of co-ownership, Ed had requested that both Mike and I help out the new guy, show him the ropes of running a comedy club, and keep the ship sailing in the right direction.

For whatever good or ill, that help seemed to be resented and much of our counsel was rejected.  After a time, I became frustrated and gave up, returning to the road and staying there for the sake of peace of mind and just being tired of always being the target of criticism.  Mike suffered quite a bit, too, and even though he was always a good-spirited person with a mind that leaned toward positive thinking, his customer-service and friendly ways always seemed to be in conflict with a management staff who felt he was giving away the store.  At management meetings, Mike and I would sit on one side of a large table and the other managers would sit on the other.  It was like being on trial every week.  I hated it and bailed, but Mike, out of loyalty to Ed, stayed and took his lumps.  He was a better man than I in that respect.

Mike went by the nickname "Shake 'n' Bake," which I never got the full story where the nickname came from, but he was a true throwback to the golden years of standup comedy.  Mike was the guy who spent as much time in front of the bar as he did behind it, glad-handing customers and really making them feel welcome in the club.  Mike was the guy who made sure everyone had a good time, and it frustrated him when his efforts were thwarted.  He ran the bar on karoake night, "Shake 'n' Bake Wednesdays," and he would bartend and then run out and sing, and when I would get up to sing, the shots of whiskey would start coming.  He knew I wasn't much of a drinker, and I think he wanted me to loosen up.  He wouldn't stop until everyone was having as much fun as he was.

As a comic, he was a true variety act, mixing standup, juggling, magic, and a straitjacket escape that was his closer.  At one point, Mike, Joe Fico (another Rochester comic) and I developed a show called "The Fat Pack" and we worked on putting together a true cabaret show containing music, spotlight comedy sets, and any other things we could throw in.  The show was not supported by the club, out of spite would be my guess, and it closed after just four shows.  But I remember fondly sitting in Mike's living room, notepads out, coming up with comedy bits, working on blocking, and throwing our all into the show.

He and I were a lot alike in many ways.  We were the same age, started doing comedy at the same time, and had a background in club management.  His fanatical love of Billy Joel is paralleled by my fanatical love of Bruce Springsteen.  He loved horror films, while I more favored comic books.  And we both lived and died with the Buffalo Bills, although Mike loved the Buffalo Sabres hockey team more, even to the point that he was layed out in his replica Sabres jersey.  We both did magic, although I gave it up at a young age, moving to bass guitar as an outlet for my stage jones.  And we both have young daughters, although Mike also had a son who I was not aware of.

But when we spoke about things spiritual, that's when we really clicked.  Mike enjoyed listening to Joyce Meier, a televangelist who is on TV quite a bit.  He quoted her often, and one of his favorite passages from the Bible was the urging to be "more than a conqueror," and he used that to get him through the difficult times at the club and the conflict with some of the people there.

His door was always open to me, he loved socializing, he loved to be around people who were enjoying themselves, and when he finally succumbed, it was to heart disease.  An autopsy showed that his heart had enlarged and he had a major heart attack while he slept.  That's no way for a 40-year-old man to go, and it has been a real kick in the gut for me.  I've been working with doctors and nurses and nutritionists in an attempt to reverse the many years of neglect I've shown my body, and Mike's death has become a backdrop for my own mortality and while I'm thankful that I now have medical attention that will prevent me from suffering a similar fate, I am angry and upset and conflicted that Mike will never have the same chance, the same opportunity to correct whatever neglect led to his demise.

I wanted to write about this just after I got the news, last Friday, but I was choked up and couldn't focus.  Then after the wake on Tuesday, I wanted to write, but I was overcome with emotion and felt I wouldn't be able to do Mike justice.  Today I guess I'm more lucid and I've had time to properly digest this loss, but I still don't feel properly prepared to fully explain how wonderful Mike was and how lousy I feel that he's gone, and that I didn't spend enough time with him because I felt that he would always be around, a joyful constant in a world that is growing greyer and colder by degrees.

A little less than a week before he died, Mike wrote me a MySpace message that basically said "call me," and I didn't call him right away, waiting for a time when I would be settled, in a hotel room somewhere, and have time to talk.  That time never came, and I have more than my share of guilt about it.  After all the loss I've experienced this year, you'd think that I'd be a little more aware that there is no time better than today to make that call, there is no tomorrow, and the only joy you will have in this life is the joy that you are willing to seize.  But I guess I have to keep getting the buckets of cold water until I finally get it.

Tonight, I will have a drink for my friend, and I will hate myself a little that he's not there to pour it.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY