Thursday, December 18, 2008-11:30 A.M.
What if you were about to die but didn't know it? Just didn't have a clue?
That's where I was last week, on Tuesday night. I was hanging out at Danny Liberto's open mic at the Otter Lodge and hanging around with friends, doing some comedy, having a whiskey and living my life. And I had a swollen foot.
It was no big deal. It didn't hurt. I'd had some leg problems going back to Halloween, but I was getting around. I thought it was fallen arches. I had fallen arches before, and you recover. You do the stretching exercises, put some arch supports in your shoes, and away you go.
I'm diabetic, so foot care is always right in the forefront. My wife said "You need to get that looked at." I needed to make an appointment to see my doctor anyway, as I had prescriptions that he didn't want to renew until he saw me again. I got one that very morning.
When I arrived, he looked at the foot, and after I described my month-long leg pain, he decided that I was in danger of having a blood clot. I was sent hustling over to the ultrasound department at Rochester General Hospital, where I was born 42 years ago, and the ultrasound showed that indeed, I had a blood clot in my left leg that was restricting blood flow and causing my left foot to swell.
Blood clots are tricky things, I've learned. They float up and down the leg, sometimes they get stuck, and sometimes they go right to the lungs and give you what's called a pulmonary embolism. That's a bad thing. The lungs actually protect clots from going to the brain, but sometimes they do, and that's called a stroke.
I was admitted immediately.
My wife joined me, and before I knew it, I was in a wheelchair and going through hospital admissions. The woman who checked me in, Luda, was an older lady and very nice. After talking for a while, she recognized me. She had come to a show at the Comix Cafe (my old home club) on a Sunday night, they sat in the front, and I picked on her husband. After looking at the photographs on her office wall, the whole night came back to me; it was a Sunday, they sat to the left of the stage, so my right looking out to the audience, and her husband had his chair turned away, which is why I gave him grief to begin with. I thought, "what are the odds?" Well, I was in my hometown, where I've worked steadily for ten years or more, so I guess the odds were pretty good.
I was wheeled into a room on the fourth floor, into the area they call 4200. I was in a shared room with another patient, a gentleman named Rick who was recovering from back surgery. Rick had a lot of visitors, and long story short, his daughter Lisa recognized my voice from behind the curtain that separated us as we had worked together in the research department of WCMF radio about 15 years ago. We laughed and caught up, and that was two episodes of being recognized in the short span of just an hour or two.
I was due to start treatment Wednesday night with an intravenous drip of a drug called Heparin, which is a blood thinner. The young lady, whose name escapes me, had to put the IV into my left arm, and apparently I have rhino skin or something, because she had a hell of a time getting the needle through my dermis, and then the vein kept "jumping" or "rolling" and she couldn't get the IV in.
I've never been good with medical procedures and I hate needles (I'd be the lousiest junkie ever...."Does heroin come in a pill?") and while the nurse dug and dug into my arm, I started going into traumatic shock. I know, because I've gone into shock before...the symptoms are basic. First, there's the feeling of nausea. Next, there's the cold sweat. Finally, shortness of breath takes over. The nurse removed the needle and they elevated my legs and instructed me to breathe. That's how worked-over I was, they had to remind me to breathe. If you have to be reminded to breath, some hellacious shit is happening to you.
Once I was back to normal, she tried again, and this attempt was far more successful. I ate dinner and sent my wife home with a list of some personal items I would need for my hospital stay; a book I'm reading ("Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman), a sudoku book, underwear (to help maintain some sense of modesty under the hospital's gowns, who are designed for no one's comfort or pleasure) and personal items. I chatted with Rick through the curtain, as he was on some sort of steroids and was having trouble falling asleep. I had my own problems; I'd never been hospitalized before, much less for a "deep vein thrombosis," and a description of it as "going in through the groin area" did nothing for my customer confidence. They brought me water in a Styrofoam cup, and after I drank the water, I nervously inscribed the cup with a ballpoint pen, writing down my wife and daughter's names, a quote from Winston Churchill's "we shall fight them in the fields, we shall defend our island" speech, song lyrics, and joke that I wrote for Mitch Hedberg that he died before he could consider using. I was scheduled for my procedure at 8:00 A.M., and drifted off to sleep around midnight.
The next morning, a barrage of nurses, doctors, food service workers and the like started invading the room, quashing any thoughts I had of sleeping in. They woke me at 7 A.M., an hour before my procedure. Well, like in show business, very little in the hospital starts on time. I went to the procedure about quarter to twelve, only shy of four hours later from the scheduled time. I didn't mind, because any delay of a needle in my groin was fine with me.
I was rolled down to the room where such procedures are done, and they flopped me onto an operating table, face down. I joked around with the team that was working on me, and to my surprise, they did not have to go into my groin, but rather, through the back of my knee and down near my ankle. I'm not going to pretend to be any sort of medical professional, but basically, the procedure was to blast the clot with anticoagulant and then soak the pieces with anticoagulant, hoping to dissolve them. Long story short, the procedure went so well, instead of sending me to intensive care for monitoring (the original plan), I was sent back to the recovery room in 4200. The only problem was that they had given away my bed. I wound up in a private room, where I spent the next four and half days.
Pamela came to visit me, bringing me all the things I would need for my stay, including my laptop. The hospital had wireless Internet (thank God) and daily newspaper delivery to the rooms on request. Honestly, it was like being in a hotel they way they took care of me. I met a great number of people, all who were exceptional in their care of me, including Kristina, Brandi, Robert, Julie, Jessica S., Mallory, Sarah and Alex. Everyone was amazing, and no one ever left my room without asking me if there was anything I needed or that they could get for me.
I sleep with a CPAP machine because I have sleep apnea, and someone from Respiratory Services showed up every day to make sure that things were working properly. Someone from Nutrition came and went over the daily menu with me, and explained to me that if there was something on the menu I didn't like, that I could call and get something switched around, and if I was still hungry, there was room service available until 8:00 P.M. I decided that their menu (customized to my diabetic profile) was nutritionally balanced enough that I didn't want to mess with it, and never took them up on their room service offer. Pam brought me some Combos pretzel snacks at my request, because the one rap on hospital food that I have is everything is very soft and there's no variation in texture. I guess if my client base had an average age somewhere between 65 and deceased, I'd slop out the creamed corn, too.
I was released on Tuesday afternoon after the Coumadin I was receiving hit the proper level, and I was excited to be going home. All day on Tuesday and Wednesday, I was weak as a kitten, my muscles protesting due to their inactivity for almost a week. I think I'll be back to full fighting strength this weekend, when I have two gigs close to home, but I had to cancel my Western Canada trip for January that I was very much looking forward to, because I have to go to a blood lab twice a week as they monitor my anticoagulants and make sure that the concentration is therapeutic enough to make a difference, but not so effective that I bleed to death when I nick myself shaving.
I have a feeling it's going to be a long, cold winter as I adjust to this new wrinkle in my health profile, but I'm glad to be alive and I've started catching up on lost time, putting up Christmas cards here at the apartment, fishing the small artificial tree down from the attic, and getting ready to enjoy the holiday season.
Thanks to everyone who checked in on me while I was languishing in the hospital, to everyone on my health care staff (don't forget to come and see me at the Comedy Club in Webster [www.thecomedyclub.us] on December 26th and 27th), and I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
White Christmas (Crash Test Dummies)
Monday, December 8, 2008-4:00 P.M.
Wow, it feels like life is a little back to normal.
I'm home from visiting my mother in Florida, and the three days were just full of phone calls, doctor's appointments, trips to the hardware store, and a lot of love, helping my mother mend after her horrific car accident.
Frankly, the details of the accident were grim. The accident occurred at night, and she was struck by two separate vehicles, both on her driver's side door, the first spinning her around so the second could strike her again. I don't know the details, but as I understand it, both vehicles were going at least 55 mph (mom's Jeep Cherokee going much slower as it entered the highway), the impact gave her a concussion, knocked her wig off of her head, knocked her glasses off of her face, and she lost a lot of blood before being taken by helicopter to Orlando Regional Medical Center.
Today, she wears an arm sling to help relieve the pressure on her crushed clavicle (near the collarbone) and she features no other signs of being in an accident at all except for some stitches on the left side of her head, a few inches above the temple.
According to my sister, who had time to investigate the wrecked remains of the Jeep, the floor compartment on the driver's side of the vehicle was crushed to within eight inches in width, and yet Mom has no leg injuries.
My sister went immediately to Florida from her home in North Carolina to be with mom, and when she left, I arrived and stayed for a few days. My brother Christopher relieved me, and stayed until today, when my sister arrives and he'll go back to Syracuse. I'm on the next stay, whenever that may be.
We lost our father almost two years ago. I guess that fresh scar moved us all a little quicker to rush to Mom's side. I was just there a month ago, cooling my heels on a few days off from my college tour, and taking advantage of the rent-free guest room. We always have a good visit, and this was my third time visiting Mom this year. Having the gypsy job that I do offers me more flexibility to make such excursions, and now that I'm in my 40's, I treasure the time with family so much more than I used to when I was a young buck trying to make a name for myself, and now I'm just trying to make a buck, having discovered that my name has limited value.
Mom's name is Linda. But to a generation of comedians working in Rochester, she was always "Mom." When I started doing open mics at Yuk Yuk's in the Olde Rochesterville section of town, mom used to tag along, and to my horror, sit in the front row at open mic night. Then she would talk to every comic that addressed her from the stage, completely obliterating any credibility I would have as a performer. When you're a comic, you're supposed to be this hip, swinging smart-ass, not the guy who's mom is sitting in the front row! But the truth be told, I wasn't hip, I didn't swing, and I was more smart than smart-ass, which doesn't always translate to laughs. I protested, but Mom kept coming out to shows, until she was a staple, a household name among the comics. I just had to get used to it.
My mom loved comedy. For mother's day, I used to give my poor, tired father a break and take Mom to the Yuk Yuk's in Niagara Falls, a 90 minute drive, and we'd see the comedians there on a Sunday night. She loved those shows, and I enjoyed using my connections as a Yuk Yuk's comic to talk my way into the comps.
A bunch of us "new jacks" formed an improv troupe, The Inner Loop. We started doing improv comedy on our own night at Yuk Yuk's, by that time the club had gone independent and was named "Hiccup's." Mom didn't attend many of our shows, but sometimes accompanied us on out-of-town gigs (there weren't many of them) as her schedule allowed. We had posters made up to promote our shows, and after one show, we all autographed one of them and gave it to Mom, and she still has the thing, along with one of our group headshots....we changed personnel so many times, I can't tell you what version of the group it was, but the headshot is framed and sitting on her dresser.
The group has long since been scattered to the four winds (our one long-standing gig, the First Night celebration in Binghamton, NY passed us over this year, probably because they'd had us four years in a row and needed some variety) but they live forever at my mom's house, on the dresser and on the wall.
Well, as the situation would turn out, Mom has let some of her finances get away from her in the past couple of years, and my sister and brother and I have used much of the time with her to "untangle the Christmas lights." I wonder sometimes, if this non-fatal (yet scary, violent and jarring) car accident wasn't God intervening and saying to the three of us "your mother needs help, get down to Florida!" I believe in God and believe that when terrible things happen to people, they happen for a distinct reason. It's like the story of Lazarus in the Bible; Lazarus was sick and everyone called Jesus to go and help his friend, but Jesus dilly-dallied for a few days and when he got there, Lazarus was dead. Jesus then performed on of the miracles, raising Lazarus from the dead, as if to say "your request of me is so small; you ask me to heal the sick, when I am willing and able to raise the dead for you." Jesus let a terrible thing happen to reaffirm his love (and power) to the people that trusted him. I guess God could have just reached my brother and sister and I in a different way, but this car accident was his way of ringing the bell. It certainly got our attention, and we've all gone to visit and started the heavy lifting of getting mom back on track. (The story of Lazarus is in John 11:1-45 if you're interested in reading the story).
So, I made it back to Rochester in time to fulfill my weekend obligations, a Friday morning appointment and a Friday night show in Pennellville, NY with Steve Natarelli and Annette Lorenzo that was just smashing. We were working at Monirae's in Pennellville, which is just outside of Syracuse, NY. It was a bitter cold night, but we had a good crowd and they turned out to be a lively bunch. I was headlining and early in my set, addressed a heckler that wound up being the owner. I went deep into him, prompting one of the servers to ask me to stop talking about her parents having sex...the two servers were the owners' daughters, and that lead to a whole other line of comedy. I had a great time, sold a good number of souvenir CD's after the show, and look forward to my next booking with Danny Liberto and The Comedy Company (http://www.noclowns.com/), a New Year's Eve show in Corning, New York.
Saturday, I was the entertainment for a holiday office party for Hospitality Restaurant Group, the owners and operators of the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut/Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants in Upstate New York. I had a great time, even with a small sound system problem (the people in the back couldn't hear me) that was corrected by Johnny-on-the-spot DJ Steven Turner. I had requested a long, corded microphone because I do some bits with the microphone cord, but the room was set up the long way, so the cordless mic that Steven provided was more appropriate. I set them up with some "canned" material, and then went into the stuff they really liked....going through the audience and improvising material with them. Without going into too much detail, it was a great experience, the big boss seemed delighted. Anyhow, Steven was the guy who recommended me to the group in the first place, having seen me do my thing at another event, and turnabout is fair play, so if you're interested in a top-notch DJ, a real craftsman who doesn't just come in and spin tunes but someone who really controls the mood and tempo of an event, Steven Turner at Turner Music Productions is your guy. The website is http://www.tmpdj.com/ or call him at 585-663-3948. His website features audio samples of his work as well as an avalanche of testimonial letters from happy clients.
I took Sunday off to decompress and slept like I never slept before. My mother-in-law was watching my daughter and my wife was off at a craft show, so I was able to sleep into the afternoon. After being non-stop go for ten days, I needed the break. I resisted the temptation to watch the Buffalo Bills play their game in Toronto (that I *knew* they were going to lose) and instead, picked my daughter up and took her shopping and out to lunch and spent some good "daddy" time with her. I figure after being away from home so much, she deserved my undivided attention, and we had a good time. We even went to Taco Bell and had a nice lunch....Harmony's a sucker for the beans!
This week, it's a long week off to try and get the house back in order, and Saturday I'm working a Christmas party up in the North Country of New York...in the town of Massena, where I've played a few times before in my 20-year career. I don't know the name of the group or the showtime or any of the details because I'm waiting on the itinerary from the booker, but it's a full week away and I'm not gonna sweat it until Thursday....that leaves only one more business day to reasonably get in touch with the booker, who is also a comic, and they will probably be on the road and hard to reach after Thursday.
So in the meantime, it's drag out the tree, put up the garland, light the candles, do the dishes, all that good holiday stuff, and start getting into the spirit of the season!
Here's hoping that you don't have to be prodded by a catastrophe to visit your loved ones, or reach out and contact them. Cherish them while you have them, especially this time of year.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Wow, it feels like life is a little back to normal.
I'm home from visiting my mother in Florida, and the three days were just full of phone calls, doctor's appointments, trips to the hardware store, and a lot of love, helping my mother mend after her horrific car accident.
Frankly, the details of the accident were grim. The accident occurred at night, and she was struck by two separate vehicles, both on her driver's side door, the first spinning her around so the second could strike her again. I don't know the details, but as I understand it, both vehicles were going at least 55 mph (mom's Jeep Cherokee going much slower as it entered the highway), the impact gave her a concussion, knocked her wig off of her head, knocked her glasses off of her face, and she lost a lot of blood before being taken by helicopter to Orlando Regional Medical Center.
Today, she wears an arm sling to help relieve the pressure on her crushed clavicle (near the collarbone) and she features no other signs of being in an accident at all except for some stitches on the left side of her head, a few inches above the temple.
According to my sister, who had time to investigate the wrecked remains of the Jeep, the floor compartment on the driver's side of the vehicle was crushed to within eight inches in width, and yet Mom has no leg injuries.
My sister went immediately to Florida from her home in North Carolina to be with mom, and when she left, I arrived and stayed for a few days. My brother Christopher relieved me, and stayed until today, when my sister arrives and he'll go back to Syracuse. I'm on the next stay, whenever that may be.
We lost our father almost two years ago. I guess that fresh scar moved us all a little quicker to rush to Mom's side. I was just there a month ago, cooling my heels on a few days off from my college tour, and taking advantage of the rent-free guest room. We always have a good visit, and this was my third time visiting Mom this year. Having the gypsy job that I do offers me more flexibility to make such excursions, and now that I'm in my 40's, I treasure the time with family so much more than I used to when I was a young buck trying to make a name for myself, and now I'm just trying to make a buck, having discovered that my name has limited value.
Mom's name is Linda. But to a generation of comedians working in Rochester, she was always "Mom." When I started doing open mics at Yuk Yuk's in the Olde Rochesterville section of town, mom used to tag along, and to my horror, sit in the front row at open mic night. Then she would talk to every comic that addressed her from the stage, completely obliterating any credibility I would have as a performer. When you're a comic, you're supposed to be this hip, swinging smart-ass, not the guy who's mom is sitting in the front row! But the truth be told, I wasn't hip, I didn't swing, and I was more smart than smart-ass, which doesn't always translate to laughs. I protested, but Mom kept coming out to shows, until she was a staple, a household name among the comics. I just had to get used to it.
My mom loved comedy. For mother's day, I used to give my poor, tired father a break and take Mom to the Yuk Yuk's in Niagara Falls, a 90 minute drive, and we'd see the comedians there on a Sunday night. She loved those shows, and I enjoyed using my connections as a Yuk Yuk's comic to talk my way into the comps.
A bunch of us "new jacks" formed an improv troupe, The Inner Loop. We started doing improv comedy on our own night at Yuk Yuk's, by that time the club had gone independent and was named "Hiccup's." Mom didn't attend many of our shows, but sometimes accompanied us on out-of-town gigs (there weren't many of them) as her schedule allowed. We had posters made up to promote our shows, and after one show, we all autographed one of them and gave it to Mom, and she still has the thing, along with one of our group headshots....we changed personnel so many times, I can't tell you what version of the group it was, but the headshot is framed and sitting on her dresser.
The group has long since been scattered to the four winds (our one long-standing gig, the First Night celebration in Binghamton, NY passed us over this year, probably because they'd had us four years in a row and needed some variety) but they live forever at my mom's house, on the dresser and on the wall.
Well, as the situation would turn out, Mom has let some of her finances get away from her in the past couple of years, and my sister and brother and I have used much of the time with her to "untangle the Christmas lights." I wonder sometimes, if this non-fatal (yet scary, violent and jarring) car accident wasn't God intervening and saying to the three of us "your mother needs help, get down to Florida!" I believe in God and believe that when terrible things happen to people, they happen for a distinct reason. It's like the story of Lazarus in the Bible; Lazarus was sick and everyone called Jesus to go and help his friend, but Jesus dilly-dallied for a few days and when he got there, Lazarus was dead. Jesus then performed on of the miracles, raising Lazarus from the dead, as if to say "your request of me is so small; you ask me to heal the sick, when I am willing and able to raise the dead for you." Jesus let a terrible thing happen to reaffirm his love (and power) to the people that trusted him. I guess God could have just reached my brother and sister and I in a different way, but this car accident was his way of ringing the bell. It certainly got our attention, and we've all gone to visit and started the heavy lifting of getting mom back on track. (The story of Lazarus is in John 11:1-45 if you're interested in reading the story).
So, I made it back to Rochester in time to fulfill my weekend obligations, a Friday morning appointment and a Friday night show in Pennellville, NY with Steve Natarelli and Annette Lorenzo that was just smashing. We were working at Monirae's in Pennellville, which is just outside of Syracuse, NY. It was a bitter cold night, but we had a good crowd and they turned out to be a lively bunch. I was headlining and early in my set, addressed a heckler that wound up being the owner. I went deep into him, prompting one of the servers to ask me to stop talking about her parents having sex...the two servers were the owners' daughters, and that lead to a whole other line of comedy. I had a great time, sold a good number of souvenir CD's after the show, and look forward to my next booking with Danny Liberto and The Comedy Company (http://www.noclowns.com/), a New Year's Eve show in Corning, New York.
Saturday, I was the entertainment for a holiday office party for Hospitality Restaurant Group, the owners and operators of the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut/Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants in Upstate New York. I had a great time, even with a small sound system problem (the people in the back couldn't hear me) that was corrected by Johnny-on-the-spot DJ Steven Turner. I had requested a long, corded microphone because I do some bits with the microphone cord, but the room was set up the long way, so the cordless mic that Steven provided was more appropriate. I set them up with some "canned" material, and then went into the stuff they really liked....going through the audience and improvising material with them. Without going into too much detail, it was a great experience, the big boss seemed delighted. Anyhow, Steven was the guy who recommended me to the group in the first place, having seen me do my thing at another event, and turnabout is fair play, so if you're interested in a top-notch DJ, a real craftsman who doesn't just come in and spin tunes but someone who really controls the mood and tempo of an event, Steven Turner at Turner Music Productions is your guy. The website is http://www.tmpdj.com/ or call him at 585-663-3948. His website features audio samples of his work as well as an avalanche of testimonial letters from happy clients.
I took Sunday off to decompress and slept like I never slept before. My mother-in-law was watching my daughter and my wife was off at a craft show, so I was able to sleep into the afternoon. After being non-stop go for ten days, I needed the break. I resisted the temptation to watch the Buffalo Bills play their game in Toronto (that I *knew* they were going to lose) and instead, picked my daughter up and took her shopping and out to lunch and spent some good "daddy" time with her. I figure after being away from home so much, she deserved my undivided attention, and we had a good time. We even went to Taco Bell and had a nice lunch....Harmony's a sucker for the beans!
This week, it's a long week off to try and get the house back in order, and Saturday I'm working a Christmas party up in the North Country of New York...in the town of Massena, where I've played a few times before in my 20-year career. I don't know the name of the group or the showtime or any of the details because I'm waiting on the itinerary from the booker, but it's a full week away and I'm not gonna sweat it until Thursday....that leaves only one more business day to reasonably get in touch with the booker, who is also a comic, and they will probably be on the road and hard to reach after Thursday.
So in the meantime, it's drag out the tree, put up the garland, light the candles, do the dishes, all that good holiday stuff, and start getting into the spirit of the season!
Here's hoping that you don't have to be prodded by a catastrophe to visit your loved ones, or reach out and contact them. Cherish them while you have them, especially this time of year.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Monday, December 1, 2008
A Quick One While He's Away (The Who)
Monday, December 1, 2008-2:00 P.M.
Just a weekend wrap-up while the girls are gone.
I got home o.k. last night, even though it rain/snowed all the way home from Toronto. Border was an afterthought, the guard looked at my passport, asked me two questions and back home in New York I went. The exchange rate was terrible on Canadian money....on Wednesday, I cashed $50 U.S. and got $52.25 CDN for it. Last night, Sunday, I cashed $553 CDN and got a $440 U.S. and some change. I haven't done the math yet, but I think either the rate changed or duty-free had their way with me.
Great shows this week, even the last one. Absolute Comedy is extremely supportive of their loyal locals (don't perform at a stage too close to them, though, or it's off to the Gulag...). I met and/or shared the stage with some very funny people this week; Eric Clifford, Dan Bruzzi, Doug Brown, Curtis Blakely, Elaine (ED) Dandy, Brendan McKeigan, Ryan Maglonob, Perry Perlmutar, Dred Lee, and Steven Sharpe. We had decent attendance, although some shows they pulled the curtain to cordon off the back section, which made the room nice 'n' cozy. My favorite moment of the week-talking to two older ladies who were waiting for their salad, and then leaving the stage to go back to the kitchen to try and help. Just another example of thinking on the balls of my feet, which I love (although sometimes more than the audience does).
So now I have one day to prepare before I fly down to Florida. I've gone through my prescription of antibiotics so hopefully this upper respiratory infection that's been kicking my ass all month is a thing of the past. Then after a few days with Mom, it's fly back home and get to work again, one public show and one private show. This non-stop-go stuff is starting to catch up with me and I guess burnout is better than rust-out (the opposite of burnout....didn't know that, didja?) but I'd rather have a steady diet of just enough stress.
So cheers to all, and I'll write again soon.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Just a weekend wrap-up while the girls are gone.
I got home o.k. last night, even though it rain/snowed all the way home from Toronto. Border was an afterthought, the guard looked at my passport, asked me two questions and back home in New York I went. The exchange rate was terrible on Canadian money....on Wednesday, I cashed $50 U.S. and got $52.25 CDN for it. Last night, Sunday, I cashed $553 CDN and got a $440 U.S. and some change. I haven't done the math yet, but I think either the rate changed or duty-free had their way with me.
Great shows this week, even the last one. Absolute Comedy is extremely supportive of their loyal locals (don't perform at a stage too close to them, though, or it's off to the Gulag...). I met and/or shared the stage with some very funny people this week; Eric Clifford, Dan Bruzzi, Doug Brown, Curtis Blakely, Elaine (ED) Dandy, Brendan McKeigan, Ryan Maglonob, Perry Perlmutar, Dred Lee, and Steven Sharpe. We had decent attendance, although some shows they pulled the curtain to cordon off the back section, which made the room nice 'n' cozy. My favorite moment of the week-talking to two older ladies who were waiting for their salad, and then leaving the stage to go back to the kitchen to try and help. Just another example of thinking on the balls of my feet, which I love (although sometimes more than the audience does).
So now I have one day to prepare before I fly down to Florida. I've gone through my prescription of antibiotics so hopefully this upper respiratory infection that's been kicking my ass all month is a thing of the past. Then after a few days with Mom, it's fly back home and get to work again, one public show and one private show. This non-stop-go stuff is starting to catch up with me and I guess burnout is better than rust-out (the opposite of burnout....didn't know that, didja?) but I'd rather have a steady diet of just enough stress.
So cheers to all, and I'll write again soon.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Cold Metal-Iggy Pop
Saturday, November 29, 2008-6:00 P.M.
I'm going to keep this blog short and you'll understand why after reading it. My mother was in a car accident on Tuesday night. I found out about it when I got home and checked my e-mail, and one of her friends from the gated community she lives in sent me a message with the phone number of the hospital she was taken to.
Long story short, it was a bad wreck. She was hit on the driver's side of her vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, while attempting to make a left hand turn. The impact spun her into the other lane, and she was hit again. She suffered a concussion, broken collarbone, and needed stitches on her head. The car was opened with the jaws of life and she was taken by helicopter from Leesburg, Florida to the Orlando Medical Center.
There's no reason she should be alive today, but she is. And all of this took place two days before Thanksgiving.
My sister scrapped her holiday plans and flew immediately down to Florida, and she'll be there until Tuesday of next week, and I'm going down Tuesday morning and staying until Thursday. I'd stay longer, but I have commitments in New York, so I'll be flying back home for the weekend, and then most probably returning the week after.
I'm performing in Toronto at Absolute Comedy, my first appearance here ever. I booked it specifically so that I could work a decent week somewhere, and Canada celebrates their Thanksgiving back in October, so it was a good move at the time. Unfortunately, now I'm away from my family in Rochester and worried sick about my mother. Besides the health issues involved, this accident is sure to take a financial toll on her, and that's really on my mind because I'm just barely making it and not in any shape to help her out if things get rough.
So here I am, in a beautiful city at a beautiful new club, trying to make a good first impression with the weight of the world on my shoulders and sick to my stomach about it.
I'm thankful my mother is alive. I'm thankful that I'm working, and can go spend time with her, if only for a few days. I'm thankful that my brother and sister are pitching in. I'm thankful that my wife understands what I'm going through and can continuously do without my time and attention, even though she has to do it all the time.
I keep telling myself that God doesn't hand us anything we can't handle, but lately the load's looking awfully cumbersome.
I'm not writing this to bring you down, dear reader. Believe me, I've struggled since Wednesday about writing at all, and if I did write, exactly what should I say? I thought about writing about anything else, but the indecision left me frozen, so I wrote nothing.
I have two shows tonight, and one tomorrow, and then I drive the three hours back home. I'll spend a day doing laundry and spending just a little time with my wife and daughter, and then Tuesday morning I'll fly to my mother's side. I don't know what I'll do while I'm down there, I guess I'll just do what's needed. My sister, who has the strength of Hercules for this sort of thing, has already laid plenty of groundwork, so I'm sure she'll have a list of things for me to do.
I've never felt weaker or less prepared in my life, and it's scaring the hell out of me.
I suppose I could have written anything else here, rather than show my vulnerability now, but for what purpose? So that you would think better of me?
I've always chosen honesty, to the point of bluntness, and let the chips fall where they may. I'm not going to change that now.
I'm off to go be funny now. Thank you for reading.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
I'm going to keep this blog short and you'll understand why after reading it. My mother was in a car accident on Tuesday night. I found out about it when I got home and checked my e-mail, and one of her friends from the gated community she lives in sent me a message with the phone number of the hospital she was taken to.
Long story short, it was a bad wreck. She was hit on the driver's side of her vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, while attempting to make a left hand turn. The impact spun her into the other lane, and she was hit again. She suffered a concussion, broken collarbone, and needed stitches on her head. The car was opened with the jaws of life and she was taken by helicopter from Leesburg, Florida to the Orlando Medical Center.
There's no reason she should be alive today, but she is. And all of this took place two days before Thanksgiving.
My sister scrapped her holiday plans and flew immediately down to Florida, and she'll be there until Tuesday of next week, and I'm going down Tuesday morning and staying until Thursday. I'd stay longer, but I have commitments in New York, so I'll be flying back home for the weekend, and then most probably returning the week after.
I'm performing in Toronto at Absolute Comedy, my first appearance here ever. I booked it specifically so that I could work a decent week somewhere, and Canada celebrates their Thanksgiving back in October, so it was a good move at the time. Unfortunately, now I'm away from my family in Rochester and worried sick about my mother. Besides the health issues involved, this accident is sure to take a financial toll on her, and that's really on my mind because I'm just barely making it and not in any shape to help her out if things get rough.
So here I am, in a beautiful city at a beautiful new club, trying to make a good first impression with the weight of the world on my shoulders and sick to my stomach about it.
I'm thankful my mother is alive. I'm thankful that I'm working, and can go spend time with her, if only for a few days. I'm thankful that my brother and sister are pitching in. I'm thankful that my wife understands what I'm going through and can continuously do without my time and attention, even though she has to do it all the time.
I keep telling myself that God doesn't hand us anything we can't handle, but lately the load's looking awfully cumbersome.
I'm not writing this to bring you down, dear reader. Believe me, I've struggled since Wednesday about writing at all, and if I did write, exactly what should I say? I thought about writing about anything else, but the indecision left me frozen, so I wrote nothing.
I have two shows tonight, and one tomorrow, and then I drive the three hours back home. I'll spend a day doing laundry and spending just a little time with my wife and daughter, and then Tuesday morning I'll fly to my mother's side. I don't know what I'll do while I'm down there, I guess I'll just do what's needed. My sister, who has the strength of Hercules for this sort of thing, has already laid plenty of groundwork, so I'm sure she'll have a list of things for me to do.
I've never felt weaker or less prepared in my life, and it's scaring the hell out of me.
I suppose I could have written anything else here, rather than show my vulnerability now, but for what purpose? So that you would think better of me?
I've always chosen honesty, to the point of bluntness, and let the chips fall where they may. I'm not going to change that now.
I'm off to go be funny now. Thank you for reading.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
Sunday, November 23, 2008-6:30 P.M.
Back home after a week of work, and feeling guilty about blogging....isn't that funny? Blogging is the most self-indulgent thing you can do without hand lotion, and when you don't do it, you feel this guilt, as though there were droves of people hanging on your every post, and when you don't write anything for a long time, it's as though their lives stop because they don't know what you're doing or what's on your mind. Luckily, I harbor no misconceptions of my "fan base" or "readership" or whatever you want to call it. My guilt comes from my adoption of a regular blog as a clearinghouse for events as my life, as a document that my daughter can go back and read when she's older to understand what Daddy was doing when he went to work, and my inability to keep that task up with any regularity.
This week was a busy one, and performed in the throes of walking pneumonia, upper respiratory infection, or whatever the final diagnosis turned out to be. I was popping Mucinex, trying to stay phlegm-free, and certain I was infecting everyone around me. Monday, I set off for Niagara University in Niagara Falls, New York, with comedy buddy Ray Salah in tow. We made the 90 minute journey with little difficulty, and loaded in the "Dash For Dollars" gear into the student union. While leisurely setting up the props for the game show, Ray was fiddling with the sound system, and playing some pre-show music to set the ambiance. A group filed in and asked us if we would turn down the music, as they were doing some sort of poster presentation. We obliged, and the young lady continued to speak, as if we somehow hadn't fully acquiesced to their wishes. Come to find out, the group was under the impression that they had reserved the space for their event, and viewed us as interlopers, and as she went into her pitch to somehow get me to understand that I wasn't supposed to be there, I explained that I was an off-campus concern, basically a vendor, and that I was hired by Student Activities to be there, and that if there was a conflict, I was just the hired help and merely doing what I was instructed by the folks who contracted me to be there. She disappeared into the Student Activities office, and shortly after, her group hit the bricks.
Now, I'm not one to piss on campus activism. The poster presentation that the young lady (who as it turns out, was a member of the schools faculty) and her group had planned on displaying had something to do with peace in the Middle East. I'm all for peace in the Middle East, the Far East, the Near East, and even back here in North America. But I really question how effective the poster presentation would have been in bringing about peace. Were the warring factions represented here in New York? Were there enough members of the groups present in Niagara Falls to constitute a quorum? How many of them were on campus at Niagara University? And finally, how many of them would luck have to be present in the student union at lunchtime? I suppose the answer to these questions are moot, but in all fairness, if you want peace in the Middle East, I think the minimum requirement is that you actually go there to drum some of it up. I am a pragmatist, if I am nothing.
Tuesday, Ray and I made our way to Finger Lakes Community College, and a blizzard was gripping the Finger Lakes region of New York. We were driving the company vehicle, a Ford E150 van containing the Incredible Cash Cube, the centerpiece of the Dash For Dollars game show, which doesn't carry much weight as the cube is mostly air when it comes right down to it. Vehicles were colliding on the slick roads leading into Canandaigua, and we fish-tailed a couple of times on our way down, but remained on the road the whole time and arrived in a safe and timely fashion (two of the best ways to arrive, in my opinion). The show was in danger of not being very well attended until I decided to prime the pump a little bit, intruding into the student cafeteria adjacent to our performing space and throwing out dollar bills at random. In the business, we call this a "teaser," and even though no such event was scheduled, I decided that it would be a good idea. It paid off in spades, and by showtime, the event area was full of students ready and raring to compete for the money. One of the funniest moments of the show was when a game involved blowing up balloons, and one of the contestants was a young man with an assortment of piercing appliances in his lower lip. It was awkward, and led to some good comedic interplay, and he actually wound up passing that particular round and moving on in the competition.
Later that night, after returning to Rochester, Ray and I decided that with the snow that was hitting the southern part of New York, we ought to get into town early, as the next gig was in Olean, NY and they were getting their fair share of crappy weather. We took off and got into town early, slept over at the wonderful Hampton Inn (I am a whore for the Hampton Inn) and were only blocks away from Jamestown Community College, Olean Campus, the next morning. When I checked in, there was a poster on the front desk with my face on it, as I was scheduled to perform in town on Saturday doing my own standup comedy show. It was neat to check in and point to the poster and tell the desk clerk, "I'm checking in, that's me right there." JCC is a very small satellite campus, being only a cluster of four buildings in the downtown Olean area. We still had a good showing, and with the help of a diligent maintenance man who was willing to use his power tools to disassemble doors for us, we were able to roll the Incredible Cash Cube directly into our performance area instead of just putting it in the hallway, as the Student Activities Director informed us was done on the game show's last appearance at the school. I'm willing to do whatever a client wants to make them happy, but I am still a showman at heart, and I know that having the entire game show set in the performance area is a basic minimum to having a successful show. Again, the show went great, there was good attendance, and everyone had a good time. The drive back to Rochester was pleasant, with temperatures in the 50's, and no sign that snow had ever fallen in the area.
Thursday night, I was on my own, and I made my way to the State University of New York (SUNY) Canton. It was about a four hour trip, and I really dragged my feet as the grip of whatever illness I was harboring made me lazy, sluggish, and belabored my breathing. I made my report time with a few minutes to spare, and did a teaser in the dining hall where everyone was enjoying a buffet-style Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not going to lie and tell you that the glistening steam tables of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and pumpkin pie didn't distract me at all. My antidote was to perform the teaser as quickly as possible, throw the money around, and get the hell out of there.
With the help of some student volunteers, I set up the show and got ready. I was met with a boisterous, crazy audience who went from highly involved and interested to absolutely volatile. I think if they could have just collectively picked me up, held me upside down and shook me until all the money came spilling out of my pockets, they would have. Large, athletic men were karate chopping young ladies out of the way to get a dollar. People were threatening my life and telling me in so many words that there was no way the cash cube and I were leaving campus with any money to show for it, and one young lady (who, by the way, was a contestant on stage who had her chance to win money, but was eliminated in one of the challenges) criticized me that I wasn't paying enough attention to her section, the far left-hand side of the stage. I throw money right-handed, so she may have had a point, but throwing money is completely to my discretion. I started having second thoughts about my populist views as I realized that the core of many people's psychological makeup is greed, and worse than that, a sense of entitlement. I finished the show and on the way home, I stopped at a Subway sandwich shop and had a spicy Italian sub that was in no way, shape or form as good as turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes.
Friday was my only day off, and I packed all of my errands into it. First off was trip to the doctor and a prescription for antibiotics to finally start fighting off my illness which had been a thorn in my flesh since before Halloween. Next, a trip to the post office and my local comic book shop, Comics Etc., to pick up a month's worth of reading material that I'd missed as I'd been out of town since before Halloween. I stopped by Monroe Community Hospital where Pammey was doing a craft show and swapped our cars, and then took her car in to be diagnosed as to why her sunroof was allowing not just sunlight but rainwater to come in. The prognosis, if you're curious, was bad lifters in the back of the unit and some body rust in the roof of the vehicle. We have an appointment in December to get the unit replaced, which will provide my wife and daughter with a nice, dry vehicle to drive around in (it's the least I could do). One last stop to my daughter's school to drop off a book order, and it was back home for a nice nap. Later that evening, Pamela and I toasted our eighth wedding anniversary with a nice dinner at Red Lobster, one of our favorites (don't laugh). My mother-in-law volunteered to watch Harmony so we could have some time together, and because we're old and tired, we figured the best thing to do was go out to dinner. Ah, how time makes fools of us all! Still, we had a good time and after dinner, went out winter-coat shopping for me as my leather jacket that I've been holding on to since Chuck Yeager passed it on to me was no longer in good repair. I picked out a nice, low-cost fleece lined number with a million pockets in it to store my cell phone, bluetooth (which I don't wear if I don't have to), wallet, chewing gum, chapstick and car keys. I wanted something cheap because I just know that one of these days, I'm going to be unloading the cash cube out of the van and a sharp metal corner is going to do a number on the jacket, and I'd rather it be a cheap coat than an expensive one.
Saturday, I slept in and finally started making my way to Olean. I got into town just as the sun was setting and the snow started coming down like a bitch. I got ready for the show, shaved and ironed my clothes and made my way to the Premiere Banquet Center where I was performing with Jamie Lissow and Bill Benden. It was a co-headliner show with me as the warm-up act, and it shook out that I only needed to do 15 minutes. Still under the weather with only one day's worth of antibiotics in my system, I gladly filled the short set with a "greatest hits" montage that went over well. I palled around with Bill and Jamie, talked shop, new babies, and all that stuff that standup comics talk about when we get together. After the show, Jamie opted to brave the snow and head back to Rochester. I opted to stay in the cushy Hampton Inn and beg a late checkout. By the time I left the hotel, the sun was shining, the roads were clear, and I got to hear the first quarter of the Buffalo Bills beating the stuffing out of the Kansas City Chiefs. I swear, after Monday night's dismal, last-second loss to the Cleveland Browns, I vowed that if Buffalo couldn't hand a 1-9 team their ass, I was through with them. Luckily, they delivered, and Trent Edwards ran for two touchdowns, which is making me like him again. Then again, Rob Johnson did that crap against Jacksonville a handful of seasons ago, and I started liking him and he turned into a total piece of shit. So let's just say I'm being cautiously optimistic.
This week, it's Absolute Comedy in Toronto, my first time at the club and I'm excited to be breaking new ground. Next month, there's a lot of work close to home, holidays to prepare for, and then in January, I head off for a month-long tour of Calgary, Edmonton, and other snow-tossed cities of Western Canada. I'm excited, but also happy that it's still a couple of months off....I'm going to have to get ready for one of the farthest away places that I've ever performed in before.
Best to you and yours this Thanksgiving holiday.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Back home after a week of work, and feeling guilty about blogging....isn't that funny? Blogging is the most self-indulgent thing you can do without hand lotion, and when you don't do it, you feel this guilt, as though there were droves of people hanging on your every post, and when you don't write anything for a long time, it's as though their lives stop because they don't know what you're doing or what's on your mind. Luckily, I harbor no misconceptions of my "fan base" or "readership" or whatever you want to call it. My guilt comes from my adoption of a regular blog as a clearinghouse for events as my life, as a document that my daughter can go back and read when she's older to understand what Daddy was doing when he went to work, and my inability to keep that task up with any regularity.
This week was a busy one, and performed in the throes of walking pneumonia, upper respiratory infection, or whatever the final diagnosis turned out to be. I was popping Mucinex, trying to stay phlegm-free, and certain I was infecting everyone around me. Monday, I set off for Niagara University in Niagara Falls, New York, with comedy buddy Ray Salah in tow. We made the 90 minute journey with little difficulty, and loaded in the "Dash For Dollars" gear into the student union. While leisurely setting up the props for the game show, Ray was fiddling with the sound system, and playing some pre-show music to set the ambiance. A group filed in and asked us if we would turn down the music, as they were doing some sort of poster presentation. We obliged, and the young lady continued to speak, as if we somehow hadn't fully acquiesced to their wishes. Come to find out, the group was under the impression that they had reserved the space for their event, and viewed us as interlopers, and as she went into her pitch to somehow get me to understand that I wasn't supposed to be there, I explained that I was an off-campus concern, basically a vendor, and that I was hired by Student Activities to be there, and that if there was a conflict, I was just the hired help and merely doing what I was instructed by the folks who contracted me to be there. She disappeared into the Student Activities office, and shortly after, her group hit the bricks.
Now, I'm not one to piss on campus activism. The poster presentation that the young lady (who as it turns out, was a member of the schools faculty) and her group had planned on displaying had something to do with peace in the Middle East. I'm all for peace in the Middle East, the Far East, the Near East, and even back here in North America. But I really question how effective the poster presentation would have been in bringing about peace. Were the warring factions represented here in New York? Were there enough members of the groups present in Niagara Falls to constitute a quorum? How many of them were on campus at Niagara University? And finally, how many of them would luck have to be present in the student union at lunchtime? I suppose the answer to these questions are moot, but in all fairness, if you want peace in the Middle East, I think the minimum requirement is that you actually go there to drum some of it up. I am a pragmatist, if I am nothing.
Tuesday, Ray and I made our way to Finger Lakes Community College, and a blizzard was gripping the Finger Lakes region of New York. We were driving the company vehicle, a Ford E150 van containing the Incredible Cash Cube, the centerpiece of the Dash For Dollars game show, which doesn't carry much weight as the cube is mostly air when it comes right down to it. Vehicles were colliding on the slick roads leading into Canandaigua, and we fish-tailed a couple of times on our way down, but remained on the road the whole time and arrived in a safe and timely fashion (two of the best ways to arrive, in my opinion). The show was in danger of not being very well attended until I decided to prime the pump a little bit, intruding into the student cafeteria adjacent to our performing space and throwing out dollar bills at random. In the business, we call this a "teaser," and even though no such event was scheduled, I decided that it would be a good idea. It paid off in spades, and by showtime, the event area was full of students ready and raring to compete for the money. One of the funniest moments of the show was when a game involved blowing up balloons, and one of the contestants was a young man with an assortment of piercing appliances in his lower lip. It was awkward, and led to some good comedic interplay, and he actually wound up passing that particular round and moving on in the competition.
Later that night, after returning to Rochester, Ray and I decided that with the snow that was hitting the southern part of New York, we ought to get into town early, as the next gig was in Olean, NY and they were getting their fair share of crappy weather. We took off and got into town early, slept over at the wonderful Hampton Inn (I am a whore for the Hampton Inn) and were only blocks away from Jamestown Community College, Olean Campus, the next morning. When I checked in, there was a poster on the front desk with my face on it, as I was scheduled to perform in town on Saturday doing my own standup comedy show. It was neat to check in and point to the poster and tell the desk clerk, "I'm checking in, that's me right there." JCC is a very small satellite campus, being only a cluster of four buildings in the downtown Olean area. We still had a good showing, and with the help of a diligent maintenance man who was willing to use his power tools to disassemble doors for us, we were able to roll the Incredible Cash Cube directly into our performance area instead of just putting it in the hallway, as the Student Activities Director informed us was done on the game show's last appearance at the school. I'm willing to do whatever a client wants to make them happy, but I am still a showman at heart, and I know that having the entire game show set in the performance area is a basic minimum to having a successful show. Again, the show went great, there was good attendance, and everyone had a good time. The drive back to Rochester was pleasant, with temperatures in the 50's, and no sign that snow had ever fallen in the area.
Thursday night, I was on my own, and I made my way to the State University of New York (SUNY) Canton. It was about a four hour trip, and I really dragged my feet as the grip of whatever illness I was harboring made me lazy, sluggish, and belabored my breathing. I made my report time with a few minutes to spare, and did a teaser in the dining hall where everyone was enjoying a buffet-style Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not going to lie and tell you that the glistening steam tables of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and pumpkin pie didn't distract me at all. My antidote was to perform the teaser as quickly as possible, throw the money around, and get the hell out of there.
With the help of some student volunteers, I set up the show and got ready. I was met with a boisterous, crazy audience who went from highly involved and interested to absolutely volatile. I think if they could have just collectively picked me up, held me upside down and shook me until all the money came spilling out of my pockets, they would have. Large, athletic men were karate chopping young ladies out of the way to get a dollar. People were threatening my life and telling me in so many words that there was no way the cash cube and I were leaving campus with any money to show for it, and one young lady (who, by the way, was a contestant on stage who had her chance to win money, but was eliminated in one of the challenges) criticized me that I wasn't paying enough attention to her section, the far left-hand side of the stage. I throw money right-handed, so she may have had a point, but throwing money is completely to my discretion. I started having second thoughts about my populist views as I realized that the core of many people's psychological makeup is greed, and worse than that, a sense of entitlement. I finished the show and on the way home, I stopped at a Subway sandwich shop and had a spicy Italian sub that was in no way, shape or form as good as turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes.
Friday was my only day off, and I packed all of my errands into it. First off was trip to the doctor and a prescription for antibiotics to finally start fighting off my illness which had been a thorn in my flesh since before Halloween. Next, a trip to the post office and my local comic book shop, Comics Etc., to pick up a month's worth of reading material that I'd missed as I'd been out of town since before Halloween. I stopped by Monroe Community Hospital where Pammey was doing a craft show and swapped our cars, and then took her car in to be diagnosed as to why her sunroof was allowing not just sunlight but rainwater to come in. The prognosis, if you're curious, was bad lifters in the back of the unit and some body rust in the roof of the vehicle. We have an appointment in December to get the unit replaced, which will provide my wife and daughter with a nice, dry vehicle to drive around in (it's the least I could do). One last stop to my daughter's school to drop off a book order, and it was back home for a nice nap. Later that evening, Pamela and I toasted our eighth wedding anniversary with a nice dinner at Red Lobster, one of our favorites (don't laugh). My mother-in-law volunteered to watch Harmony so we could have some time together, and because we're old and tired, we figured the best thing to do was go out to dinner. Ah, how time makes fools of us all! Still, we had a good time and after dinner, went out winter-coat shopping for me as my leather jacket that I've been holding on to since Chuck Yeager passed it on to me was no longer in good repair. I picked out a nice, low-cost fleece lined number with a million pockets in it to store my cell phone, bluetooth (which I don't wear if I don't have to), wallet, chewing gum, chapstick and car keys. I wanted something cheap because I just know that one of these days, I'm going to be unloading the cash cube out of the van and a sharp metal corner is going to do a number on the jacket, and I'd rather it be a cheap coat than an expensive one.
Saturday, I slept in and finally started making my way to Olean. I got into town just as the sun was setting and the snow started coming down like a bitch. I got ready for the show, shaved and ironed my clothes and made my way to the Premiere Banquet Center where I was performing with Jamie Lissow and Bill Benden. It was a co-headliner show with me as the warm-up act, and it shook out that I only needed to do 15 minutes. Still under the weather with only one day's worth of antibiotics in my system, I gladly filled the short set with a "greatest hits" montage that went over well. I palled around with Bill and Jamie, talked shop, new babies, and all that stuff that standup comics talk about when we get together. After the show, Jamie opted to brave the snow and head back to Rochester. I opted to stay in the cushy Hampton Inn and beg a late checkout. By the time I left the hotel, the sun was shining, the roads were clear, and I got to hear the first quarter of the Buffalo Bills beating the stuffing out of the Kansas City Chiefs. I swear, after Monday night's dismal, last-second loss to the Cleveland Browns, I vowed that if Buffalo couldn't hand a 1-9 team their ass, I was through with them. Luckily, they delivered, and Trent Edwards ran for two touchdowns, which is making me like him again. Then again, Rob Johnson did that crap against Jacksonville a handful of seasons ago, and I started liking him and he turned into a total piece of shit. So let's just say I'm being cautiously optimistic.
This week, it's Absolute Comedy in Toronto, my first time at the club and I'm excited to be breaking new ground. Next month, there's a lot of work close to home, holidays to prepare for, and then in January, I head off for a month-long tour of Calgary, Edmonton, and other snow-tossed cities of Western Canada. I'm excited, but also happy that it's still a couple of months off....I'm going to have to get ready for one of the farthest away places that I've ever performed in before.
Best to you and yours this Thanksgiving holiday.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Play It All Night Long-Warren Zevon
Tuesday, November 11, 2008-10:45 P.M.
Good evening from Raleigh, North Carolina.
I must be in a blue state, because I'm freezing my ass off.
That's not exactly true, but after spending two weeks in Florida and Alabama, the 15 degree drop in temperature is feeling absolutely chilly.
I have one more show tomorrow and then I'll start heading north to home, where I haven't been since before Halloween. I'll be hosting "Dash For Dollars," my college comedy game show, and even though I've only been on the job about six weeks, I'm starting to have the same withdrawal feelings I have when I don't get to do my own standup act for a long time.
The stage time has been really sparse this trip out. I did a show in Savannah, Georgia at Savannah State University, and then went to my mother's house in Florida to hang out for five days. I got sick somewhere along the way, and I've been sucking down the water and taking Mucinex to stop coughing and to try to bring up some of the congestion, and even though I have the symptoms under control, I need to get home and see a doctor for some antibiotics.
To top it off, I started having leg problems that I was able to diagnose as due to fallen arches, because I've had them before. I went out and got some inserts for my shoes to give some support, but the muscles still take time to relax back to normal. There are exercises you can do to relieve the tension, but with a great deal of driving, there's a greater than normal stress on the muscles of the foot and leg. I've been lucky that I've had stretches of time off to let myself just collapse and lay in bed in a hotel room rather than having to get up and go out and produce.
I worked at the Stardome Comedy Club in Birmingham, Alabama on Election Day, the following day, and the following Sunday, or what they call in the comedy business a "wrap-around;" they got a special headliner act (in this case, James Gregory, the "Funniest Man In America") and needed to fill the "off" nights that the big name guy didn't want to do. Cue your man Ralph. I'd been wanting to get into the Stardome for a long time, having heard great things about the club, and it definitely lives up to the hype. The place is huge, the seats were full every night I was there, and the crowds were appreciative. I sold out of my comedy CD's while I was there and was invited back. Nice day at the office, eh? I worked with Will Marfori on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Drew Thomas on Sunday. They're both really good comics and nice fellows that I'd met and worked with before, and that's always a bonus.
I had Thursday and Friday off to relax, and then Saturday I went and entertained a small group in Atlanta for a gentleman's 50th birthday party. I did a mild "roast" of the guy, who was a family man, Sunday School teacher, and just an overall good guy. His kids were there, as well as people from his church, so the humor had to be squeaky clean, and it was a challenge to write a roast that was totally clean for a guy I never met before. They were a nice group, though, and I did balloon animals for the kids. I'm serious, I had the balloons with me, so I did some for the kids. It was 190 miles one way to get to the gig from Birmingham, but after finding ridiculously cheap gasoline ($1.90!!! Thank you, Flying J loyalty card!) I still made money on the trip.
So I had too many days off, and one of my college shows got canceled this week, but I got to spend time with my mother, break in a new club, made an anniversary celebration special for someone, and got to watch the election returns come in thanks to lodging that didn't require me to be up and out at any certain time. Which reminds me....God bless Holiday Inn Express and the Holiday Inn Priority Club and their late check-out. There's nothing like lounging around in a room until 2:00 in the afternoon and not getting bitched at. Other hotels could learn from these people.....I'm talking to YOU, Days Inn.
So the only other thing to report is that I'm in love with Rachel Maddow. I'm not sure when it happened, but I've become quite taken with her. I know that some folks will say that she's not on our team, but that doesn't matter.....I'm married, it's not like I'm trying to recruit her. And when I tried to put my finger on exactly what it is about Rachel that I find attractive, I keep coming back to her intelligence. She's smart! She's REALLY smart! She's smart in a way that when she's speaking or interviewing a guest, I feel like I'm really following the conversation, even though I'm a guy who took four years at a community college to get a two-year degree.
But most importantly, other people seem taken with Rachel Maddow besides me. She seems to be the new "hot" commentator on TV, and I think it's because America is starting to value intelligence again. "Smart" is the new "cool."
President-Elect Obama is the gold standard for cool, and he really isn't. He's smart. I caught him answering some questions and he did an impression of Redd Foxx having a heart attack. In case you're very young or not familiar with the program through re-runs, Redd Foxx has a show called "Sanford and Son," and one of the running gags was that he would always pretend he was having a heart attack, and he would call up to the heavens, "Elizabeth, I'm coming to join you, honey!" Elizabeth was his predeceased wife. Well, when Obama did the impression, he said "Weezy, I'm coming!" Weezy was the wife from Sherman Helmseley's TV sitcom, "The Jeffersons," which came out about seven or eight years after "Sanford and Son." Only a guy who spent as much time as he did, studying and keeping his nose lodged in a book, would make that obvious pop culture error. On the David Letterman show, they had him deliver the line "Can you smell what Barack is cooking?" which was a satirical slant at the Rock's wrestling catch-phrase. But Obama doesn't know that either, because he doesn't watch wrestling. He pores over the minutiae of his work, takes time to work out at the gym, and strives, strives, strives. Sometimes I feel guilty that I never had the discipline to dig into the books that way, who knows what I'd be doing today. But there's one thing for sure, and that is that America is finally coming back around and saying "education is good." "Book smarts have value." I'm very happy about that. I'm tired of living in a dumbed-down country. Maybe we can finally ship Will Ferrell off to Alaska and get some decent character-driven film comedies made before I qualify for the freakin' senior citizen's discount.
Before I sign off, I'd like to acknowledge my good and trusted friend Steve Burr, the host of "3 Things You Never Talk About" (google it if you don't know) who challenged me to write something positive about someone I disagreed with from a policy standpoint. That may not be the exact challenge, but it was words to that effect, and it was several months ago and I'd been dwelling upon it, and somehow could not do it. Today, I'd like to change that.
In the transition period between President George W. Bush and President-Elect Barack Obama, I think President Bush has been phenomenal in expediting a swift and seamless transfer of power. I think that the comments he made about seeing Obama and his family on the stage and saying what a wonderful thing this was for America was gracious, patriotic, loving, and a showing of a side of Bush that we haven't seen enough of.
In truth, President Bush has to be looked upon as an individual who has offered incredible opportunities to people of color. The appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice to the office of Secretary of State were groundbreaking, and his trusting of Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General must be recognized. After all this consideration, I frame the President as a man who really thought he was doing the best he could for America, and made hard decisions, no matter how unpopular they were. Now, I can't speak for Dick Cheney, who I'm sure a lot of people suspect was the real evil behind the Bush administration, but I won't question Bush anymore as regards to the flippant statements made by Kanye West after Hurricane Katrina that "President Bush hates black people." I believe, no, he doesn't, and as a matter of fact, he's probably their greatest cheerleader. Now, whether or not he surrounded himself with cronies as a way to insulate himself from dissent, I would have to take exception with, but I believe that actions speak louder than words, and his actions in this transition have shown that he is the warm human being that I never would have given him the credit for being.
I guess we all have our good and bad points, you just have to take the time to inventory them.
Tomorrow, it's off to St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and then Thursday, the trail of tears back to snowy Upstate New York. I can't wait!
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Good evening from Raleigh, North Carolina.
I must be in a blue state, because I'm freezing my ass off.
That's not exactly true, but after spending two weeks in Florida and Alabama, the 15 degree drop in temperature is feeling absolutely chilly.
I have one more show tomorrow and then I'll start heading north to home, where I haven't been since before Halloween. I'll be hosting "Dash For Dollars," my college comedy game show, and even though I've only been on the job about six weeks, I'm starting to have the same withdrawal feelings I have when I don't get to do my own standup act for a long time.
The stage time has been really sparse this trip out. I did a show in Savannah, Georgia at Savannah State University, and then went to my mother's house in Florida to hang out for five days. I got sick somewhere along the way, and I've been sucking down the water and taking Mucinex to stop coughing and to try to bring up some of the congestion, and even though I have the symptoms under control, I need to get home and see a doctor for some antibiotics.
To top it off, I started having leg problems that I was able to diagnose as due to fallen arches, because I've had them before. I went out and got some inserts for my shoes to give some support, but the muscles still take time to relax back to normal. There are exercises you can do to relieve the tension, but with a great deal of driving, there's a greater than normal stress on the muscles of the foot and leg. I've been lucky that I've had stretches of time off to let myself just collapse and lay in bed in a hotel room rather than having to get up and go out and produce.
I worked at the Stardome Comedy Club in Birmingham, Alabama on Election Day, the following day, and the following Sunday, or what they call in the comedy business a "wrap-around;" they got a special headliner act (in this case, James Gregory, the "Funniest Man In America") and needed to fill the "off" nights that the big name guy didn't want to do. Cue your man Ralph. I'd been wanting to get into the Stardome for a long time, having heard great things about the club, and it definitely lives up to the hype. The place is huge, the seats were full every night I was there, and the crowds were appreciative. I sold out of my comedy CD's while I was there and was invited back. Nice day at the office, eh? I worked with Will Marfori on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Drew Thomas on Sunday. They're both really good comics and nice fellows that I'd met and worked with before, and that's always a bonus.
I had Thursday and Friday off to relax, and then Saturday I went and entertained a small group in Atlanta for a gentleman's 50th birthday party. I did a mild "roast" of the guy, who was a family man, Sunday School teacher, and just an overall good guy. His kids were there, as well as people from his church, so the humor had to be squeaky clean, and it was a challenge to write a roast that was totally clean for a guy I never met before. They were a nice group, though, and I did balloon animals for the kids. I'm serious, I had the balloons with me, so I did some for the kids. It was 190 miles one way to get to the gig from Birmingham, but after finding ridiculously cheap gasoline ($1.90!!! Thank you, Flying J loyalty card!) I still made money on the trip.
So I had too many days off, and one of my college shows got canceled this week, but I got to spend time with my mother, break in a new club, made an anniversary celebration special for someone, and got to watch the election returns come in thanks to lodging that didn't require me to be up and out at any certain time. Which reminds me....God bless Holiday Inn Express and the Holiday Inn Priority Club and their late check-out. There's nothing like lounging around in a room until 2:00 in the afternoon and not getting bitched at. Other hotels could learn from these people.....I'm talking to YOU, Days Inn.
So the only other thing to report is that I'm in love with Rachel Maddow. I'm not sure when it happened, but I've become quite taken with her. I know that some folks will say that she's not on our team, but that doesn't matter.....I'm married, it's not like I'm trying to recruit her. And when I tried to put my finger on exactly what it is about Rachel that I find attractive, I keep coming back to her intelligence. She's smart! She's REALLY smart! She's smart in a way that when she's speaking or interviewing a guest, I feel like I'm really following the conversation, even though I'm a guy who took four years at a community college to get a two-year degree.
But most importantly, other people seem taken with Rachel Maddow besides me. She seems to be the new "hot" commentator on TV, and I think it's because America is starting to value intelligence again. "Smart" is the new "cool."
President-Elect Obama is the gold standard for cool, and he really isn't. He's smart. I caught him answering some questions and he did an impression of Redd Foxx having a heart attack. In case you're very young or not familiar with the program through re-runs, Redd Foxx has a show called "Sanford and Son," and one of the running gags was that he would always pretend he was having a heart attack, and he would call up to the heavens, "Elizabeth, I'm coming to join you, honey!" Elizabeth was his predeceased wife. Well, when Obama did the impression, he said "Weezy, I'm coming!" Weezy was the wife from Sherman Helmseley's TV sitcom, "The Jeffersons," which came out about seven or eight years after "Sanford and Son." Only a guy who spent as much time as he did, studying and keeping his nose lodged in a book, would make that obvious pop culture error. On the David Letterman show, they had him deliver the line "Can you smell what Barack is cooking?" which was a satirical slant at the Rock's wrestling catch-phrase. But Obama doesn't know that either, because he doesn't watch wrestling. He pores over the minutiae of his work, takes time to work out at the gym, and strives, strives, strives. Sometimes I feel guilty that I never had the discipline to dig into the books that way, who knows what I'd be doing today. But there's one thing for sure, and that is that America is finally coming back around and saying "education is good." "Book smarts have value." I'm very happy about that. I'm tired of living in a dumbed-down country. Maybe we can finally ship Will Ferrell off to Alaska and get some decent character-driven film comedies made before I qualify for the freakin' senior citizen's discount.
Before I sign off, I'd like to acknowledge my good and trusted friend Steve Burr, the host of "3 Things You Never Talk About" (google it if you don't know) who challenged me to write something positive about someone I disagreed with from a policy standpoint. That may not be the exact challenge, but it was words to that effect, and it was several months ago and I'd been dwelling upon it, and somehow could not do it. Today, I'd like to change that.
In the transition period between President George W. Bush and President-Elect Barack Obama, I think President Bush has been phenomenal in expediting a swift and seamless transfer of power. I think that the comments he made about seeing Obama and his family on the stage and saying what a wonderful thing this was for America was gracious, patriotic, loving, and a showing of a side of Bush that we haven't seen enough of.
In truth, President Bush has to be looked upon as an individual who has offered incredible opportunities to people of color. The appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice to the office of Secretary of State were groundbreaking, and his trusting of Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General must be recognized. After all this consideration, I frame the President as a man who really thought he was doing the best he could for America, and made hard decisions, no matter how unpopular they were. Now, I can't speak for Dick Cheney, who I'm sure a lot of people suspect was the real evil behind the Bush administration, but I won't question Bush anymore as regards to the flippant statements made by Kanye West after Hurricane Katrina that "President Bush hates black people." I believe, no, he doesn't, and as a matter of fact, he's probably their greatest cheerleader. Now, whether or not he surrounded himself with cronies as a way to insulate himself from dissent, I would have to take exception with, but I believe that actions speak louder than words, and his actions in this transition have shown that he is the warm human being that I never would have given him the credit for being.
I guess we all have our good and bad points, you just have to take the time to inventory them.
Tomorrow, it's off to St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and then Thursday, the trail of tears back to snowy Upstate New York. I can't wait!
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Changes (David Bowie)
"It's no sin to make a mistake. The sin is when you don't go back and clean it up."
I spoke those words to my brother 23 years ago. He was about to fail his senior year in high school because of a missing phys-ed credit. Long story short, he would oversleep because of his job and then wouldn't go to school because of a mandatory detention policy for late arrivals, which would interfere with his after-school job, so some days he just didn't go. Consequently, he wasn't present enough days to get the gym credit, and was looking at the prospect of being held back a year.
I told him to take summer school. They don't offer summer school for phys-ed.
But I told him the line above, about cleaning up our mistakes, and he went back to school and worked out a plan with them. The school let him put time in at the YMCA, and after enough hours to satisfy them, they would award him his diploma, which he did over the summer.
He made the mistake, and then cleaned it up.
Tuesday night, America cleaned up it's mistakes.
In electing Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States, America said "we are ready to fix things."
We are ready to fully anoint African-Americans, not just with cheap, smiling words, but with a real vote of confidence.
We are ready to turn the wheels of government over to individuals who are knowledgeable, who have studied law, who bring real credentials to the table and are ready to govern.
We are ready to offer the rest of the world the assurance that the country which they all look up to and aspire to be, is ready to stop being a bully and ready to start being a trusted ally again.
As much as I support Barack Obama, it is with much shame that I confess that I found many more reasons to vote against his opponent than I found reasons to support him.
From the beginning, the McCain campaign seemed to be waged for all the wrong reasons.
First of all, why was a wealthy, 72-year-old man with 13 cars and eight houses working so hard to apply for a job? Shouldn't he have been contemplating retirement? I'll tell you why he did it; he got boned by Karl Rove and George W. Bush in South Carolina in 2000, and he's been lying in stealth for eight years waiting for his turn, the turn he felt he was cheated out of. I'm sure the eight years weren't easy, but he spent five years in a P.O.W. camp, so I have no doubts about his tenacity.
But that's the wrong reason to want to be President. Bob Dole ran on that bullshit back in 1996, and Bill Clinton slapped him around.
The Sarah Palin pick as VP? I never saw a campaign shoot itself in the foot more deftly since Al Gore thought it would be a good idea to run a Jewish veep (Joe Lieberman) past the deeply Christian voters of the South (and elsewhere....the 13 states of the Confederacy don't have any monopoly on anti-Semitism). The race for the presidency isn't "Take Your Daughter To Work Day." It would be hard to argue that even a featherweight like J. Danforth Quayle wasn't less qualified than the Governor of Alaska. Could the McCain campaign have been saved by a more savvy pick? Absolutely. He could have chosen one of a plethora of rising young stars on the right, or even an old saw like Elizabeth Dole who was a skillful politician until the voters of North Carolina started to wake up and smell the bullshit. Bobby Jindall could have brought some youth and excitement, Mitt Romney would have brought all of his economically conservative supporters, but McCain had to find someone who would whet the Evangelical's whistle after he basically told them to lick his asshole back in 2000. And snake-charming, speaking in tongues Sarah was that gal. It's too bad that the hypocrisy started piling up faster than the lines on her resume; from Troopergate, to the grandchild being born out of wedlock, to the high-end shopping spree, Caribou Barbie went to just plain old "boo" Barbie.
Finally, the campaign of smear and mud that never seemed to end, was just a bad choice. McCain flung the kitchen sink at Obama, but Barack never responded. It is virtually impossible to win a fight with an enemy that will not engage you. McCain would go into a red-faced rant about Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Socialism, spread the wealth, Joe the Plumber, and so on, and Barack would just smile and shake his head. Like all he had to say was "During the Charles Keating affair, you were the only one with money on the table" and the game is over. But he didn't go there. Obama told the truth, about McCain's lock-step with George W. Bush and the smoldering ruin that he's leaving America. And the American people responded with a hearty "fuck THAT plan."
Well, the smart parts of America did. A glance at the electoral map shows that there are still pockets of resistance to liberals, black people, educated people, or whatever part of voting for Obama you want to isolate. Maybe some folks liked McCain simply based on his military record. If that's the case, John Kerry with his superior military record should have handed W. his National-Guard-but-never-showed-up ass. Maybe some folks voted for McCain simply based on the conservative position on abortion. Fair, but here's a position on abortion I think a lot of people haven't considered, and it happens to be MY position......if two water-heads couldn't figure out a condom in the back seat of Dad's car on prom night, I DON'T WANT THEM RAISING CHILDREN!
Whatever malady is affecting the folks in the South and that strip of states from Texas to North Dakota (fuck you, I've driven through all of them, so I'll name 'em.....Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota....and I did that WITHOUT a map in front of me), whatever the malady is, the good news is that the smart people of America are going to put people and programs in position to help EVERYONE out of the mess that this country has become. EVERYONE. Everyone is going to be a beneficiary of good, smart government that won't allow the economy to tank, won't allow us to squander money we don't have and young people's lives we'd rather keep in futile wars abroad, won't allow an American city to eat Hurricane Dick and wait around four days to do something about it. And I'm talking to you, Louisiana. How much self-loathing do you have to ever vote Republican again? After George Bush left you swimming in your own shit without lifting a finger? If I lived in New Orleans, I'd rather have a finger cut off than vote Republican.
A criticism of the Democratic party by some commentator on the right was that "They always run a lawyer for President. It's never a common person."
Here's a thought. If I'm going to send someone to Washington, the home of national law and government in this country, maybe I'd like to send someone who has STUDIED LAW AND GOVERNMENT. If I want surgery done, I don't bring in a guy who lays carpet, I call a surgeon. If I want my clogged toilet fixed, I don't bring in a guy who grooms poodles, I call a plumber. And If I want economic advice, I call an economist NOT A FUCKING PLUMBER.
This is how frustrated I've become. My candidate won, and I'm still pissed. Still pissed that the election wasn't a clear-cut landslide, like Reagan-Mondale back in 1984, because there are still pockets of folks in our country who still don't get it. But it's O.K. Because folks like me stepped up and did the right thing, folks like them will get universal health care, decent wages for jobs, a country that is released from the grip of foreign oil, better social standing in the world, and the residual positivity of some racial healing.
And by the way, the flip-side of that racial healing thing is that the bar has been WAY lifted for black folk in America. The old arguments about inequalities and access to opportunity just won't hold anymore. Obama grew up without his father, worked his ass off, and became President of the Harvard Law Review (no small achievement), United States Senator, and now President of the United States. I want to hear "Yes We Can" echoing through the black community for the rest of my life. There's really no reason that I shouldn't hear it, anyway. We've come too far to turn back now.
So I applaud a post-racial America, an America that no longer considers intellectualism to be a bad thing, an America that's ready to build on that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton built and George W. Bush burned. I'm girding myself for the hounding attacks that will surely come from the Right, now that they have a villain to coalesce around. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly and the rest have four years of material ready to go, and if they try to tear down Obama like they did Bill Clinton, it won't surprise me at all. The only exception being that if they try that shit with Obama, his wife Michelle will be WAY more likely than Hillary to kick off her heels, take her jewelry off, and start kicking a little ass.
In real life, and to be serious to close this up, I have a bi-racial family. My wife is of mixed heritage, and based on our backgrounds, my daughter is Italian, African-American, Isle of St. Croix, and German. She goes to a school that is mostly minority (oxymoron?) and even though she is aware of the difference in races, she perceives no difference in the races, other than the color of their skin. And she's four. And none of her classmates think anything of it, either. Can it be that children are smarter than the voters of Alabama? And white Americans over the age of 65? I'm in Birmingham, Alabama right now, and I know damn well, somewhere in the city today, some cracker asshole made a joke about the huge Obama headline in the paper this morning and everyone getting excited because a black man got a job. And it still galls the piss out of me.
Those racial wounds are old and deep. But they're scabbing up. And one day, they'll dry up and fall off.
God Bless America.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
did anyone catch why I used a David Bowie song?
I spoke those words to my brother 23 years ago. He was about to fail his senior year in high school because of a missing phys-ed credit. Long story short, he would oversleep because of his job and then wouldn't go to school because of a mandatory detention policy for late arrivals, which would interfere with his after-school job, so some days he just didn't go. Consequently, he wasn't present enough days to get the gym credit, and was looking at the prospect of being held back a year.
I told him to take summer school. They don't offer summer school for phys-ed.
But I told him the line above, about cleaning up our mistakes, and he went back to school and worked out a plan with them. The school let him put time in at the YMCA, and after enough hours to satisfy them, they would award him his diploma, which he did over the summer.
He made the mistake, and then cleaned it up.
Tuesday night, America cleaned up it's mistakes.
In electing Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States, America said "we are ready to fix things."
We are ready to fully anoint African-Americans, not just with cheap, smiling words, but with a real vote of confidence.
We are ready to turn the wheels of government over to individuals who are knowledgeable, who have studied law, who bring real credentials to the table and are ready to govern.
We are ready to offer the rest of the world the assurance that the country which they all look up to and aspire to be, is ready to stop being a bully and ready to start being a trusted ally again.
As much as I support Barack Obama, it is with much shame that I confess that I found many more reasons to vote against his opponent than I found reasons to support him.
From the beginning, the McCain campaign seemed to be waged for all the wrong reasons.
First of all, why was a wealthy, 72-year-old man with 13 cars and eight houses working so hard to apply for a job? Shouldn't he have been contemplating retirement? I'll tell you why he did it; he got boned by Karl Rove and George W. Bush in South Carolina in 2000, and he's been lying in stealth for eight years waiting for his turn, the turn he felt he was cheated out of. I'm sure the eight years weren't easy, but he spent five years in a P.O.W. camp, so I have no doubts about his tenacity.
But that's the wrong reason to want to be President. Bob Dole ran on that bullshit back in 1996, and Bill Clinton slapped him around.
The Sarah Palin pick as VP? I never saw a campaign shoot itself in the foot more deftly since Al Gore thought it would be a good idea to run a Jewish veep (Joe Lieberman) past the deeply Christian voters of the South (and elsewhere....the 13 states of the Confederacy don't have any monopoly on anti-Semitism). The race for the presidency isn't "Take Your Daughter To Work Day." It would be hard to argue that even a featherweight like J. Danforth Quayle wasn't less qualified than the Governor of Alaska. Could the McCain campaign have been saved by a more savvy pick? Absolutely. He could have chosen one of a plethora of rising young stars on the right, or even an old saw like Elizabeth Dole who was a skillful politician until the voters of North Carolina started to wake up and smell the bullshit. Bobby Jindall could have brought some youth and excitement, Mitt Romney would have brought all of his economically conservative supporters, but McCain had to find someone who would whet the Evangelical's whistle after he basically told them to lick his asshole back in 2000. And snake-charming, speaking in tongues Sarah was that gal. It's too bad that the hypocrisy started piling up faster than the lines on her resume; from Troopergate, to the grandchild being born out of wedlock, to the high-end shopping spree, Caribou Barbie went to just plain old "boo" Barbie.
Finally, the campaign of smear and mud that never seemed to end, was just a bad choice. McCain flung the kitchen sink at Obama, but Barack never responded. It is virtually impossible to win a fight with an enemy that will not engage you. McCain would go into a red-faced rant about Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Socialism, spread the wealth, Joe the Plumber, and so on, and Barack would just smile and shake his head. Like all he had to say was "During the Charles Keating affair, you were the only one with money on the table" and the game is over. But he didn't go there. Obama told the truth, about McCain's lock-step with George W. Bush and the smoldering ruin that he's leaving America. And the American people responded with a hearty "fuck THAT plan."
Well, the smart parts of America did. A glance at the electoral map shows that there are still pockets of resistance to liberals, black people, educated people, or whatever part of voting for Obama you want to isolate. Maybe some folks liked McCain simply based on his military record. If that's the case, John Kerry with his superior military record should have handed W. his National-Guard-but-never-showed-up ass. Maybe some folks voted for McCain simply based on the conservative position on abortion. Fair, but here's a position on abortion I think a lot of people haven't considered, and it happens to be MY position......if two water-heads couldn't figure out a condom in the back seat of Dad's car on prom night, I DON'T WANT THEM RAISING CHILDREN!
Whatever malady is affecting the folks in the South and that strip of states from Texas to North Dakota (fuck you, I've driven through all of them, so I'll name 'em.....Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota....and I did that WITHOUT a map in front of me), whatever the malady is, the good news is that the smart people of America are going to put people and programs in position to help EVERYONE out of the mess that this country has become. EVERYONE. Everyone is going to be a beneficiary of good, smart government that won't allow the economy to tank, won't allow us to squander money we don't have and young people's lives we'd rather keep in futile wars abroad, won't allow an American city to eat Hurricane Dick and wait around four days to do something about it. And I'm talking to you, Louisiana. How much self-loathing do you have to ever vote Republican again? After George Bush left you swimming in your own shit without lifting a finger? If I lived in New Orleans, I'd rather have a finger cut off than vote Republican.
A criticism of the Democratic party by some commentator on the right was that "They always run a lawyer for President. It's never a common person."
Here's a thought. If I'm going to send someone to Washington, the home of national law and government in this country, maybe I'd like to send someone who has STUDIED LAW AND GOVERNMENT. If I want surgery done, I don't bring in a guy who lays carpet, I call a surgeon. If I want my clogged toilet fixed, I don't bring in a guy who grooms poodles, I call a plumber. And If I want economic advice, I call an economist NOT A FUCKING PLUMBER.
This is how frustrated I've become. My candidate won, and I'm still pissed. Still pissed that the election wasn't a clear-cut landslide, like Reagan-Mondale back in 1984, because there are still pockets of folks in our country who still don't get it. But it's O.K. Because folks like me stepped up and did the right thing, folks like them will get universal health care, decent wages for jobs, a country that is released from the grip of foreign oil, better social standing in the world, and the residual positivity of some racial healing.
And by the way, the flip-side of that racial healing thing is that the bar has been WAY lifted for black folk in America. The old arguments about inequalities and access to opportunity just won't hold anymore. Obama grew up without his father, worked his ass off, and became President of the Harvard Law Review (no small achievement), United States Senator, and now President of the United States. I want to hear "Yes We Can" echoing through the black community for the rest of my life. There's really no reason that I shouldn't hear it, anyway. We've come too far to turn back now.
So I applaud a post-racial America, an America that no longer considers intellectualism to be a bad thing, an America that's ready to build on that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton built and George W. Bush burned. I'm girding myself for the hounding attacks that will surely come from the Right, now that they have a villain to coalesce around. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly and the rest have four years of material ready to go, and if they try to tear down Obama like they did Bill Clinton, it won't surprise me at all. The only exception being that if they try that shit with Obama, his wife Michelle will be WAY more likely than Hillary to kick off her heels, take her jewelry off, and start kicking a little ass.
In real life, and to be serious to close this up, I have a bi-racial family. My wife is of mixed heritage, and based on our backgrounds, my daughter is Italian, African-American, Isle of St. Croix, and German. She goes to a school that is mostly minority (oxymoron?) and even though she is aware of the difference in races, she perceives no difference in the races, other than the color of their skin. And she's four. And none of her classmates think anything of it, either. Can it be that children are smarter than the voters of Alabama? And white Americans over the age of 65? I'm in Birmingham, Alabama right now, and I know damn well, somewhere in the city today, some cracker asshole made a joke about the huge Obama headline in the paper this morning and everyone getting excited because a black man got a job. And it still galls the piss out of me.
Those racial wounds are old and deep. But they're scabbing up. And one day, they'll dry up and fall off.
God Bless America.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
did anyone catch why I used a David Bowie song?
Friday, October 24, 2008
Jesus Was A Democrat (Everclear)
Saturday, October 25, 2008-12:30 A.M.
I'm home on a Friday night, and off, thank God. I'm worn out, under the weather, and tired.
I took off for another long road trip on Wednesday, October 15th, working a few comedy clubs and a couple of college gigs in an 8-day stretch with two days off. I took the van that is now my rolling office, loaded up with the Incredible Cash Cube, the star of the game show "Dash For Dollars," of which I am now the host.
I got the old war wagon up and running for the trip, heading to Jiffy Lube to get her an oil change (I literally had no idea when the oil had been changed last, so better safe than sorry) and then went to the gurus at Best Buy to have my satellite radio installed. My good buddy, Ricky K., managed to find a satellite radio unit, unopened, in the original bubble pack, at a thrift store down in Florida, and hooked me up like a fat rat. After the boys at Best Buy hooked that baby up, I was free to enjoy hundreds of channels while I drove, even though I only worked about four of them in regular rotation.
The trip to Blacksburg, Virginia, took a little longer than usual, what with me tooling around in a Ford E150 van and not having the same mobility as scooting around in a Toyota Camry. Still, the miles melted away as I enjoyed the news, talk and commentary on Air America, CNN, and other news outlets. I also indulged in a channel called Boneyard, which focuses on radio friendly 80's metal, which is what I grew up with.
Upon arriving in Blacksburg, I got myself washed up, shaved and ironed a shirt and made my way to Attitudes Bar, in the Holiday Inn. Outside, enjoying a smoke, was my old friend Paul Hooper, a talented comic out of Charlotte, North Carolina whom I toured with in the past. Paul had the reputation of being quite a hell raiser back in the day, but these days, he's rockin' the Red Bull but passing on the Jager, and his act hasn't suffered for it at all. He keeps the punchlines coming like a machine gun, unapologetic and non-stop, and he's a great act to watch. I also didn't suck, but Paul earned his headliner money that night.
The next day, I decided to drive right to Greensboro and check in to the hotel a day early. The hotel gave me the same rate the Comedy Zone was getting, and I set up shop, ironing shirts for the weekend, writing, and doing all of the stuff I do when I'm on the road. I tried to exercise, but the treadmill in the exercise room wasn't working, so I had to settle for walking around in the stadium neighborhood of Greensboro.
At the Comedy Zone, I shared the bill with local host and legend Chris Wiles and headliner James Sibley, both comics I had worked with before and enjoyed their company. I got booed the first show Saturday when I entreated the audience to use their democratic right to vote, and they got it mixed up and thought I was saying "vote Democratic," and they booed and hissed me. I told them to go fuck themselves; actually, I apologized like a little bitch and changed the subject. By the end of the weekend, I was saying whatever the hell I wanted to say and doing fine with it, and I don't know what it is about that room, but I like it and I keep going back.
Sunday, I checked out of the hotel late so I could watch "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO, and then headed to the laundromat up the road to wash my clothes. I enjoyed the Buffalo Bills game (vs. San Diego) on one of the Sirius stations (they merged with XM and I chose the package that would offer the NFL games) and the Bills won. It was great actually being able to catch the game even though I was miles away from any TV or radio station that would have carried that game. The soup Du jour was the Carolina Panthers, and they won, too, so "Go Cats!"
I drove to Fayetteville and literally missed the part of the game where Buffalo ran out the clock to seal the win, because I had to stop for gas. I managed to find it for $2.79, which was a lot better than in Fayetteville proper, where gas prices spiked to over three bucks. The grand champion of gas this week was in Virginia, where I saw a station offering it for $2.59 after I had just filled up at $2.69. At least the gas is going down, and I can't decide if that's because demand has gone down, or the oil companies realize that no one can afford it anymore.
Fayetteville was fun, but I miss the old mc, Steve. Steve took his own life a while ago, and I miss not only his dry wit, but the easy, mellow way that he warmed up the crowd. The new guy (I forget his name) comes right out of the box bashing Republicans, which is probably not a smart thing to do in a town populated predominately by military folk, their families, and folks who give them aid and comfort. Somehow, I did better in Fayetteville on Sunday than I did in Greensboro on Friday, which has my brain in a twist.
Monday I headed back west across North Carolina to the Charlotte suburb of Belmont, home of Belmont Abbey College and Starz Tavern, home of the late Belmont Comedy Zone. I checked in to the Hampton Inn, my new favorite hotel (they put us up at one in Fayetteville, as well), got cleaned up and made my way to the school to do the "teaser," a cafeteria event where I threw dollar bills and t-shirts into the audience and got them hyped for the evening show.
The show was great, with a full room and lots of folks who were hot to compete and win the money. After the show, I made my way back to the Hampton Inn and completely unraveled. I do a lot of what I call "running, jumping and dancing" in the show, the kind of thing I would do in the old Joey and Maria's Italian Comedy Wedding Shows I used to do, to get the crowd fired up. The downside is that the next day, my legs feel like the legs of an almost 42-year-old man who's been running around for an hour and a half.
I squeezed them for the late checkout and headed back across the state eastward to Henderson, North Carolina. It was a day off, so I dragged my feet, and somewhere between Charlotte and Greensboro, I heard a weird noise coming from the rear passenger side of the van, and started losing speed. Sure as shit, the tire was coming apart at the seams. And not just going flat, but coming apart like you see tractor trailer tires eating it as they speed down the road.
Luckily, no one was near me, so I headed off the ramp and got up onto the shoulder, and started making phone calls. Triple A was my first call, and they got someone out very quickly. Then I called the office to let them know what was going on, then checked in with my wife. I was carrying a full-sized spare, but had no jack to lift the van, and I probably wouldn't have tried it anyway, except in an emergency. The tow truck driver showed up with one of those heavy-duty floor jacks, and got the tire changed quickly and with little problem. The funny thing was that another car had experience some trouble as I was pulling off to the right, he was pulling off to the left with smoke billowing out from under his hood. The police and fire department came and got him squared away, and I didn't even see them move his car until just after my flat was changed.
The luck kept coming. The tow truck driver mentioned to me that there was a tire place right off the exit I had left the expressway on, so I motored on up and bought a new spare. I left them the rim with the shredded remains of the tire, and went to lunch and found a bank to get some cash. When I arrived back, the work was done, I settled up and headed on my way.
I got into Henderson and didn't have a specific hotel to check into, the college was supplying me with a lodging stipend. I decided to dig into my own pocket and stay somewhere nice, and there was a Hampton Inn within just a few miles of the school, Vance-Granville Community College. I got settled in, and went to Wal-Mart to get a hair cut. I had to wait about 40 minutes, but it felt good to just sit in a chair and not have to talk, drive or do anything. I had a mop of hair on my head that needed serious attention, and at Belmont Abbey, I had blow-dried it instead of my usual mousse-and-comb-back, and I felt like I looked like a game show host, but a parody of one. It was just too much hair.
The next morning, I checked out of the hotel and headed to VGCC. There was construction on the I-85, I got turned around, and wound up arriving 25 minutes late for my 10:00 A.M. check-in. The school is so new, my GPS doesn't even know it's there, and that was a problem. Plus, when I called, the person at the switchboard decided that County House Road and Community House Road sounded good enough that she could just give me either and I'd be fine. The late arrival didn't affect me as I still had 90 minutes to set up for the show. I worked quickly, setting up the props, backdrop, cash cube, and putting duct-tape lines on the floor that I would use during the games.
It was a great show with great competitors, and I had to introduce a tie-breaker game about three times during the course of the show. The winner was a young lady who managed to pull not just the $100 bill out of the cash cube, but one of the $50's. She wound up getting $179!
After the show, I was covered in sweat. The van was parked by a back loading dock so I did a quick change of clothes and used some new load tie-downs to secure the cube in the van. I hit the road around 2:30, and rolled into Rochester just before 1 A.M. I've got a few days off to get myself back together, and leave Tuesday for a swing through Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. I still have quite a few days off, so I'll probably visit my mother in Florida. I'll be home for my birthday, and then have a cluster of dates the week before Thanksgiving in Upstate New York, and then Thanksgiving week, I'll be in Toronto. It's a new ballgame now, juggling club dates with college dates and still trying to get home every once in a while. Today, Harmony had a school play and Pam and I went out and got a little digital video camera to catch the event on film. I'm glad I didn't miss it, but I was tired as hell this morning and the constant non-stop go has weakened some of my defenses to the common cold and such. I'm achy and listless, and sleeping an awful lot. I have a lot of work to do around the house, as well as still having to come up with some plan to retrieve my car from Grand Rapids, Michigan where it's languishing in a parking lot. I'd like to have it back before Thanksgiving week because there's no way I'm taking the van into Canada; it's not registered to me, there is a large piece of not-readily-identifiable hardware strapped down in the back, the whole thing just sounds like a personalized invitation to a battery of body cavity searches.
Not without dinner and a movie, you don't.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
I'm home on a Friday night, and off, thank God. I'm worn out, under the weather, and tired.
I took off for another long road trip on Wednesday, October 15th, working a few comedy clubs and a couple of college gigs in an 8-day stretch with two days off. I took the van that is now my rolling office, loaded up with the Incredible Cash Cube, the star of the game show "Dash For Dollars," of which I am now the host.
I got the old war wagon up and running for the trip, heading to Jiffy Lube to get her an oil change (I literally had no idea when the oil had been changed last, so better safe than sorry) and then went to the gurus at Best Buy to have my satellite radio installed. My good buddy, Ricky K., managed to find a satellite radio unit, unopened, in the original bubble pack, at a thrift store down in Florida, and hooked me up like a fat rat. After the boys at Best Buy hooked that baby up, I was free to enjoy hundreds of channels while I drove, even though I only worked about four of them in regular rotation.
The trip to Blacksburg, Virginia, took a little longer than usual, what with me tooling around in a Ford E150 van and not having the same mobility as scooting around in a Toyota Camry. Still, the miles melted away as I enjoyed the news, talk and commentary on Air America, CNN, and other news outlets. I also indulged in a channel called Boneyard, which focuses on radio friendly 80's metal, which is what I grew up with.
Upon arriving in Blacksburg, I got myself washed up, shaved and ironed a shirt and made my way to Attitudes Bar, in the Holiday Inn. Outside, enjoying a smoke, was my old friend Paul Hooper, a talented comic out of Charlotte, North Carolina whom I toured with in the past. Paul had the reputation of being quite a hell raiser back in the day, but these days, he's rockin' the Red Bull but passing on the Jager, and his act hasn't suffered for it at all. He keeps the punchlines coming like a machine gun, unapologetic and non-stop, and he's a great act to watch. I also didn't suck, but Paul earned his headliner money that night.
The next day, I decided to drive right to Greensboro and check in to the hotel a day early. The hotel gave me the same rate the Comedy Zone was getting, and I set up shop, ironing shirts for the weekend, writing, and doing all of the stuff I do when I'm on the road. I tried to exercise, but the treadmill in the exercise room wasn't working, so I had to settle for walking around in the stadium neighborhood of Greensboro.
At the Comedy Zone, I shared the bill with local host and legend Chris Wiles and headliner James Sibley, both comics I had worked with before and enjoyed their company. I got booed the first show Saturday when I entreated the audience to use their democratic right to vote, and they got it mixed up and thought I was saying "vote Democratic," and they booed and hissed me. I told them to go fuck themselves; actually, I apologized like a little bitch and changed the subject. By the end of the weekend, I was saying whatever the hell I wanted to say and doing fine with it, and I don't know what it is about that room, but I like it and I keep going back.
Sunday, I checked out of the hotel late so I could watch "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO, and then headed to the laundromat up the road to wash my clothes. I enjoyed the Buffalo Bills game (vs. San Diego) on one of the Sirius stations (they merged with XM and I chose the package that would offer the NFL games) and the Bills won. It was great actually being able to catch the game even though I was miles away from any TV or radio station that would have carried that game. The soup Du jour was the Carolina Panthers, and they won, too, so "Go Cats!"
I drove to Fayetteville and literally missed the part of the game where Buffalo ran out the clock to seal the win, because I had to stop for gas. I managed to find it for $2.79, which was a lot better than in Fayetteville proper, where gas prices spiked to over three bucks. The grand champion of gas this week was in Virginia, where I saw a station offering it for $2.59 after I had just filled up at $2.69. At least the gas is going down, and I can't decide if that's because demand has gone down, or the oil companies realize that no one can afford it anymore.
Fayetteville was fun, but I miss the old mc, Steve. Steve took his own life a while ago, and I miss not only his dry wit, but the easy, mellow way that he warmed up the crowd. The new guy (I forget his name) comes right out of the box bashing Republicans, which is probably not a smart thing to do in a town populated predominately by military folk, their families, and folks who give them aid and comfort. Somehow, I did better in Fayetteville on Sunday than I did in Greensboro on Friday, which has my brain in a twist.
Monday I headed back west across North Carolina to the Charlotte suburb of Belmont, home of Belmont Abbey College and Starz Tavern, home of the late Belmont Comedy Zone. I checked in to the Hampton Inn, my new favorite hotel (they put us up at one in Fayetteville, as well), got cleaned up and made my way to the school to do the "teaser," a cafeteria event where I threw dollar bills and t-shirts into the audience and got them hyped for the evening show.
The show was great, with a full room and lots of folks who were hot to compete and win the money. After the show, I made my way back to the Hampton Inn and completely unraveled. I do a lot of what I call "running, jumping and dancing" in the show, the kind of thing I would do in the old Joey and Maria's Italian Comedy Wedding Shows I used to do, to get the crowd fired up. The downside is that the next day, my legs feel like the legs of an almost 42-year-old man who's been running around for an hour and a half.
I squeezed them for the late checkout and headed back across the state eastward to Henderson, North Carolina. It was a day off, so I dragged my feet, and somewhere between Charlotte and Greensboro, I heard a weird noise coming from the rear passenger side of the van, and started losing speed. Sure as shit, the tire was coming apart at the seams. And not just going flat, but coming apart like you see tractor trailer tires eating it as they speed down the road.
Luckily, no one was near me, so I headed off the ramp and got up onto the shoulder, and started making phone calls. Triple A was my first call, and they got someone out very quickly. Then I called the office to let them know what was going on, then checked in with my wife. I was carrying a full-sized spare, but had no jack to lift the van, and I probably wouldn't have tried it anyway, except in an emergency. The tow truck driver showed up with one of those heavy-duty floor jacks, and got the tire changed quickly and with little problem. The funny thing was that another car had experience some trouble as I was pulling off to the right, he was pulling off to the left with smoke billowing out from under his hood. The police and fire department came and got him squared away, and I didn't even see them move his car until just after my flat was changed.
The luck kept coming. The tow truck driver mentioned to me that there was a tire place right off the exit I had left the expressway on, so I motored on up and bought a new spare. I left them the rim with the shredded remains of the tire, and went to lunch and found a bank to get some cash. When I arrived back, the work was done, I settled up and headed on my way.
I got into Henderson and didn't have a specific hotel to check into, the college was supplying me with a lodging stipend. I decided to dig into my own pocket and stay somewhere nice, and there was a Hampton Inn within just a few miles of the school, Vance-Granville Community College. I got settled in, and went to Wal-Mart to get a hair cut. I had to wait about 40 minutes, but it felt good to just sit in a chair and not have to talk, drive or do anything. I had a mop of hair on my head that needed serious attention, and at Belmont Abbey, I had blow-dried it instead of my usual mousse-and-comb-back, and I felt like I looked like a game show host, but a parody of one. It was just too much hair.
The next morning, I checked out of the hotel and headed to VGCC. There was construction on the I-85, I got turned around, and wound up arriving 25 minutes late for my 10:00 A.M. check-in. The school is so new, my GPS doesn't even know it's there, and that was a problem. Plus, when I called, the person at the switchboard decided that County House Road and Community House Road sounded good enough that she could just give me either and I'd be fine. The late arrival didn't affect me as I still had 90 minutes to set up for the show. I worked quickly, setting up the props, backdrop, cash cube, and putting duct-tape lines on the floor that I would use during the games.
It was a great show with great competitors, and I had to introduce a tie-breaker game about three times during the course of the show. The winner was a young lady who managed to pull not just the $100 bill out of the cash cube, but one of the $50's. She wound up getting $179!
After the show, I was covered in sweat. The van was parked by a back loading dock so I did a quick change of clothes and used some new load tie-downs to secure the cube in the van. I hit the road around 2:30, and rolled into Rochester just before 1 A.M. I've got a few days off to get myself back together, and leave Tuesday for a swing through Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. I still have quite a few days off, so I'll probably visit my mother in Florida. I'll be home for my birthday, and then have a cluster of dates the week before Thanksgiving in Upstate New York, and then Thanksgiving week, I'll be in Toronto. It's a new ballgame now, juggling club dates with college dates and still trying to get home every once in a while. Today, Harmony had a school play and Pam and I went out and got a little digital video camera to catch the event on film. I'm glad I didn't miss it, but I was tired as hell this morning and the constant non-stop go has weakened some of my defenses to the common cold and such. I'm achy and listless, and sleeping an awful lot. I have a lot of work to do around the house, as well as still having to come up with some plan to retrieve my car from Grand Rapids, Michigan where it's languishing in a parking lot. I'd like to have it back before Thanksgiving week because there's no way I'm taking the van into Canada; it's not registered to me, there is a large piece of not-readily-identifiable hardware strapped down in the back, the whole thing just sounds like a personalized invitation to a battery of body cavity searches.
Not without dinner and a movie, you don't.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Friday, October 10, 2008
Don't Stop Believin'
Saturday, October 11, 2008
3:45 A.M.
It's nice to be home again. I've been out in the midwest for the last ten days, training for a new job. I'm not leaving standup comedy; I'm just taking a different path.
Anyone who's talked to me know that I've been increasingly disenchanted with the standup comedy life. There's too much driving, too much time away from home, too much adversity, bad crowds, clubs dying, and not enough upside when the paycheck comes. Gas prices have been kicking the ass of traveling entertainers for years now, and wages have been stagnant.
I started doing comedy when I was in college, which was between 1987 and 1991. I was active in student activities at that time, and the two meshed together well; I was on the campus radio station (closed circuit, but an audience none the less) and hosted comedy shows on campus. I started a coffeehouse series called "Club Wednesday," and we brought big-name touring college acts on campus to do one-hour shows at noon. I remember handing thousand-dollar checks to guys like Nick DiPaolo and John Joseph, who had just won Star Search that year. And because we block-booked our talent, I knew that these guys had six or seven more shows in a ten day period, and that seemed like really good money. It was one of the reasons that I ran away from home to join the circus, thinking that fast cash and easy money were at the end of the standup comedy rainbow.
Well, long story short, standup comedy has been fun, and I'll love it until I die, but it's a lot easier to go out on the road and starve when you don't have a family waiting back home. If it were just me, I'd be sleeping on sofas, being a "road whore" and getting by on the kindness of strangers, working from check-to-check in a gypsy existence and dying on the road.
Ever since the price of gas got ridiculous, I've felt the pressure of needing to make a decision about comedy; it's not paying the bills anymore, becoming increasingly frustrating to do, and robbing me of a good portion of my time with my family. I'd even gone so far as to pick up applications for different retail stores in my area, as I worked in retail (and enjoyed it) before I made the decision many years ago to go back to college.
I hadn't gone and made any rash decisions until my wife had mentioned that she talked to our friend Stephano, a comic from Wisconsin (now living in Las Vegas). Stephano was working for a college comedy game show, and making some decent money, and he mentioned to her that the agency was looking for another guy. He passed along the number and said I should give him a call.
Now, I initially looked at this opportunity the same way that a jungle cat looks at meat in a trap. I'm hungry, but don't completely trust what I'm about to get into.
But I've got a wife and a beautiful little girl at home who are depending on me to make good decisions, so finally, after dragging my feet, I pick up the phone.
I spoke with Bill Smith from the Smith Agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan and basically submitted my resume over the phone. He must have liked what he heard, because he started pitching the show to me and let me know what it was all about. I used my improv skills to speak with Bill, letting him know that I had experience and that I was familiar with the market. He mentioned that they pitched a line of inflatables, so I mentioned that I had experience with Sumo Wrestling suits and hosting the show at various bar clients.
After a few weeks of preparation, I was scheduled to come out to Michigan to train for the show. Smith brought in Sean Carlin, one of the other comics who hosts a third game show for the Smith Agency. Sean and I hit it off well, and my training began for the game show.
Basically, it's a live show hosted on college campuses called "Dash For Dollars." We have live contestants in a game show format, and the students have to work their way through a series of challenges, and the grand champion gets to go into the cash cube, a money booth where the money flies through the air, and they can keep as much as they can grab in 30 seconds.
I trained for about three days with Sean, doing run-throughs and discussing all of the possible glitches, situations, strategies and contingencies that I could experience. After the fourth day, a collection of workers and family members from the Smith Agency gathered in their warehouse to watch me go through an actual running of "Dash For Dollars." Bill bought pizza for the crew, and we set it up like an actual show, using his sound equipment in the warehouse left over from his rock 'n' roll days. The show went well, and I was on my way.
I spent Sunday preparing mentally, going over the notes, technical documents for the cash cube, the internal paperwork for the Smith Agency, and bonding with Sean and asking him all of the questions I could possibly think of. On Monday, we loaded up a van with the cash cube and all of the props, and made our way to Aquinas College in Grand Rapids.
We had a "teaser" scheduled a few hours before showtime, where we would go through the student cafeteria and tell the students about the show happening later that night, passing out money and t-shirts and getting their excitement level up. We had a mix-up with the hotel situation, finally figuring out that we were scheduled to be at the Comfort Inn, and I got showered and dressed and prepared for my first public show.
Sean and I were accompanied by a guy named Ryan, one of the technicians at the Smith Agency. The agency does a series of other shows for colleges, including temporary tattoos, funny t-shirts, and the like, and Ryan operates some of the shows. He came along for moral support, and to be our "roadie," and he came in quite handy. We got to the college two hours before our 10:00 P.M. showtime, and the student activities folks greeted us with a nice pre-show meal (Jimmy John's submarine sandwich platters and soft drinks). I remember providing hospitality when I brought artists on campus, and the practice hasn't changed. I ate quietly while Sean chatted with the student activities people, taking notice of what he had to say and what the students were responding to.
As the time ticked down to showtime, I got on the mike and started warming up the crowd. Several agents from the Smith Agency showed up to see me work in front of an actual college crowd, and Bill even came out for a little while.
The first show went well, with only a few notes from Sean, and the students seemed to enjoy the show a lot. I tossed out money and t-shirts, and ran the students through the games, while Sean ran the musical soundtrack from the d.j. booth. It was a lot of running and shouting, but a lot of fun. The next day, I was a little sore from all the physical activity, but we got a late checkout from the hotel so I had the opportunity to sleep in a little.
The next show was at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. Sean followed me and hung out only as an observer, and I loaded in the show using student volunteers and set it up and ran it myself. It went really well and was well attended, and afterwards, the Student Activities director took us out and bought us Subway sandwiches for our post-show meal. Sean and I ate and talked and then parted company, he followed me to the expressway and then headed east towards Upstate New York, and I went back to the hotel.
I had only a short time to sleep before heading off towards South Suburban College in South Holland, Illinois, just south of Chicago. It rained heavily all the way there, but the van held steady on the road, and I didn't have much trouble negotiating it even though it was the biggest vehicle I've driven since piloting the Bronco on the George Carlin tour, and that was over a decade ago. Still, old habits die hard, and soon I was one with the vehicle, making turns and navigating around parked cars with that big boat like I'd been doing it forever.
The one thing that was troublesome was the cash cube. Imagine a plexiglass telephone booth with no telephone in it, and a window-style air conditioner anchored at the bottom. The cube has a rolling dolly welded to the back of it, and the unit slides into the back of the van on the wheels. They had sandbags to chock the wheels to keep it from sliding around, but they shift during transit and at one point, I stopped for a vehicle making a right-on-red, and the cube slammed into the back of my seat, giving me a nice little punch in the back.
I anchored the cube as best I could, using the full-sized spare tire as a buffer between my seat and the cube, laying it down so the rolling cube wouldn't hit my chair again. I drove through the rain to Chicago, and just five blocks from the school, disaster struck. I was waiting at a red light, and when the light turned green, I gave the gas pedal a little push, and as the van lurched forward, the cube rolled back, and one of the metal edges caught one of the back windows just right and shattered it into a thousand pieces. I was 45 minutes early for my check in time, and I had to move fast. I also had to find a place to change money into small bills to put into the cash cube for the show.
I stopped at a supermarket and used the bathroom. Their ATM was out of order, so I headed to a bank around the corner. I used the bank's ATM, paying the $2 fee, and took the money to a teller who happily broke the bills for me.
Next stop was Walgreen's. I purchased a small broom 'n' dustpan, parked the van in the back of the parking lot near a garbage can, and started cleaning up the mess. Once I got most of the glass taken care of, I whipped out my roll of duct tape (which I bought for just such an emergency) and butchered the cardboard from a mostly empty box of t-shirts and started closing the hole. After the hole was properly covered, I made my way to the college with 15 mintues to spare.
I chatted with the student activities director at South Suburban, getting a feel for the demographic makeup of the student body while I set up the show. The cube was too big to fit through any of the doors, but the back of the theater I was performing in had a big roll-up door, so we brought it in that way. I had the show set up quickly and had about 45 minutes to breathe and relax before showtime. The show went great, and believe me, it's hard for it not to go great when you're handing out cash and t-shirts like Santa Claus. The winning student, a big dude named Eric who I had picked on earlier in the show, only fished out $56 from the cash cube, so I looked in my pocket and saw a fifty, a five and a one. Fifty-six dollars. I doubled the prize money and looked like the biggest super hero there ever was! It was a great feeling, and all I could think of was "Wow, they're actually paying me to do this!"
After the show, it was off to the hotel where the college graciously lodged me in a king business suite, complete with fridge, microwave and comped wireless internet. I relaxed for only a few minutes before scanning the yellow pages to look for an auto glass shop that could take care of my situation. I was performing at a school on the north side of Chicago the following day, so I made an appointment for the mobile unit to meet me there. They needed a four-hour window of time to work on the glass, and between the check-in and the end of the show, I would be at Oakton Community College for four hours, so it seemed perfect.
I headed out, grabbed dinner and hit a bank to replenish my cash supply for the next show. I wanted to have all of my ducks in a row before taking off the next morning, so I used the time in the hotel room to reset all of my props and have the most time available to work with the glass technician if need be.
I took off extra early for Oakton, knowing that morning rush hour traffic in Chicago would be relentless. It was only a 45-minute drive, but I allowed double the time and still only got there 20 minutes early. I was met immediately by the glass company's mobile unit, and he repaired my windown in 20 minutes. It was literally a picture-perfect situation!
I loaded in the show to the student cafeteria, and after a few glitches with the college's sound system, started the show. The show went great, and the students really seemed to need the money because they were mobbing me as I threw singles into the crowd. The grand champion, a petit young lady named Mary Kitt, also pulled a small amount of money like the winner the day before. I reached in my pocket and added cash to her stack, and the crowd went nuts!
I actually had clipped the college's sound system with the music and lapel microphone they gave me to use, because I was trying to drive a full cafeteria with music and I'm loud to begin with. Still, I ran around, jumped up on chairs, mugged for the audience, threw money around, and before I knew it, I realized I was channeling Mike Ruiz.
Mike Ruiz is one of my good, good friends, and I met him while performing in the Joey and Maria's Italian Comedy Wedding Show years back. Mike is a good comic and actor, and a natural mc for the show. I have literally done hundreds of shows with Mike in all manner of rooms, from small banquet halls to huge convention centers, and even the big room at Turning Stone Casino in Upstate New York. Mike has a wonderful rapport with an audience, and uses his natural likeability to move them, and I obviously absorbed some of his technique, because there it was, in the Oakton Community College Student Life Center, bubbling out of me like hot marinara out of a calzone. It worked so well that I must publicly thank you Mike, for teaching me even if you didn't realize that you were teaching me.
After the show, I hit the trail of tears back home to Rochester, and after losing an hour in the time transition from Chicago back to east coast time, I rolled into Rochester around 3 A.M. I now have the Smith Agency van sitting in my driveway and my car is back in Grand Rapids sitting in the parking lot and as soon as I can figure out how to retrieve it, I'm heading back there. I slept in as long as Harmony would let me, and later in the afternoon, I got a call from Bill Smith mentioning that my report cards from the schools were good, and that I was "in the van," meaning I'm hired and installed as the newest host for "Dash For Dollars."
I still have comedy club dates on the books; I'm going to Blacksburg, Virginia, Greensboro, North Carolina and Fayetteville, North Carolina this week, and then I have a Monday night show the day after. The great thing about this game show is that they generally get booked during the week, leaving my weekends available for club work. Plus, they're all over the country, which means the routing is actually going to help me expand my territory. And the money is good enough that I'm actually going to be able to stay in the game, and I've got a company full of agents repping me, and now all I have to do is worry about getting to the dates and performing. I'm also going to try and get my improv troupe to work more frequently, but I have to tackle things a little bit at a time. I have books to write, CD's to record, and so many projects I can't count them. I've been recharged by this opportunity, and I'm excited to see where it's going to head. One of the best by-products is that I'm home for a weekend, and it doesn't mean I was unemployed this week. I feel like I should pinch myself to make sure I'm awake.
I've always said that the key to this business was tenacity. I just never thought that I would have to prove it to myself. I went from being ready to take a job stocking shelves at a supermarket to being the host of one of the longest-running college shows in the country. I feel like Kurt Warner must have after Super Bowl XXXIV.
Don't Stop Believin', indeed.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
3:45 A.M.
It's nice to be home again. I've been out in the midwest for the last ten days, training for a new job. I'm not leaving standup comedy; I'm just taking a different path.
Anyone who's talked to me know that I've been increasingly disenchanted with the standup comedy life. There's too much driving, too much time away from home, too much adversity, bad crowds, clubs dying, and not enough upside when the paycheck comes. Gas prices have been kicking the ass of traveling entertainers for years now, and wages have been stagnant.
I started doing comedy when I was in college, which was between 1987 and 1991. I was active in student activities at that time, and the two meshed together well; I was on the campus radio station (closed circuit, but an audience none the less) and hosted comedy shows on campus. I started a coffeehouse series called "Club Wednesday," and we brought big-name touring college acts on campus to do one-hour shows at noon. I remember handing thousand-dollar checks to guys like Nick DiPaolo and John Joseph, who had just won Star Search that year. And because we block-booked our talent, I knew that these guys had six or seven more shows in a ten day period, and that seemed like really good money. It was one of the reasons that I ran away from home to join the circus, thinking that fast cash and easy money were at the end of the standup comedy rainbow.
Well, long story short, standup comedy has been fun, and I'll love it until I die, but it's a lot easier to go out on the road and starve when you don't have a family waiting back home. If it were just me, I'd be sleeping on sofas, being a "road whore" and getting by on the kindness of strangers, working from check-to-check in a gypsy existence and dying on the road.
Ever since the price of gas got ridiculous, I've felt the pressure of needing to make a decision about comedy; it's not paying the bills anymore, becoming increasingly frustrating to do, and robbing me of a good portion of my time with my family. I'd even gone so far as to pick up applications for different retail stores in my area, as I worked in retail (and enjoyed it) before I made the decision many years ago to go back to college.
I hadn't gone and made any rash decisions until my wife had mentioned that she talked to our friend Stephano, a comic from Wisconsin (now living in Las Vegas). Stephano was working for a college comedy game show, and making some decent money, and he mentioned to her that the agency was looking for another guy. He passed along the number and said I should give him a call.
Now, I initially looked at this opportunity the same way that a jungle cat looks at meat in a trap. I'm hungry, but don't completely trust what I'm about to get into.
But I've got a wife and a beautiful little girl at home who are depending on me to make good decisions, so finally, after dragging my feet, I pick up the phone.
I spoke with Bill Smith from the Smith Agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan and basically submitted my resume over the phone. He must have liked what he heard, because he started pitching the show to me and let me know what it was all about. I used my improv skills to speak with Bill, letting him know that I had experience and that I was familiar with the market. He mentioned that they pitched a line of inflatables, so I mentioned that I had experience with Sumo Wrestling suits and hosting the show at various bar clients.
After a few weeks of preparation, I was scheduled to come out to Michigan to train for the show. Smith brought in Sean Carlin, one of the other comics who hosts a third game show for the Smith Agency. Sean and I hit it off well, and my training began for the game show.
Basically, it's a live show hosted on college campuses called "Dash For Dollars." We have live contestants in a game show format, and the students have to work their way through a series of challenges, and the grand champion gets to go into the cash cube, a money booth where the money flies through the air, and they can keep as much as they can grab in 30 seconds.
I trained for about three days with Sean, doing run-throughs and discussing all of the possible glitches, situations, strategies and contingencies that I could experience. After the fourth day, a collection of workers and family members from the Smith Agency gathered in their warehouse to watch me go through an actual running of "Dash For Dollars." Bill bought pizza for the crew, and we set it up like an actual show, using his sound equipment in the warehouse left over from his rock 'n' roll days. The show went well, and I was on my way.
I spent Sunday preparing mentally, going over the notes, technical documents for the cash cube, the internal paperwork for the Smith Agency, and bonding with Sean and asking him all of the questions I could possibly think of. On Monday, we loaded up a van with the cash cube and all of the props, and made our way to Aquinas College in Grand Rapids.
We had a "teaser" scheduled a few hours before showtime, where we would go through the student cafeteria and tell the students about the show happening later that night, passing out money and t-shirts and getting their excitement level up. We had a mix-up with the hotel situation, finally figuring out that we were scheduled to be at the Comfort Inn, and I got showered and dressed and prepared for my first public show.
Sean and I were accompanied by a guy named Ryan, one of the technicians at the Smith Agency. The agency does a series of other shows for colleges, including temporary tattoos, funny t-shirts, and the like, and Ryan operates some of the shows. He came along for moral support, and to be our "roadie," and he came in quite handy. We got to the college two hours before our 10:00 P.M. showtime, and the student activities folks greeted us with a nice pre-show meal (Jimmy John's submarine sandwich platters and soft drinks). I remember providing hospitality when I brought artists on campus, and the practice hasn't changed. I ate quietly while Sean chatted with the student activities people, taking notice of what he had to say and what the students were responding to.
As the time ticked down to showtime, I got on the mike and started warming up the crowd. Several agents from the Smith Agency showed up to see me work in front of an actual college crowd, and Bill even came out for a little while.
The first show went well, with only a few notes from Sean, and the students seemed to enjoy the show a lot. I tossed out money and t-shirts, and ran the students through the games, while Sean ran the musical soundtrack from the d.j. booth. It was a lot of running and shouting, but a lot of fun. The next day, I was a little sore from all the physical activity, but we got a late checkout from the hotel so I had the opportunity to sleep in a little.
The next show was at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. Sean followed me and hung out only as an observer, and I loaded in the show using student volunteers and set it up and ran it myself. It went really well and was well attended, and afterwards, the Student Activities director took us out and bought us Subway sandwiches for our post-show meal. Sean and I ate and talked and then parted company, he followed me to the expressway and then headed east towards Upstate New York, and I went back to the hotel.
I had only a short time to sleep before heading off towards South Suburban College in South Holland, Illinois, just south of Chicago. It rained heavily all the way there, but the van held steady on the road, and I didn't have much trouble negotiating it even though it was the biggest vehicle I've driven since piloting the Bronco on the George Carlin tour, and that was over a decade ago. Still, old habits die hard, and soon I was one with the vehicle, making turns and navigating around parked cars with that big boat like I'd been doing it forever.
The one thing that was troublesome was the cash cube. Imagine a plexiglass telephone booth with no telephone in it, and a window-style air conditioner anchored at the bottom. The cube has a rolling dolly welded to the back of it, and the unit slides into the back of the van on the wheels. They had sandbags to chock the wheels to keep it from sliding around, but they shift during transit and at one point, I stopped for a vehicle making a right-on-red, and the cube slammed into the back of my seat, giving me a nice little punch in the back.
I anchored the cube as best I could, using the full-sized spare tire as a buffer between my seat and the cube, laying it down so the rolling cube wouldn't hit my chair again. I drove through the rain to Chicago, and just five blocks from the school, disaster struck. I was waiting at a red light, and when the light turned green, I gave the gas pedal a little push, and as the van lurched forward, the cube rolled back, and one of the metal edges caught one of the back windows just right and shattered it into a thousand pieces. I was 45 minutes early for my check in time, and I had to move fast. I also had to find a place to change money into small bills to put into the cash cube for the show.
I stopped at a supermarket and used the bathroom. Their ATM was out of order, so I headed to a bank around the corner. I used the bank's ATM, paying the $2 fee, and took the money to a teller who happily broke the bills for me.
Next stop was Walgreen's. I purchased a small broom 'n' dustpan, parked the van in the back of the parking lot near a garbage can, and started cleaning up the mess. Once I got most of the glass taken care of, I whipped out my roll of duct tape (which I bought for just such an emergency) and butchered the cardboard from a mostly empty box of t-shirts and started closing the hole. After the hole was properly covered, I made my way to the college with 15 mintues to spare.
I chatted with the student activities director at South Suburban, getting a feel for the demographic makeup of the student body while I set up the show. The cube was too big to fit through any of the doors, but the back of the theater I was performing in had a big roll-up door, so we brought it in that way. I had the show set up quickly and had about 45 minutes to breathe and relax before showtime. The show went great, and believe me, it's hard for it not to go great when you're handing out cash and t-shirts like Santa Claus. The winning student, a big dude named Eric who I had picked on earlier in the show, only fished out $56 from the cash cube, so I looked in my pocket and saw a fifty, a five and a one. Fifty-six dollars. I doubled the prize money and looked like the biggest super hero there ever was! It was a great feeling, and all I could think of was "Wow, they're actually paying me to do this!"
After the show, it was off to the hotel where the college graciously lodged me in a king business suite, complete with fridge, microwave and comped wireless internet. I relaxed for only a few minutes before scanning the yellow pages to look for an auto glass shop that could take care of my situation. I was performing at a school on the north side of Chicago the following day, so I made an appointment for the mobile unit to meet me there. They needed a four-hour window of time to work on the glass, and between the check-in and the end of the show, I would be at Oakton Community College for four hours, so it seemed perfect.
I headed out, grabbed dinner and hit a bank to replenish my cash supply for the next show. I wanted to have all of my ducks in a row before taking off the next morning, so I used the time in the hotel room to reset all of my props and have the most time available to work with the glass technician if need be.
I took off extra early for Oakton, knowing that morning rush hour traffic in Chicago would be relentless. It was only a 45-minute drive, but I allowed double the time and still only got there 20 minutes early. I was met immediately by the glass company's mobile unit, and he repaired my windown in 20 minutes. It was literally a picture-perfect situation!
I loaded in the show to the student cafeteria, and after a few glitches with the college's sound system, started the show. The show went great, and the students really seemed to need the money because they were mobbing me as I threw singles into the crowd. The grand champion, a petit young lady named Mary Kitt, also pulled a small amount of money like the winner the day before. I reached in my pocket and added cash to her stack, and the crowd went nuts!
I actually had clipped the college's sound system with the music and lapel microphone they gave me to use, because I was trying to drive a full cafeteria with music and I'm loud to begin with. Still, I ran around, jumped up on chairs, mugged for the audience, threw money around, and before I knew it, I realized I was channeling Mike Ruiz.
Mike Ruiz is one of my good, good friends, and I met him while performing in the Joey and Maria's Italian Comedy Wedding Show years back. Mike is a good comic and actor, and a natural mc for the show. I have literally done hundreds of shows with Mike in all manner of rooms, from small banquet halls to huge convention centers, and even the big room at Turning Stone Casino in Upstate New York. Mike has a wonderful rapport with an audience, and uses his natural likeability to move them, and I obviously absorbed some of his technique, because there it was, in the Oakton Community College Student Life Center, bubbling out of me like hot marinara out of a calzone. It worked so well that I must publicly thank you Mike, for teaching me even if you didn't realize that you were teaching me.
After the show, I hit the trail of tears back home to Rochester, and after losing an hour in the time transition from Chicago back to east coast time, I rolled into Rochester around 3 A.M. I now have the Smith Agency van sitting in my driveway and my car is back in Grand Rapids sitting in the parking lot and as soon as I can figure out how to retrieve it, I'm heading back there. I slept in as long as Harmony would let me, and later in the afternoon, I got a call from Bill Smith mentioning that my report cards from the schools were good, and that I was "in the van," meaning I'm hired and installed as the newest host for "Dash For Dollars."
I still have comedy club dates on the books; I'm going to Blacksburg, Virginia, Greensboro, North Carolina and Fayetteville, North Carolina this week, and then I have a Monday night show the day after. The great thing about this game show is that they generally get booked during the week, leaving my weekends available for club work. Plus, they're all over the country, which means the routing is actually going to help me expand my territory. And the money is good enough that I'm actually going to be able to stay in the game, and I've got a company full of agents repping me, and now all I have to do is worry about getting to the dates and performing. I'm also going to try and get my improv troupe to work more frequently, but I have to tackle things a little bit at a time. I have books to write, CD's to record, and so many projects I can't count them. I've been recharged by this opportunity, and I'm excited to see where it's going to head. One of the best by-products is that I'm home for a weekend, and it doesn't mean I was unemployed this week. I feel like I should pinch myself to make sure I'm awake.
I've always said that the key to this business was tenacity. I just never thought that I would have to prove it to myself. I went from being ready to take a job stocking shelves at a supermarket to being the host of one of the longest-running college shows in the country. I feel like Kurt Warner must have after Super Bowl XXXIV.
Don't Stop Believin', indeed.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sexual Healing
Sexual Healing 4963
Tuesday, September 30, 2008-1:00 A.M.
I said "Fuck The Troops" on stage Saturday night and got a round of applause.
Here's how it happened; I was performing at the Cedar House in Skaneatles, New York with fellow comics Danny "D-Low" Brown and Joe Fico. At a point in my headlining set, I begin talking about politics. I preface the political material in my show by urging everyone to vote in November, because it sickens me that voter apathy has subjected us to lousy leadership in this country for much of the last 40 years (in other words, my lifetime). I mention that American fighting men and women lost their lives defending our right to vote, and if you stayed home on Election Day, you were basically saying "Fuck The Troops." The crowd of about 120 clapped and cheered.
Now, staying home on Election Day is NOT saying "Fuck The Troops." The right to vote is also the right to abstain. But I thought it would be a fun exercise to see if I could say what is possibly the most inflammatory statement you could say to a group of strangers (in a small, and from what I could gather, conservative town) and get away with it.
Joe had done some political material earlier in the show, and it was clear from their response that I was in a very red part of New York (a very blue state). Getting them to clap for me saying "fuck the troops" was all the more sweeter, because it proved that in the right context, with the right wording and inflection, you can get social conservatives to clap for almost anything.
Now, I mention all of this not to give myself a smug pat-on-the-back, but to set up the next thing, which is a question from the mailbag. The question comes from Ricky K. of Englewood, Florida, and he's not exactly a stranger; he's been one of my best friends for almost 20 years.
Ricky writes; "I'd like to see you write in your blog about Sara Palin and how she is quickly becoming another Dan Quayle and late night fodder for Dave, Jay and Saturday Night Live. I'd like to see your take on this."
Well, Ricky, I'd be glad to oblige.
The state of politics in this country has become so fragmented and divided that we'll likely never come together as a nation again. The infighting based on whether or not an individual is a Democrat or a Republican has gotten so ugly, it's made many of us feel like foreigners in our own country. The current state of the economy (disastrous) is a perfect microcosm of what we've become....a bunch of sorry finger-pointers who would rather assign blame (and therefore, shame) than roll up our sleeves and work together in a bucket brigade to put the fire out. This fragmentation was designed by Republicans, to pit us against each other and seize the power that by rights, should be held by Democrats as champions of the middle class, the largest class in this country (and by that I mean outnumbering both the "rich" and the "poor").
Now, as a Liberal, I must defend the Democrats as being more correct-not "totally" correct, but more correct, than Republicans in any given circumstance. Republicans are given to hyperbole, such as tearing down actors who give their political opinions as "Hollywood elitists," even though you never hear that tag given to Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger, ie: Hollywood elitists that they agree with. They are masters of double-speak, and will sell you as much bullshit as you are willing to buy.
And even the base of the Republican party is suspect; Republicans were always the party of the monied few, while the Democrats favored the working class; hence, the union support of Democratic candidates. The simple truth is that as more and more wealth is hoarded by the top one percent in this country, the Republican party needed to shore up their numbers (there are certainly not enough wealthy people left to win an election for a Republican candidate), and they did it by reaching out to evangelical Christians; ie: "Social Conservatives." The plot here seems to be that if you are an economic Conservative, you justtake a stance that abortions are wrong, flag burning is wrong, and gay marriage is an abomination, and you count those votes right into office. Politicians will say anything to get elected, sure, but this one is so easy an idiot could do it.
Calm down, I'm not up to Governor Palin yet.
You never hear anyone talk about "economic Liberals," do you? It's usually just social Liberals, because Liberals don't follow the money like Conservatives do. The general stance is that Republicans care about money, and Democrats care about people. Liberals are forced to deal with money in the form of taxation because they need that money to implement social programs which are designed (wait for it) to take care of people. Republicans want smaller government, smaller taxes, less governmental regulation and intrusion in business, and basically allow each individual's chips to fall where they may, which is a very cavalier attitude to take when you've already got plenty of money. Universal health care isn't very important to you if you're healthy and wealthy. Which begs the question, why isn't there universal health care in this country? Because we've only had two terms of Democratic leadership in the White House in the last 28 years, and that particular president (Clinton) had to deal with a Republican Congress that basically told him to shove universal health care up his blow hole (talking about health care and President Clinton actually makes the song "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye come to mind, and I'm sure there's a good joke in there somewhere, but I got the punchline and can't figure out the setup). Another reason that Republicans shoot down universal health care is that dead people can't collect Social Security. If health care was available and people lived long, healthy lives, they'd be collecting Social Security up the wazoo, and George W. Bush and his cronies have already raided that fund and spent the money. Finally, universal health care would destroy a whole industry, the health insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical lobby won't sit back and watch their product get "price fixed" by a bunch of anti-profit Socialists. It's all in the money, baby. If the uninsured (yes, I'm one of them, thank you) could get some Political Action Committee money together to lobby Congress, we would. But if we had that money, we wouldn't need to lobby Congress, we could just go buy our own damn medication.
I had a very interesting conversation with a guy after a show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania last month about universal health care. This individual was ex-Army, and worked for the government in a civilian capacity. His argument against universal health care (after damning the newly minted Democratic VP choice of Joe Biden as a "Socialist" [the new bad word for "Liberal"]) was that the same long lines and poor service that we recieve at the Department of Motor Vehicles would be the same that we would receive under socialized medicine. Although at first blush, I would say as an unisured person that if I could vault over high medical bills by standing in line, I would find the time to do that, but I reject this logic because people at the Department of Motor Vehicles are bureaucrats who are issuing licenses, collecting money and handing out plates. Folks who work in medicine do so because they are healers, wishing to help people and take oaths to do so. I'm not saying that the billing and records aspect of hospitals and clinics would be less rigmarole than they are now, but actually, yes they would, because there wouldn't have to be any billing to speak of, it would just be maintenance of health records. So yes, I disagree in that respect.
So we've got a hornswoggled populace who are getting shoved around, manipulated by Republicans who beat the socially conservative drum, lining up all the simps who care way too much about the abortion issue, gay marriage and gun rights (and the sad truth is that overturning Roe v. Wade wouldn't abolish abortion, it would just revert the ruling on the issue back to the states, so you'd have really, really, really conservative states like South Dakota and Alabama saying "no" to abortion, then Becky Sue would have to take a long bus ride to the next abortion-allowing state to get her procedure done, or Billy Ray would have to do a back alley coat hanger job on her or face raising a little bastard for 18 years) and marching Conservative politicians into office to the detriment of their fiscal health and welfare. For the most part, social conservatives are not of monetary substance to afford the fiscal policies of the Conservative Right. It would be much more to their advantage to vote with the Left, but the thought of allowing gays to marry and live together (even though this would fall under the allowance of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...remember that from History class?) makes most social conservatives (the real ones, not the ones pretending they are to curry favor and get votes) vomit. And I mean, those that weren't in the airport bathroom already, playing footsy under the bathroom stall with another guy.
But neither do Liberals vote their wallets....Sean Penn and Barbara Streisand have plenty of money, and vote with a party that would most likely tax them handily, but they do so because they understand that to whom much is given, much is expected (that's from the Bible, in case you don't recognize it). And while the teachings of Jesus Christ almost always smack of Socialism, only a few people (and it's usually artists, people who spend time examining the human condition) that understand the natural beauty in helping one another. And they do it because it's the right way to act.
So that, in an overly-simplified explanation, is why I am a Liberal. Now on to Governor Palin.
By now, I'm sure you've heard a lot about the good Governor and her fine work up there in Alaska, and had quite a few opportunities to size her up for yourself and decide if she is indeed a good choice for Senator McCain as a running mate.
From the beginning, when Senator McCain emerged victorious over a weak Republican field to garner the nomination of the party, most Conservatives were beside themselves. I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh and hearing how much of a disaster this was for the party (he's seemed to have come around as of late) and all I could think of was that the George W. Bush campaign painted McCain as the worst possible choice in the world back in 2000, and now he's the next coming of Ronald Reagan. Remember when Karl Rove got a bunch of volunteers on the phone in South Carolina back in 2000 and asked people "Would it make you want to vote for Senator McCain less if you found out that he fathered a black child out of wedlock?" And the truth was that he handn't, the truth was that he and his wife, Cindy, had adopted a black child and McCain had to hide the child lest people think the rumor was true, and many folks in South Carolina didn't vote for him over George W. Bush based on that lie alone. When McCain was named the eventual Republican nominee this year, many folks on the right were very disappointed, hoping for a Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney (Giuliani never had a chance) and in the absence of those candidates, McCain was like a bitter medicine and the choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was quite the thumb in the eye to Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or any of the other rich, white men who were supposed to be in line for that job.
The initial response was that Palin was an answer to disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters who were upset that Barack Obama didn't choose her as his running mate and the Republicans decided to give them a female that they could vote for and make the medicine go down easier. But Hillary Clinton's supporters weren't supporting her because she was a female, they were supporting her because she stood for the things they wanted their elected officials to stand for; health care, help for working families, relief from the high cost of living, a woman's right to choose, equality in the workplace for women and other Liberal ideas. Palin is a pro-life (unless you're a moose, I guess), pro-gun Conservative who shares few if any of Clinton's views, other than that a woman can and should compete for one of the two highest offices in the land.
It is to Governor Palin's eternal misfortune that she has a talented Doppelganger in the form of Tina Fey, formerly of Saturday Night Live and now of 30 Rock on NBC. Fey has lampooned the Governor twice in the last two weeks on SNL, and this last go-around, she didn't even have to memorize funny written dialogue. In a sketch featuring Amy Pohler as Katie Couric and spoofing a recent interview Governor Palin did with her, Fey merely delivered the lines Governor Palin did when questioned on her foreign party credentials. The disjointed response generated gales of laughter without much comic exaggeration, and THAT, my friends, is quite unfortunate indeed. It is far unfortunate for us as a nation that this situation has been allowed to happen, that a woman who appears to be, while strong, STUNNINGLY unqualified for the position of Vice President, has, in fact, been offered by one of the two major political parties as fit for that office.
Dan Quayle, for those of you that remember him, was chosen by the elder President Bush to show some balance on the ticket by featuring one of the young rising stars of the Republican party. Quayle was a senator from Indiana, and was famously skewered for his correction of a student who spelled "potato" correctly, insisting that the word actually featured an "e" at the end. Quayle had several other gaffes as well, but none more memorable than that one.
Sarah Palin hasn't even ascended to office yet, and she's already barfed up quite a few doozies for the late night comedians to work with. There's a photo making the rounds on the internet of her in an American flag bikini, holding an automatic rifle, but it's actually Palin's head photoshopped on to another woman in that pose (please don't believe stuff you read on the internet.....there's also no money waiting for you in Nigeria from your dead uncle you didn't know you had).
The choice of Palin is bad, and probably not McCain's, although he definitely has a history of reckless behavior. McCain has a damaged reputation among evangelicals (leftover from his 2000 presidential bid in which he basically told the religious right to go fuck themselves) and the Palin pick seems like an attempt to assuage them. Whether or not there are women dumb enough to follow the logic that if they can't vote for Hillary Clinton, they can vote for McCain and get Palin into the White House as the first female to hold the veep job, remains to be seen. I can't imagine that Clinton supporters are that obtuse, although she has strong support in the Appalachian states, and those folks aren't exactly world-famous for their "book lurnin'."
Any politician that McCain chose as his running mate was sure to be eviscerated by the late night comics, Letterman, Leno, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and others. The sad truth is that Palin is such a bad choice, her jokes write themselves, and now even Republicans are dog-piling on and calling for her removal from the ticket. And this is two months away from the election!
But let's face it, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln could descend from heaven and he'd lose the presidential election in a landslide. The blue states wouldn't vote for him because he's a Republican. The South wouldn't vote for him because he's from Illinois. And the evangelicals wouldn't vote for him because they'd see his beard and think he was Amish.
Our only hope as a nation is to happen along a charismatic leader who can unite us, make us all proud to be one country again, like Reagan did after the financial crisis of the recession during Jimmy Carter's presidency. We were on the ropes as a nation back in 1979, with hostages in Iran, gas shortages that only allowed you to buy fuel on odd or even days depending on your license plate, and a withering sense of national pride. Reagan, although flawed, was able to bring us all together for a time. Who will do that for us now? We can pin our hopes on an egotistical bastard who's running for President to correct the screwing he got from Bush eight years ago, and tolerate his angry, caustic style and hope that he unites our country and improves the value of a dollar to most of what it used to be, or we can try the other guy, who seems popular and magnetic, speaks softly, and doesn't care to approve "attack ads" or sling the mud. I shudder to think that a group of people who can be lead by me, a standup comic doing his act in a bowling alley, to applaud the phrase "Fuck The Troops," can be lead to think that John McCain and Sarah Palin are a good choice to be Captain and First Mate on this Titanic that the United States of America has become.
You do what you want to, I think the choice is clear.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
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