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