Used Cars (Bruce Springsteen)

February 16, 2009-8:05 P.M.

Wow. The days are starting to blend together, even more than they used to.

I've been staying busy, and I'm starting to wonder whether or not "burn out" is better than "rust out." God knows, I've done them both.

I only wound up doing one show at Pare Restaurant back on Saturday the 7th, but it was a good one. I worked with Rochester comics Dan Maslyn and Annette Lorenzo. The room was full, and set up just fine for comedy. I pulled out all of the air in my lungs and did an hour and 5 in the closing spot....I don't know what I'll ever be able to do to placate my love of the stage....when I get up there, I can't stop! It's a sickness! Still, it was a fine show with a lot of nice comments afterward.

Sunday morning, I packed and headed off to Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, for another installment in the college tour of Dash For Dollars, the comedy game show. I drove all day, starting around 10:30 in the morning, and managed to escape the death-trap that is Chicago, Illinois. I was sure I would wind up hitting major traffic there, but Loren, my assistant (ok, she's the voice programmed into my Tom-Tom GPS) re-routed me further south so I didn't have to deal with it. I got in to the hotel around 2:30 in the morning, but I picked up an hour because of the time change. I slept well after the 16 hour drive, as you could imagine.

The next morning, I was up super-early, and hit the continental breakfast (you gotta love waffles) and actually attempted to hit the work-out room, but the treadmill was busted. I always have a weird feeling using hotel excercise equipment these days, as my friend Tiny expired about a year ago doing exactly the same thing. The hotel desk clerk claimed that the machine had been repaired, but I found it unplugged and when I plugged it in, it only worked for a minute or two and then the power shut off, and I decided that I didn't need more of a hint to pack it in for the day.

I checked out of the hotel and headed over to the college, where I wound up spending the day. I did a lunch-time teaser event, handing out t-shirts and money to promote the evening event, and then killed time. I set up the equipment for the show, ate lunch, and went to the bank to get the proper increments of currency for the money booth. After the show, the students from the Student Activities Board treated me to dinner and even gave me some burgers to go, and I hit the road. The first thing I did was to gas up, because Iowa is a long, wide and unforgiving state, and there is nothing happening between the major cities. There was some sort of windstorm hitting the area, and I pumped gas as the corrugated steel canopy above me at the gas station shook like it was about to come loose. The winds howled at me all the way east, and around midnight, I decided I'd had enough. My destination was a Motel 6 (the preferred accomodations of the Ralph Tetta national comedy and game show tour) and I found one in Cedar Rapids. Imagine my surprise when at check-in, the desk clerk punched my driver's license information into the computer and then announced that I'd stayed at that particular property before. In fact, almost two years earlier to the day. I had to think about it, and talking to my mother on the phone the next day, I realized it was the tour that killed my old Toyota Corolla back in 2007.

Tuesday, I drove back the rest of the way and managed to get home before midnight. I listened to so much talk radio I actually overdosed and by the end of the drive, I was searching frantically for a music channel that was playing something that I not only like but wasn't sick of yet. I've spent years working in radio and there's not a lot of music I can say that for. Lately I've been digging the Bruce Springsteen sattelite radio channel, but I know the day is going to come when I tell the Boss to take his job and shove it. It's probably going to take a long time for that to happen, because I have a ridiculous fascination with Bruce. I also agree 100% with his politics, so maybe I'll stay in the union for a while...and as long as the new albums keep holding up, I should be alright.

Thursday, I hosted at The Comedy Club in Webster, bringing the first group of semi-finalists for their in-house comedy contest to the stage, and finishing up by introducing Kris Shaw, a comedy buddy of mine from Indianapolis, Indiana. They asked me to do five minutes to warm up, and of course, I went over. It takes me five minutes to remember my jokes, much less tell them. Two of the four contestants tied, and will move on to the finals, Dan Maslyn and Pat Duffy. I'm judging again this Thursday, and I'm looking forward to seeing who else will advance.

Saturday, Pamela and I packed up the car, dropped Harmony over to my mother-in-law's house, and headed to the Western Ohio town of Beaverdam, for an evening comedy show on Valentine's Day. The trip got started about 90 minutes later than I had hoped, as wrangling my wife and daughter into the car is only slightly less challenging than herding cats. After much Andy Capp and Flossy fighting in the car, we made it to the Comfort Inn and I started getting ready, pressing my clothes, shaving, and getting ready for the 9 PM show. We hadn't had dinner and were trying to figure out where we could eat in a timely fashion, what with it being Valentine's Day, a Saturday, and a small town with limited options. We wound up having to go to Lima, the next largest town over, and after seeing a mob scene at the chain restaurants around the mall, opted for a Captain D's meal, which pleased my "vegetarian wife who still eats seafood" to no end (the actual term is pesce-vegetarian, but I like to call her a "pesty vegetarian"). We arrived at the club with plenty of time to spare and were pleased to see that there was a full boat in attendance.

I was working with Scott Dunn, a former Rochester home-boy (actually he worked in Batavia) who now makes his home in Indiana and he's a regular caller to the Bob and Tom radio show, and a draw in the midwest. I did my 35 minutes with relish, and had so much fun with the accomodating crowd that I had to cut set-ups and did the last 10 minutes as punchlines only. It wasn't really that bad, but it seemed like it in my head. I wound up getting a phenomenal reaction overall, the owner was pleased, and I sold a boatload of CD's and DVD's after the show. It was great.

On the trip home, we were frought with pitfalls every step of the way. I stopped at a gas station in front of the hotel to repleshish the window wash fluid in the car, and the hood wouldn't close. We drove the first 100 miles with the hood rattling and looking like it would fly up in our faces at any moment. We finally pulled into a Wal-Mart in Fremont, Ohio and got an oil change, which the car probably needed anyway (my wife's car has no documentation in that respect....no window sticker, no receipts, and no memory of when the service was done last). Along with the oil change came the added service of the technician properly clicking the hood down into a fixed position. I guess we're good until we have to get under there again, hopefully it won't be too soon. Then, of course, driving through Cleveland, we hit two pockets of snowfall that looked like we were dead in the water, and then they dried up as quickly as they came. It was bizarre. We finally made it home, and I can't remember when I've been this tired. I took all day today to rest and recuperate, and luckily, I have no obligations until Friday, and it shouldn't be a bad excursion. I'm a little concerned, because next week, the college tour really starts revving up, as well as a weekend in Rhode Island. I'll also be performing for the first time in the states of Vermont and New Jersey, two close-by states to New York that have thus far eluded my grasp.

Hopefully the weather will cooperate, and it will be an uneventful tour. I'm just glad to be working, to be honest.

Thanks for reading, and be good now.

Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY