Headlights On A Dark Road 3432
Saturday, February 23, 2008-5:50 A.M.
This blog was actually too large for AOL's blog server to accept, but you can read it at my MySpace page www.myspace.com/rabidralph or at www.comedysoapbox.com under "blogs."
Enjoy it, and stay warm.
Running Down A Dream 3346
February 4, 2008-4:15 A.M.
Some late-night thoughts about Super Bowl 42...
First off, I'm a Buffalo Bills fan. I have no great love for either the Patriots or Giants, as a matter of fact, I hate 'em both. The Giants stole the Bills' Super Bowl thunder back in 1990, and I've never forgiven them. Still, I had to root for them tonight over those fucking Patriots.
If New York had lost the game tonight, no one would have been surprised. They've been playing over their heads all through the playoffs, knocking off teams like Dallas and Green Bay like they were nothing, and even giving Tampa Bay the elbows 'n knuckles in their own stadium. If New York had lost and the Patriots had won, it would have shut up those old codgers left over from the Miami Dolphins 1972 team, a team that went undefeated on the backs of a soft schedule and frankly, I never regarded with anything but indifference. I would have taken cold comfort in that loss, *if* it happened.
The Patriots didn't win, though, and it tainted their year. The undefeated regular season was won on a very Dolphinesque soft schedule with a few challenges thrown in, even from these self-same New York Giants who played their hearts out trying to win that regular-season finale. But if they *had* won, the season still would have been tainted by the so-called "spygate," the taping of New York Jets coaches' defensive signals during the first game of the season. The NFL destroyed the tapes and fined coach Bill Bellichik and the Patriots a bunch of money and a first-round draft pick.
I will not go into whether or not I feel that punishment was just or unjust, enough or too lenient, because it is not my job to decide those things. It is the commissioner of football's job. But when we speak about judgement, I believe that there is only one judgement that counts, and that's the judgement of God.
The Bible says "Your sin will find you out." It's in the book of Numbers, chapter 32, verse 23, and basically, it means that you can sin against the Lord or your fellow man, and hope that you are never revealed as being the committer of dastardly acts, but the Lord is watching and you will be punished accordingly.
I find it fitting and a testimony to my faith that the Patriots didn't win the game tonight. They were blessed with victory after victory, except for the game that meant the most. And their sin has found them out. They will all get the loser's share of the money, but they also will suffer for a year knowing that they were on the brink of something amazing, unprecedented and wonderful, and they lost it all. Even coach Bellichik, who looked particularly hobo-like in his cutoff hoodie sweatshirt, walked off the field before the game was complete. He showed himself to be what he is; a small man, an unsportsmanlike man, a man to whom winning is everything and fair competition is held in little regard.
I am a Liberal and Liberals are often chastised for the way we conduct ourselves. Liberals are the sort of folks who give kids medals for participating in sports, even if they didn't win, to bolster their self-esteem. And I'm totally o.k. with that approach. Winning shouldn't mean crushing the loser of the contest. You won, you don't need to run up the score or humiliate anyone. That shows a disdain for your fellow man, a lack of respect, and it's base and degrading. I guess that Liberals generally don't have the killer instinct, if the last 30 years of Presidential politics mean anything. We try to play fair, even in the midst of dirty tricks that are usually quite effective (see Karl Rove and pretty much everything he's ever done). But can anyone with any moral instinct conduct themselves otherwise? I really don't think so.
I'll continue to conduct myself with the core principles of a fair fight, an even contest and being gracious in both victory and defeat, and I'll raise my daughter to think the same way. And if I never win, never rise to the summit of achievment because I rely only on my talent and not on dirty tricks, short cuts, favors or anything else that provides an undeserved edge, then I'll still lay my head on the pillow at night and sleep soundly because I know that there is no sin waiting in the dark, under the bed, waiting for the harsh light of judgement.
Congratulations to the New York Giants and your fans. Eli Manning is a good guy, a clean competitor and a credit to the game of football, and he deserved to win and to be called the MVP of the game. And to Patriots fans, I wish you no ill will, I instead pity you and leave you to sulk, licking your wounds like a Siamese cat under the living room sofa. If I were you, I would vote with my dollars to have another coach installed, a man who could restore pride to a franchise that frankly has the tools in place to be competitive for a very long time, without the aid of cheating or the leadership of a small, petty man.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
What If God Was One Of Us 3130
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007-2:00 A.M.
Merry Christmas, everyone. If you celebrate Christmas, I offer you the best Holiday wishes I can. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I still wish you a Merry Christmas, because the holiday doesn't discriminate. It represents the birth of Jesus, and despite what some folks (mostly Republicans) would like you to think, it represents the birth of the Messiah, the salvation of the human race, and the spirit of forgiveness.
Jesus is often thought to represent love, or peace, and in the worst of times, prosperity, but I believe in Christ as salvation. He is our forgiveness, our bail money for our sins. And we all are with sin, although some larger than others.
Got under-charged at the store and didn't say anything? You're a thief. Doesn't matter if it was $500 or 50 cents, it wasn't yours, and you stole.
Did you ever tell a lie? Or better yet, did someone tell you something you knew was incorrect and you didn't say anything to save yourself or someone else's skin? You bore false witness.
I'm not even gonna ask if anyone ever murdered anyone...those are relatively few and far between these days, although my neighborhood is getting to be like the Old West...there are so many make-shift monuments to people who have been killed unnecessarily that a drive up my street looks like a carnival midway, there's so many stuffed animals, ribbons and candles.
Have you coveted your neighbor's wife? I'm a coveting bastard, and some days I don't even know why. I think it might be part of the male brain, but enough women do it also that I can't just say it's a manly problem. I had a discussion today with a friend who told me that a mutual friend of ours is actually cheating on his wife, and we were both stunned, but his defense is that he can't help himself. Well, actually, it seems that he has been helping himself, and that's the problem.
It's a rough world today, and it's starting to get my goat. I want to cling to my religion, cling to hope, cling to the idea that things are going to get better, but I'm surrounded daily by reminders that the world is a mess, and it looks as though greed is going to win the day.
We're greedy people, we are. Maybe I'm just talking about Americans, but maybe all of us are. I think in this country that Capitalism has gone beyond an economic system and turned into some sort of wicked game. It's not about free enterprise, it's about seeing how much wealth the staggeringly rich can accumulate, to the duress of the peanut-eaters at the bottom of the cash-flow ladder.
We've forgotten the ideas of charity and good will. We've forgotten the lessons that to give out of our abundance is fine, but to give out of our scarcity is to be truly blessed (the widow's mite). Would our country have to maintain public assistance programs if everyone reached out to their neighbor to make sure they had enough? No, they wouldn't have to. Would there be violence in the streets if everyone had a job, a nice place to live, a sense of purpose and community? No, they wouldn't have to, people only commit violence when they are mentally ill, scared, desperate, hungry, angry or tired. Folks who are stable in their mind and body, social situation, housing and family structures are usually peaceful. Can we strive for that? To make sure that everyone is warm, safe and secure, and able to pitch in to the system to work together? Isn't that what cities and counties and countries are for?
I don't pretend to have all of the answers. I used to consider myself pretty well-educated, and recently, I've been discovering that I don't know half of what I need to know, and that half the knowledge I'm carrying around now is either outdated or can be categorized under music or movie trivia, with a little English Literature thrown in for good measure.
But I *do* know this;
Whether you believe in the Bible or not, or the divinity of Jesus Christ, or any god, for that matter, I have found that the Bible contains a lot of good information. If you were to follow the teachings of the Bible and not concern yourself with the person of Jesus Christ or the history of his life and teachings, you would still live a better life than one led by leaning on your own understanding.
Christ preached humility, poverty, meekness, pureness of heart, and righteousness despite persecution. And I believe He will save the world, each of us.
It is the most curious of things, that the Lord would come to us, as a child, born in a manger among the beasts, in absolutepoverty, a King who loves us so much that he came down from His throne to be one of us, the meekest, weakest one, and allowed himself to be stoned, whipped, beaten and killed for our sins, as payment for our sins that we would come to the Father and have everlasting life.
Can we save ourselves? Can we humble ourselves, treat the least of ours as the best, can we be charitable, forgiving, meek? Can we change our world from a society of "Get as much as you can" to a world where no one goes without, no one hungers, no one shivers, no one cries out because there is no love?
That would be the best Christmas present of all, wouldn't you say?
What If God Was One Of Us
If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with him
In all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?
*And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that
you would have to believe
in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints
and all the prophets (*)
Trying to make his way home
Back up to heaven all alone
Nobody calling on the phone
'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome(*)
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Shake & Bake 9785 (2995)
Saturday, December 8, 2007-11:00 A.M.
It's funny how much difference a day makes. On Thursday, I was writing about how upset I was because my friends at WCMF radio in Rochester were getting downsized, and then the next day, I received news that put everything in perspective...one of my good friends had died.
It was one of those deaths that come out of nowhere...the guy wasn't sickly at all, from outside inspection, he wasn't old, there wasn't any terminal disease he was being treated for. He was my age, 40, about to turn 41 in just a few weeks. Matter of fact, based on the bag of prescription medication that I tote around with me on a daily basis (I'm on about eight different types of medication for everything from thyroid disease to cholesterol to high blood pressure...I even take a generic Claritin to clear my sinuses so that my sleep apnea constant air machine I wear when I sleep will work), if I had to bet who would go first, me or him, I would've put the money on me.
But it didn't work out that way.
Mike Glosek was a good guy. He was a comic from Buffalo, and a friend of mine. If you want to read up on him, there's a small memorial that was written on him in the Buffalo News, and there's a link to it on the front page of my website at www.ralphtetta.com that will take you right to it. But that memorial tells about the things that Mike accomplished and doesn't really tell you about the man.
After I left the management team at the Comix Cafe in Rochester back in the summer of 2001, a series of managers came in to run the club. Mike moved from Buffalo at the request of Ed Bebko, the owner, to be one of those managers. By the time 2004 rolled around, Ed had taken on a partner in the business who would one day buy him out, and during that time of co-ownership, Ed had requested that both Mike and I help out the new guy, show him the ropes of running a comedy club, and keep the ship sailing in the right direction.
For whatever good or ill, that help seemed to be resented and much of our counsel was rejected. After a time, I became frustrated and gave up, returning to the road and staying there for the sake of peace of mind and just being tired of always being the target of criticism. Mike suffered quite a bit, too, and even though he was always a good-spirited person with a mind that leaned toward positive thinking, his customer-service and friendly ways always seemed to be in conflict with a management staff who felt he was giving away the store. At management meetings, Mike and I would sit on one side of a large table and the other managers would sit on the other. It was like being on trial every week. I hated it and bailed, but Mike, out of loyalty to Ed, stayed and took his lumps. He was a better man than I in that respect.
Mike went by the nickname "Shake 'n' Bake," which I never got the full story where the nickname came from, but he was a true throwback to the golden years of standup comedy. Mike was the guy who spent as much time in front of the bar as he did behind it, glad-handing customers and really making them feel welcome in the club. Mike was the guy who made sure everyone had a good time, and it frustrated him when his efforts were thwarted. He ran the bar on karoake night, "Shake 'n' Bake Wednesdays," and he would bartend and then run out and sing, and when I would get up to sing, the shots of whiskey would start coming. He knew I wasn't much of a drinker, and I think he wanted me to loosen up. He wouldn't stop until everyone was having as much fun as he was.
As a comic, he was a true variety act, mixing standup, juggling, magic, and a straitjacket escape that was his closer. At one point, Mike, Joe Fico (another Rochester comic) and I developed a show called "The Fat Pack" and we worked on putting together a true cabaret show containing music, spotlight comedy sets, and any other things we could throw in. The show was not supported by the club, out of spite would be my guess, and it closed after just four shows. But I remember fondly sitting in Mike's living room, notepads out, coming up with comedy bits, working on blocking, and throwing our all into the show.
He and I were a lot alike in many ways. We were the same age, started doing comedy at the same time, and had a background in club management. His fanatical love of Billy Joel is paralleled by my fanatical love of Bruce Springsteen. He loved horror films, while I more favored comic books. And we both lived and died with the Buffalo Bills, although Mike loved the Buffalo Sabres hockey team more, even to the point that he was layed out in his replica Sabres jersey. We both did magic, although I gave it up at a young age, moving to bass guitar as an outlet for my stage jones. And we both have young daughters, although Mike also had a son who I was not aware of.
But when we spoke about things spiritual, that's when we really clicked. Mike enjoyed listening to Joyce Meier, a televangelist who is on TV quite a bit. He quoted her often, and one of his favorite passages from the Bible was the urging to be "more than a conqueror," and he used that to get him through the difficult times at the club and the conflict with some of the people there.
His door was always open to me, he loved socializing, he loved to be around people who were enjoying themselves, and when he finally succumbed, it was to heart disease. An autopsy showed that his heart had enlarged and he had a major heart attack while he slept. That's no way for a 40-year-old man to go, and it has been a real kick in the gut for me. I've been working with doctors and nurses and nutritionists in an attempt to reverse the many years of neglect I've shown my body, and Mike's death has become a backdrop for my own mortality and while I'm thankful that I now have medical attention that will prevent me from suffering a similar fate, I am angry and upset and conflicted that Mike will never have the same chance, the same opportunity to correct whatever neglect led to his demise.
I wanted to write about this just after I got the news, last Friday, but I was choked up and couldn't focus. Then after the wake on Tuesday, I wanted to write, but I was overcome with emotion and felt I wouldn't be able to do Mike justice. Today I guess I'm more lucid and I've had time to properly digest this loss, but I still don't feel properly prepared to fully explain how wonderful Mike was and how lousy I feel that he's gone, and that I didn't spend enough time with him because I felt that he would always be around, a joyful constant in a world that is growing greyer and colder by degrees.
A little less than a week before he died, Mike wrote me a MySpace message that basically said "call me," and I didn't call him right away, waiting for a time when I would be settled, in a hotel room somewhere, and have time to talk. That time never came, and I have more than my share of guilt about it. After all the loss I've experienced this year, you'd think that I'd be a little more aware that there is no time better than today to make that call, there is no tomorrow, and the only joy you will have in this life is the joy that you are willing to seize. But I guess I have to keep getting the buckets of cold water until I finally get it.
Tonight, I will have a drink for my friend, and I will hate myself a little that he's not there to pour it.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Fire 9699 (2909)
Thursday, November 29th, 2007-6:15 P.M.
The word came down the pipe today that a lot of the radio personnel at WCMF, my old employer, were going to be losing their jobs. It's a shock, to be sure...not that folks in radio are being flushed out, but that the folks who are being fired had held on to their jobs so long.
Radio is a tough business, and anyone who's ever been involved in it knows that it's here one day, gone the next and if you don't produce, you are OUT. There are also trends that go swinging back and forth like a pendulum with a knife on it, first going to the "automated" format (who needs jocks?) to the "live" format (it sounds terrible without a live person to intro and back-announce the songs!).
I worked at WCMF 96.5 FM, fresh out of college, first as a research "rat," then later the director of the department. I produced "hook tapes," 35-song collections of clips from songs that we would "test" by playing them over the phone to people at their homes in the evening, asking them if they'd like to hear the songs played "a lot more, a little more, the same amount, a little less, a lot less, never again, or unfamiliar." We'd then load all of the information into a computer and calculate "burn scores," letting us know things like "people like Led Zeppelin, but they'd rather hear 'The Immigrant Song' than 'Stairway To Heaven.'" It was a lot of fun, and hard work, and most importantly, flexible enough to allow me to do comedy on the weekends, long weekends if necessary.
I was let go in the spring of 1994, and then hooked up with the George Carlin tour, but it still took me a while to get over being downsized. I remember Stan Main, the Program Director, basically breaking the news to me that I was out, and my team was out, which I should have seen coming as we shrunk from eight team members to four and then finally, three. I begged to be reassigned, but there was no place to put me, and I got a nice letter of recommendation from Stan that I never used, and never worked a "straight" job again, if you don't count being General Manager at the Comix Cafe, which was more like being a professional bull-rider in terms of the office decorum and corporate culture (that didn't exist, thankfully). I even wore a denim shirt every day, with the club logo embroidered on the pocket!
When I was at WCMF, I used to stay late after work, and use the computers in the sales staff's cubicles. I basically taught myself Microsoft Word by trial and error, typing up letters and making cool custom cassette covers for my bootleg tapes (also cadged from the station's enormous music library). It was like a playground to me, a playground with a paycheck! Not that the work wasn't hard, it was rewarding, and Stan was relentless in spurring us on. We'd be on the phones, talking to survey respondents and trying not to let them know what station we were calling from (lest it skew the results), and Stan would come into our room on his way out for the day and give us all a beating, usually either a back rub or numerous slaps on the shoulders while he would yell out things like "We're playing the hits and we ain't popping zits!" and shit like that, which to this day, honestly, I don't know what it means. Still, Stan was a great guy and he paid me money to be part of the team, and giving me and my department the axe wasn't his decision, it was the guy above him, so in that regard, I hold him blameless. He probably kept our department alive a lot longer than management wanted him to, in the name of the data that he needed to keep doing his job so well. But now he's gone, fired, a casualty of the merger with Entercom, or the takeover, or whatever you want to call it.
Dave Kane, the Music Director, Assistant Program Director and afternoon host, was always very friendly to me as well. My comedy buddy, Ray Salah and I, used to come in in the afternoons and work with Rich Van Slyke, the production chief, making "spec spots" which are basically fake commercials that the sales staff would then take cassette copies out to prospective clients and try to sell them. We worked hard to make them funny, because funny sells, and I don't know if the sales staff ever sold any of the spots, but Rich wound up taking a reel of those spots and used it as a demo to get a better paying job at a rock station in Atlanta. Still, those afternoon sessions were fun, and Kane-O was always nice to us, breaking our balls and I think once he had lunch brought in and invited us to chow down. Compliments are nice, paychecks are good, but share your food with a fat man and you've got a friend for life.
Mark Cronin lost his gig today....Mark's been in radio longer than foam windscreens on microphones. Marc was the night jock at WCMF, and I saw him every night when I worked. When you're talking about the nicest human beings on the planet, Mark's name has to come up or you don't know what you're talking about. He did a pantomime once to entertain some of us in the break room of a guy getting thrown out of a bar, whereby he grabbed his own collar with one hand and the back of his pants with the other and "threw" himself out of the room, a move that I've stolen more than once. I miss working with a guy like that, and to hear that he's being flushed reeks of age-ism, and more importantly, a complete lack of respect for the skills that he brought to the table. He was a workhorse who cut commercials, liners, and spots, all while songs were playing in the other studio, doing the job of two guys. Now, thanks to corporate culture and the cold, cruel ways of business, he's doing the job of no guys, and the "bum's rush" pantomime is creepily appropriate.
I've been crawling on the web trying to get the whole story, and they are not naming names, but it seems as though about eight people are part of the purge, and I can only talk about the three I know of that were my friends. I got into radio originally because as a comic, I thought it would help my local standing, but basically it did nothing for me in that respect. In order to gain credibility as a comic, you needed to be a better comic, not a mediocre one with ties to a radio station.
There are other names that are being bandied about as far as their futures, like Brother Wease and his sidekick Tommy Mule, and rumor is also that WPXY's Scott Spezzano is done for. Scott's a friend, and he used to host Wednesday nights at the Comix Cafe when I was General Manager there. Tommy and I have a long working relationship, and I think Wease doesn't like me. But I hope they don't go down without a fight, whatever happens.
I'll be interested to know where all of this winds up, as you can't work in radio for as long as I did and not be fascinated by the moving and shaking, but for guys like Dave Kane and Mark Cronin, you're talking about literally decades of being a Rochester radio presence. And Stan Main wrote the music programming software that the station used.
The new guys better be really fucking good is all I'm saying.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Too Long In Exile 9576 (2786)
Monday, November 12, 2007-11:44 A.M.
Did you miss me? I'm back. I haven't blogged in five weeks. I went into exile for a month, and then added a week to express solidarity with the Writer's Guild strike.
Ha ha.
Actually, I took a break after a friend of mine made a comment about my running journal. I guess a couple of local Rochester comics made a remark about my blog (which was funny and true), and it made me become introspective about this blog and the process of keeping it.
When I started keeping the blog, it was with the intention of keeping a running, blow-by-blow account of my life as a standup comic out on the road, an account that my infant daughter could go back to years from now and read about what her father was doing when he went to work.
Well, something along the line hijacked that process. People started reading it.
I am nothing if not an attention whore. I was starved for attention when I was a boy, growing up in an Italian household with two siblings, where you had to fight to be heard, much less acknowledged. My parents encouraged my pursuits, but were not totally aware of them. Perfect example, my father knew I wanted to be a writer, so he went out and bought me my first typewriter, a nice manual model from Sears with on-line correction, and then later, a fancy electric one. But he never read anything I wrote. Dad wasn't much of a reader, just TV guide and the morning paper.
Standup comedy was a cry for attention, just as my foray into working in radio was a cry for attention. I went back to college three years after I graduated from high school, a victim of my parent's and my ignorance of the college application process. I was literally signing up for classes at St. John Fisher college in Rochester the day before classes were to begin, and it felt forced and I didn't feel ready, and I aborted the process out of fear.
When I returned to school, it was at Monroe Community College, and I discovered the campus radio station on the second day, the campus activities board and school newspaper a few days later. And after only a year, I visited my first comedy club and got on stage at open mic night. I will celebrate the 20th anniversary of that event this coming May.
All of those outlets were designed to garner me attention. I was very good in school, but always in the top ten percent, usually never first or second. I was voted "Chronic Complainer" in my Senior Yearbook, but at the same time, earned "Most Spirited." I ran for Student Council President as a junior and won, because no Senior wanted the job. I had a landslide victory over a Sophomore, a young lady who wasn't very articulate, and reveled in the prospect of leading assemblys, chairing meetings, and generally making people consume all of the hot air I was generating.
Even as a comic, I regularly lapse into the trap of basically telling an audience "Dig what I have to say," rather than concentrating on making them laugh and enjoy themselves. My show isn't about them, it's about me! How dare they sit and stare at me and my offerings? I can get preachy and ramble on about points that I consider to be important and sacred, but I'm in the wrong venue. It's about beer and chicken wings, not the indiscretions of the Right Wing. It's about laughs and dick jokes, not educated discourse. And if I think something's wrong with America, then maybe I should just write a letter to the editor.
Well, this entry isn't a cry for help, it's the result of five weeks of heavy meditation. Do I continue to write, and if so, what about? The "old" blog style was becoming a parody of itself. I was writing about where I went to lunch, a bad habit I picked up from a comic I used to read who was opening for a big name performer, and he would detail the catering. I guess I thought it was funny that he was getting almond-crusted tilapia, and I was eating biscuits at Cracker Barrel or making a turkey sandwich in my hotel room out of my mini-fridge.
On a show a couple of weeks ago, a fellow comic was lamenting to me that "Since when did it become the law that if you enjoy your job, it's no longer considered work?" Comedy is hard work, but a lot of people seem to think it's very easy. On the surface, it is just talking for an hour or so, and then hanging around in the bar soaking up alcohol and affection, but it's the result of a lot of denial and sacrifice. Ask any comic who's been in this business fifteen years or more about missing birthdays, anniversaries, school plays, recitals, christenings and any other number of important family events, and the accounts will be legion. And God help me, I cannot see the forest for the trees, that with a daughter who just started preschool this week, and will be turning four years old in March, will have to go down that road with me, dealing on a daily basis that daddy's never home.
My last blog was about the death of comedy as a business, and maybe it was just my way of excising the feeling I had that I would have to give up this business in the name of having a stable home life, and to do well and justly by my wife and daughter. It's true, the business is hard and the economy is rough, but comedy hasn't been a cornucopia of plenty since the early 80's, years before I got involved in the game. I turn 41 on Thursday, and the prospect or idea of changing professions is daunting to me, for a couple of reasons. First, I would be changing professions at a late age, with no real training in any field other than wise-assery. Basically, I'm gonna be the sassiest toll-collector on the New York State Thruway. Second, in no matter what vocation I undertake, I'm most likely going to be robbed of that attention that I currently enjoy, and I do not know how that will affect me on a long-term basis.
A mid-life crisis is a terrible thing, but I believe that's where I've found myself, wondering about the future, lamenting the past, and damning the present. The secret, a good friend of mine who is basically in my same age demographic, is to not dwell so much on the negatives and give myself credit for the positives. And to work on myself.
Well, one area that I guess I need to work on is to not be so needy in the area of public adulation. So that means I'm not going to write as much. A criticism of my blog, in the past, was that I didn't write with any passion, I didn't talk about things that were emotionally strong. I fixated on pithy minutiae, and it made for a boring read. So I'm going to strive to only return to this forum when the spirit moves me, when I get cranked up by something important, when I get touched by an angel or when I get driven to tears.
And hopefully it will be a fitting body of work for my daughter to go back and read.
Yours Sincerely,
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) 9145 (2355)
Friday, October 5, 2007-3:15 P.M. CDT
Standup comedy is over. The "dead cat bounce" has happened, and we've got bigger things to deal with now, like correcting our world and adapting to the bleak landscape that is stretching out in all directions all the way to the horizon.
Comedy is dead. I hate to be the one to "call it," but I've seen too much the last few months to be convinced otherwise. Clubs are closing, or teetering on the edge of absolute bankruptcy, comics are struggling to fill their schedules, work is falling out and except for the few who cater to corporate functions, cruise ships or other secure audiences, our industry as a whole is looking like it is on the verge of a total collapse.
I started doing standup comedy right after the big comedy "boom" of the mid-80's. During that time, Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States, people were making money, and they were recovering from a very depressing time in this country called the 1970's. During that time, the economy was in a very deep recession, there was an energy crisis, and American pride was at an all-time low. Disco was killing rock 'n' roll, cocaine was the only way a lot of people could get up in the morning, Iran had American hostages that we couldn't get released by force or diplomacy, and there was a nationwide malaise. America needed a shot in the ass. Along came "Dutch."
Reagan boosted the American economy by artificial means, and prosperity became the norm throughout the 1980's. Vice President Bush criticized Reagan's plans at the time as "Voodoo Economics" and when the checks started coming due during his presidency in the late 80's and early 90's, he was found to be correct in his assumptions. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction during the 1980's, despite the prosperity that was all around. Punk rock rose out of the ashes of decadent disco, as well as the overlying nihilistic themes of heavy metal. And over in the corner, standup comedy reared it's head, with over-the-top performers like Sam Kinison, Emo Phillips, Howey Mandel and Robin Williams, banging the drum at a manic pace to remind us that something was still wrong.
Comedy thrived because it was a release, an explosion let out in small bursts of laughter in small, dark, smoky clubs. The spartan brick wall that became the cliche for a standup comedy club was a remnant of the underground coffee houses of the 50's and 60's where visionairies like Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl and their ilk began singing songs of criticism and discontent. In the 80's, performers like Bobcat Goldthwait, Bill Hicks and others used their "freedom of screech" to trumpet the call to arms for a generation not to be lulled into complacency. In Canada, voices like Kenny Robinson, Ron Vaudry and others were adding to the discourse as well. An art form that came to adolescence on the Merv Griffin show and the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was now in full-blown adulthood, and itching to make a name for itself in the world.
Well, after a few fits and starts in the 90's and the early years of the 2000's, comedy is looking pretty grey at the temples and just doesn't seem to be able to get around very well anymore. Clubs are closing, major festivals have called it quits, and the rooms that are prospering are the "one-nighters" out in the sticks, the communities where everyone is about ten years behind the times anyway, and they still squeal in delight when someone sings their favorite song at karaoke night, and the acid-washed jeans are still hanging on like some sort of lifeboat off the fashion Titanic.
The club in Rochester that I once made my home seems to be in similar trouble; flagging crowds, dissatisfaction with acts that kill elsewhere, and currently, an inability to accept credit cards for payment (death for a bar or restaurant) seem to signal a circling of the drain. The club in Buffalo closed months ago, and other clubs around the country, notably ones in Kansas City, Detroit and Chicago, have reportedly either closed, plan on closing, or are using local talent in an attempt to trim payrolls and hotel expenses in a valiant effort to stay above water.
I worked last week at the Pittsburgh Funny Bone, my first time at that club and an enjoyable experience, despite a back ailment that left me able to walk and stand for only a short period of time, and then virtually crippled. The crowds were sparse, except for Saturday night, but fun to perform for, and the most interesting experience was speaking with Jeff Schneider, the owner/booker of the club and a man who has been involved in the business for over 25 years. I was able to speak with him on the level of someone who has booked a club himself and dealt with "big name" comics' agencies, and we had interesting stories to share. Jeff has a reputation of being a bit of a beast, but frankly, he's another individual who realizes that standup comedy has run it's course and may be "playing out the string." He spoke passionately about wanting to get into radio, to have a show where he could speak his mind about whatever topics ocurred to him, and he riffed at will about a few things that were engaging, funny and although bordering on crass at times, never objectionable. It is the spirit that standup comedy was born of. Obviously, Jeff has always had this passion or he never would have subjected himself to the rigors of running and managing a club for so many years.
As a career comic, I have decisions to make; I can re-tool my approach to the business and start throwing my rope at corporate events and colleges whose big budgets make them recession-proof, but require strict language requirements. I could go completely underground and pitch myself entirely to fraternal organizations, Moose lodges, Elks, Eagles, Volunteer Fire Departments and others that pepper the landscape like so many mushrooms after a spring rain. I could even re-invent myself as a motivational speaker, using humor to boost optimism in a corporate setting and putting into play the tools that I've learned throughout my life to overcome obstacles and keep an optimistic view.
I know that sounds funny, claiming to be an optimist while playing Chicken Little and proclaiming the end of Standup Comedy, the single thing that has driven me half my life and consumed almost every waking hour in some way, shape or form. But I am optimistic, if only in the way that decrees that I will still be able to do what I love, only I will be required to do it somewhere else. If you are a regular reader, you'll remember that I wrote months ago about an engagement at a volunteer fire department event that went very well. If I'm performing in front of an appreciative audience and doing it for a fair living wage, then I may sacrifice the fame of working a big comedy club in hopes of being seen and getting a shot at a TV spot that may help make me a household name, but the clubs stopped offering those opportunities years ago. If the goal of working the road is only to earn a living, then it will still be possible, only it will take a different kind ofmarketing on our parts as comedians to keep our calendars full.
A huge problem with the clubs today rests with the audiences; they simply don't have the money to spend. The entity booking talent is the one that is rolling the dice; in a public show, a performer is promised X amount of dollars to perform, and the club gambles that they will sell enough tickets, drinks, food items and souvenir paraphenalia to pay the comics, the rent on the building, the utilities, the suppliers and the staff, with a little money left over to call "profit." In a corporate or college setting, the money comes from somewhere else....an entertainment budget in the corporate sense, and student activities fees in the college arena. Neither colleges nor corporate talent bookers are dependent on ticket sales to the general public to make their show "work." They have built-in audiences and no profit requirements. The fraternal organizations have the same setup; they aren't pitching to the general public, which doesn't have any money to spend anyway, but instead collect "dues" from members and apportion the money to their events, whether monthly, semi-annually or annually, as their individual case may be.
So the cry now is to diversify, not put all our eggs in one comedic booker's basket, and look for other things to do. Some clubs will be recession-proof, to be sure, depending on the market and the club's ability to stay relevant in that market. But now they are only going to be a small part of the picture for some of us comics, rather than the bread 'n' butter.
I am at a club this week that seems to be doing well, the Comedy Club On State in Madison, Wisconsin. Gus and Mary have cut out their niche through hard work and perserverance, and last night, they had an almost capacity crowd (on a Thursday!) and one of the open-mic guys taped a chunk of my set which now resides on my MySpace page, which I urge you to go check out at www.myspace.com/rabidralph and feel free to send the link to your friends!
Keepin' it Real,
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
