Blood Brothers

Blood Brothers                                               2867

Saturday, December 31, 2005-2:57 P.M. CST

Continuing on my road trip in St. Louis, Missouri...last night was great, I jammed two great shows down the throats of the fine people at the Comedy Forum.  Headliner and mentor Mike Dambra lambasted me all the way across Missouri, chiding me for not doing my best.  He accused me of phoning it in, and when I asked him if he thought that was going to make me mad and get me to change, he said "Absolutely."  Well, he's been mind-manipulating me for the last three years that I've been under his wing, and he was absolutely right.  I took the stage by storm, despite some abdominal discomfort caused by clam strips on the buffet at Ponderosa (I'm having really lousy luck with buffets this week, eh?) and turned in two great shows.  Matt, the owner of the club, asked if I had the bullets to close, so this might lead to the end of my quest to move up to closer status.  2006 is looking brighter every day.

This will be my last entry for 2005, and it's been an incredible year.  Looking back, all the way to New Year's Eve last year, when I was requested to play the Comedy Zone in Greensboro, North Carolina, to scoring headliner spots at my home club as well as the House of Comedy in Niagara Falls, Canada and Fat Katz in Utica, NY, Comedy Company dates in Dunkirk, NY and Williamsport, PA, Syracuse, NY and Fredericksburg, VA, and the summer tour in Florida and Georgia, it has definitely been my best year ever and the herald of great things to come. 

This year, I performed in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, New York, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Minnesota, Connecticut, Ohio, Virginia, Tennesee, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Nebraska, North Dakota, Kentucky and Missouri, as well as Ontario, Canada.  23 states and one Canadian Province...not too shabby.  I still haven't played New Jersey, which strikes me as odd considering it's only one state over from my home, and I've had 17 years to make it happen...maybe 2006 will be my chance.  Also, I never got to West Virginia....I used to do a lot more work in thatstate, but I have it on the books for 2006.

I've worked with some great people this year, comics I've had a lot of fun with, and while I probably couldn't remember them all, I'll try to mention them all...much thanks and a white-boy shout-out to Mutzie, Joseph Anthony, Bill Benden, Carol Pennington, Jay Black, Mark Knope, Jocko Alston, Nick Siracuse, Jack Wilhite, Richard Ramirez, Jim Dailakis, Ari Van Eyk, Dennis Ross, Jimmy Graham, Dan Ellison, David Graham, Chris Coccia, Mimi Gonazalez, Ray Salah, Pete Johannsen, Paul Hooper, Mo Alexander, Mark Klein, Claud Stuart, Shelly Marshall, Bobby Dean, Mike Armstrong, Chris Barnes, Al Katz, Randolph T., Scotty Goff, Bob Jay, Derek Richards, Pete Lee, Peter Jung, Mike Irwin, Mark Anthony, Stephen Juliano Moore, Bryan McCree, Keith Lenart, Mike Dambra and Chris Smith.  I hope you all have a dynamite 2006.  Mega-Mega hollas to Steve Burr, T.L. Johnson, Joe Fico, Mark Wiedmann, Annette Lorenzo, Danny Liberto, V.J. Stanley, Marianne Sierk, and everyone who hung out, drank, tagged or just supported....keep kicking ass and making 'em laugh!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Have A Nice Day

Have A Nice Day                                          2852

Friday, December 30, 2005-7:31 A.M. CST

Good morning from the Stoney Creek Inn in fabulous St. Joseph, Missouri.  Finally got some sleep after a fine show at the Cobblestone Theater downtown, and about to rape and pillage the continental breakfast....prepare to board, me hearties!  Arrrr!

The show was great last night...headliner, old friend and confidant Mike Dambra called me "a disaster" when I left the stage, although I don't know what he's talking about.  I think he's being overly critical of me, like he thinks I'm not getting the laughs I'm supposed to be getting.  I think the set was strong, but I appreciate his view.  I get wordy and unfocused when I'm tired, and after the seven hour drive with not much sleep the night before, I was plenty tired.

In the car on the way here from Carbondale, somewhere along the line, I snapped and went into a roll that made Mike laugh so hard he started crying.  He turned red and I thought he was going to drive off the road...I was mocking his music, which he has been torturing me with since we left Rochester.  Who knew that Bon Jovi put out so many albums?  That there was a Bon Jovi box set?  Who the fuck is Jim Brickman, and why is a heterosexual man subjecting me to it?  At one point, the music was so bad, I said, "Please put Bon Jovi back on...any album is fine....play the one with no hits, I don't care."  Mike laughed hard at that one.  Who carries the "Young Guns" soundtrack with him?  He has one CD that I actually want to hear, Jackson Browne's "Running On Empty," but apparently, I have to get through Garth Brook's double live album first.  Where's Peter Frampton when you need him?  I got so mad, I wished triple-dog ill will and a ham sandwich on a truck driver who was going too slow in the passing lane, and then wished the same on a friend of ours back in Rochester, although accidentally.  If I get home and see him and his asshole hasn't fallen out, I'll know he's o.k.

We ate dinner at a Chinese buffet, one of my favorite places to go.  It seems a little too convenient that there's a Chinese buffet restaurant in every city in America, regardless of the population.  I think it's part of a takeover plan.  The food was delicious for the first plate, and then I chanced the sweet 'n' sour chicken, which I never do, and after one bite, I had to spit it out into my napkin.  I don't know what cat tastes like, but I suspect it would have been something like that.  Of course, everything went downhill from there.  The biggest problem, I guess, is that I deviated from my routine, which includes a nice bowl of hot 'n' sour soup, try the sushi if it's available, and work slowly.  I was so hungry though, that I just started grabbing stuff.  Also, I didn't get any stuffed mushrooms, a Ralph Tetta Chinese buffet staple.  I hope to rectify this today; there's a really good buffet in St. Charles, Missouri, where Mike and I will be performing tonight and tomorrow.

Word from home is that little Harmony Rose had a fever the night before, but Pamela has it under control.  Baby Tylenol drops (cherry flavor) seem to be doing the trick, but it's quite the helpless feeling when your baby isn't feeling well, and you're a thousand miles away.  Even if I was home, sick child care is best administered by Mommy rather than Daddy....Mommy will give you the medicine, rub your back and hold you and sing softly to you until you fall asleep.  Daddy will spoon Robitussin down your throat and send you packing so he doesn't miss the next hand of video poker.

It's true.

O.K., off to the coffee and danish.  Have a nice day.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

 

Sleepless

Sleepless                                                          2834

Thursday, December 29, 2005-4:45 CST

Good morning from Carbondale, Illinois, from the beautiful Super 8 motel on Main Street.  Yesterday was the hell drive from Rochester, NY....13 grueling hours in a rental car with Mike Dambra.  Thankfully, we had a month of road stories to share or it would have dragged on forever.

We're tooling around in his rental car from the week before, a Ford Taurus from the Hertz rental car agency.  It has one of those onboard GPS systems, a little gadget that looks like a pocket calculator on a bracket at a 45 degree angle, which talks to you and tells you how to get where you're going.  It's awesome, and I don't know how I'm going to live without one after the week is up.  It even tells you how many miles are left to your journey, and calculates how long it will take you to get there based on your traveling speed.  Oh, how spoiled I am!

So we arrived in C-town around 1:30, accounting for the time zone difference after a long overnight drive, checked in to the hotel and slept.  We got to the show plenty early, and they regaled us with comped food and beverages (nice people).  I enjoyed a delicious grilled chicken salad, in a feeble attempt to have something in my body that looked like vegetables.

The show was sparsely attended, what with the whole Christmas/New Year's hangover week in full effect.  Yeah, I don't want to go back to work either, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  I pulled teeth for half an hour and then watched Mike work his magic, but there were too many empty seats, the crowd was too spread out, and nobody too much cared.  We got paid and headed to Steak and Shake for a little late-night repast (Mike quit smoking, which made him hungry, I guess, and I'm always hungry so I didn't complain) and we reminisced that the last time we worked this room, we ate at the same place, and there was a cockroach, and we got our meal comped.  No roach this time around, thankfully, and we returned to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

Only I'm not sleeping....I don't know what it is, but I don't sleep well at night very much...maybe I'm excited about the rest of the week, or I slept in the car while Mike drove and now I'm all out of kilter, but I'm awake at 4:55 in the morning, and I have an 8 A.M. wake up call, and I'm typing instead of sawing wood.  I'm sure things will even out at some point this week, and I'm hoping sooner than later.  We've got a seven hour puddle jump today to St. Joseph, Missouri, and then we start heading eastward towards St. Charles (St. Louis) and then back home, and then a few days off until San Antonio.

The 2006 machine has already started grinding, and it's not even here yet.  Good God.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Fly Like An Eagle

Fly Like An Eagle                                            2810

Redemption comes hard, and no harder than on the comedy stage.  I performed last night at the Comix Cafe to 160 of the comedy club faithful, with Porter Matthews and Mike "Shake 'n' Bake" Glosek in tow.  My mission, as I chose to accept it, was to wash away the stink of the Friday late show (chronicled elsewhere on this journal....look down, I think it's the entry before this one).

So our show, billed as an 8:00 P.M. start, promptly started at 8:15, as a courtesy for the folks who thought the show would start at 8:30....I know, I didn't quite understand either.  It's not like we didn't have a good crowd, I just didn't think the delay was necessary.  But hey, it's only 15 minutes, right?

Porter Matthews took the stage, and drew some boo-birds from some hoodlums at a table in the back.  I hate hecklers, I just don't understand how some people have no clue how to act at a public performance.  Come to find out, Porter had seen these guys at another bar the night before, swinging fists and causing trouble.  Security was alerted before the show, which consisted of the club manager, Tony, who couldn't be confused with a bouncer by any stretch of the imagination, and me.

So Porter didn't really have the opportunity to get things rolling, and turned things over to Shake 'n' Bake.  Now, Mike Glosek is a really nice guy, but he suffers from a malady that is very difficult to overcome for any performer...he just doesn't get on stage enough to stay polished.  As a result, he shoots from the hip with his material, and goes very blue, which can turn some people off.  He also juggles in his act, and does the bit where you eat the apple while juggling it, and to show you that preparation isn't his strong suit, he wound up eating a tomato.

So after 45 minutes of merciful pounding, I took the stage.  I was ready for the worst, but happily, it went extremely well.  I drew deep into the reservoir of local material, which set things up nicely, did some new material, some classic material, and took a small break to talk about the Buffalo Bills (my favorite NFL team) in a way that wasn't hilarious funny, but engaging.  I finished up at the 50 minute mark, everyone was happy, I shook hands and kissed babies in the lounge after the show, and the monkey from Friday was off my back.  Excellent.

I leave later tonight with comedy buddy Mike Dambra for our New Year's Eve week of shows that will take us to Carbondale, Illinois, St. Joseph, Missouri, and finally, St. Charles, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis).  Afterwards, I come home, and have a few days off before flying to San Antonio, Texas.  I'm relieved, because Plan A was to drive out to Missouri with Mike, then catch a bus to San Antonio (24 hours and $169), and then fly home from Texas after the gig.  I was having trouble finding a cheap enough airfare to make it to Texas.  Luckily, after a red-eyed night of internet searching, I found a good flight out of Buffalo, NY, only 65 miles to the west, that was HUNDREDS of dollars cheaper than flying out of Rochester.  I hate my hometown in that respect; traveling from here is too expensive.

So I get to drive home with Mike, spend a few carefree days at home with Pamela and Harmony, and be the big jet-set comic, flying to my gig in the Lone Star State.  I think this month of being home has made me greedy for time with my family, and I hope it doesn't start turning me into a lazy comic, trying to stay close to home at the expense of what I do for a living.  I think it will mostly just give me a better sense of balance between work and family life.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Kickin' My Heart Around

Kickin' My Heart Around                                     2780

Sunday, Christmas Day, December 25, 2005-5:46 A.M.

Good morning, and Merry Christmas, wherever you are.  If you don't celebrate Christmas, Happy Holidays.  War on Christmas is over, if you want it (there was never a war on Christmas....it was just smoke and mirrors from Bill O'Reilly).  Happy Hannukah, whose first day is today, and commemorates the lasting of the oil; and at $2.36 a gallon, it better last for eight days, dammit.

Friday night at the Comix Cafe, two headlining shows with my buddy Joe Fico in the feature slot and Porter Matthews doing his thing up front.  First show, sparse but good.  I took my time and talked to them, intermingling humor with a call to tolerance and good will.  Am I finding my voice?  The audience liked it, with some good folks seated to the side of the stage rewarding me with a piece of their cake, celebrating a fellow's birthday.  I never wanted the show to end.

Second show, was like a fruitcake...nutty, fruity, and not really what I wanted.

Nuevo Los Angelino Marianne Sierke, formerly of Rochester and NYC, respectively, stopped in for a guest spot.  We chatted before the show and had a nice time of it.  As we spoke, guest after guest came up and said their hellos, several of them being classmates of mine from Monroe Community College, where I attended from 1987 to 1991 (don't judge me, ya bastard), and of course, friends of mine and Pamela's.

Before the show, local talent Danny Liberto, Annette Lorenzo and V.J. Stanley popped in to witness the revelry.  And boy, was it revelry.  Porter opens up to an audience that rewards him with a healthy round of indifference.  He brings up Marianne, who gets served a slice of the same.  It was right about then, as I'm watching two performers who are funny, energetic and professional, that I realized I was watching a Friday late show audience (the bane of any comic's existence) compounded with a holiday hangover.  There was chatting, indifference, and overall malaise.  I girded myself for the battle.

Joe Fico took to the stage, and even though he was feeling a little sick from his dinner(many of the choices on the Comix Cafe menu are great, but Joe had a gastric bypass less than a month ago, leaving him few suitable choices), he had what I consider to be a fine show.  I took the stage and began.

Being home in Rochester, I took the opportunity to unload a good portion of local reference and material honed through several years of serving as a house mc in the club.  It went dynamite, as much as I could have hoped, and then I went into my "road set."  Things were going well, until a kid sitting up front chose to heckle me.

"My friend's a virgin."  he said.  "Make fun of him."

Well, I'm certainly not in a position to do that....I don't even know the kid.  And is virginity such a bad thing?  I didn't save myself for marriage, but I know what the Bible says, and I wasn't going to betray my faith for some laughs at an unkown kid's expense.  Besides, what did he ever do to me?  I lit into his seatmate/tormentor.

So now, I'm going nowhere, beating up this Italian kid, and I dovetail back into material.  I'm doing fine, and I'm setting up a bit about how my wife has sharp toenails that scrape my leg while we're sleeping.  It sets up the second half of my road act, and is vital.  So I'm in the middle of a setup, mind you, and a woman yells out, "That's because you have no toenails."

I'm literally shocked speechless.  I sit on the stool onstage, and mug for a good 30 seconds, like I can't believe someone would say that out loud.  I milk it for all the laughs I can while I collect myself, and then ask for the house lights to be turned up.

It's some blonde girl....not too drunk looking.  I really can't figure out what the problem was.  If she was trailer trash, I would have dismantled her, if she was drunk, I would have dismantled her, if she was an airhead arm-candy girl, I would have dismantled her.  But she wasn't any of those things.  I have never been in that situation.  The comment was just so absurd, ridiculous, I wished she would have just yelled out "You suck!" and been done with it.

I gently chided her a few times, and went back on my way...unfotrtunately, a good portion of my set was gone.  I riffed madly to turn the direction back to my material, but I had disintegrated into a babbling mess.  They got me.

So I'm trying to finish, get back to my show, but I'm not interested and they're not interested.  It's like a bad blind date, and both of us are too embarassed to say, "Hey, let's just end it here...take me home."  I close as graciously as I can, one full hour plus five minutes after taking the stage.  The compliments after the show were plentiful, but dignity had been savaged and the good feelings from the first show washed away.

It's unnerving the way one bad show can take the piss out of an entire week....Wednesday, Thursday and first show Friday, I'm a superstar....second show Friday, I'm a local comic, a sham, and a disappointment.

Now, I know I'm better than that, but I won't be able to prove it until Monday, when I take that stage again for our special Holiday show, and have a good set.  I'm sure I'll do fine, and today, I'm going to enjoy Christmas with my family, and thank the good Lord that I'm allowed to do what I do for a living.  It certainly beats most vocations.

A footnote; I arrived home and checked my e-mail, and I received headlining dates from the House of Comedy in Niagara Falls, which was a wonderful tonic in light of the horror show that I had just suffered.  It goes to show what old-time comedy buddy of mine, Tiny Glover, always says...."Don't get too high in the highs, and don't get too low in the lows."

Sage words.

So Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

                  P.S.  Here's a nice Christmas picture of Pamela, Harmony and myself....consider it a Christmas card of best wishes from me and my family to you and yours.                                

=========================================

If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
If God had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning.
When you want to talk, He'll listen.
He could live anywhere in the universe and yet He chose your heart.
And remember that Christmas gift He sent you in Bethlehem?
Not to mention that Friday at Calvary.
Face it. He's crazy about you!
Remember: God answers knee-mail!

Merry CHRISTmas!!!

today'sTHOT============================

Jesus paid the price. You get to keep the change.

=======================================

Love On The Air

Love On The Air                                        2753

Friday, December 23, 2005-12:37 A.M.

Just finished the second of five headlining shows at my home club, The Comix Cafe, this weekend.  Last night and tonight were almost identical, inasmuch as that the crowds were both predominately college-aged kids, and the room was jammed.  The shows weren't like the late-show Friday mess of last week, though...the rooms were filled with people ready to laugh and have a good time, just the way I like it.

Wednesday, our host was Tommy Mule' from 96.5 FM WCMF, and tonight we had Scott Spezzano from 97.9 FM WPXY.  Both guys are real good friends, and work for the same radio company.  I worked for that radio company years ago as director of research, so I have a long-running relationship with Tommy and Scott.  Both nights there were guest spots, Wednesday being Porter Matthews and tonight Joe Cumbo.  Both those guys took my standup comedy class and are up-and coming young talents, so it was neat being able to share the stage with them.  And finally, Joey Fico, another Ralph Tetta protege', was great in the feature spot.

I couldn't have had more fun on stage both nights if you had filled my underwear with Slick-50 and pushed me down a water slide.  It's great playing in front of a room with 350+ people in it...the difference between that and playing to a hundred or less is like the difference between driving a Chevy Cavalier and a Ferrari.  I definitely like the bigger rooms....it's like wind in your hair when you get a big laugh or applause break.  I worked pretty rough, or downright dirty, depending on what you're used to...but that's the kind of humor I like, so at least I can say I'm being true to myself.  There's no subtelty to my act when I get in front of a full room....it's caveman joke-telling time, thump, thump, thump, and drag you back to my lair where I will plant my seed into you.

Huh, I passed out there for a second...I hope I didn't say anything offensive....

Marianne Sierk, a Rochester native, now living in sin with my good friend Steve Burr in the City of Angels, was visiting the Flower City and her relatives while Steve entertains the troops overseas in Bahrain (get all the juicy details at www.steveburrcomedy.com and click on his journal), and she'll be doing a guest spot tomorrow night.  I like the guest spots, because it's like bonus comedy....I think it's a value for the audience, as long as the time isnt' ridiculous. 

This morning, I was the special guest on Radio Free Wease on WCMF.  I didn't sleep very well last night, still rattling from caffeine and a great show, and I slept about two hours (not in a row) and wound up showing up at the remote broadcast over at the Greece Ridge Center (big mall in a working-class suburb of Rochester) around 7:00 A.M.  I stayed until 11:00 A.M. when the show went off the air, and got home and slept most of the day away.  I woke up to find that my wife and daughter decided to have a little nappy-nap, too, so I woke them up and cooked a nice dinner (Szechaun Shrimp Stir-Fry) and had a nice time together before I had to head back out to the club.  It's been nice being home this month, sharing time with my family rather than hastily snatching it two days a week and then heading back out to the road.

I have radio again tomorrow morning, so I'm going to get some sleep.  I don't know if I'll be ready to sleep, I've only been awake today for about 8 hours.  Gotta promote the shows, though.  Just another day at the office.

Hope you're ready for the holidays as they approach.  We're looking forward to them over here.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

Another Christmas Song

Another Christmas Song                                       2703

Tuesday, December 13, 2005-2:18 P.M.

Weekend wrap-up report...I picked up the weekend at the Comix Cafe hosting; the regular mc had a miscommunication on the booking, I think, which left an opening I was happy to fill.

Porter Matthews and V.J. Stanley, both former protege's of mine stopped in for guest spots, and added to the frivolity.  Bryan McCree and Keith Lenart, both friends of mine for quite some time, put on wonderful shows and I was happy to be a part of it.

The corporate show was tough, but those shows are always sketchy...it's hard to laugh when your boss is sitting right there.  It's always a repressed attitude.  I had fun though, and did my best, and enjoyed the laughter from the folks who were willing to get into the moment and enjoy themselves.  That's all you can do, right?  At one point in the show, there was a lull, and the group in the other room were laughing and applauding and you could hear them through the partition, and I stopped, and then said "I'm sorry, I just wanted to hear what laughter and applause sounded like."  It got the laugh, as did some other quips and asides, but it's hard dealing out the material that's tried, true and tested for years and getting substandard response.

I did the greatest favor you can do for a friend this morning.  I didn't give him a kidney...I gave him a 4:30 A.M. ride to the airport.

Now normally, you would set your alarm for an early hour and get moving, correct?  I actually stayed up until 4:30, which lately has become my standard operating procedure.  Staying home this month has got my system all out of whack, considering I've only averaged about 12 days home a month for the last five years.  So I got Ray Salah, one of my best friends in comedy (or at all, for that matter), off to his 6 A.M. flight to Las Vegas.  I'm house-sitting for him as well, so if anyone wants to come over and try on some of his things, let me know because I can hook that up pretty easily.

Just a few days more until Christmas, and a headlining week at the Cafe.  I'm excited about it, and glad that I got onstage there this week as a primer.  I'm working with Joe Fico, a Rochester comic who also studied under me and hit the ground running.  Our fortunes seem to be tied together quite often, as we performed in the hit comedy show "The Fat Pack" at the Cafe two summers ago, and by "hit show," I mean we did the show three times and it closed.  It was a fun endeavor, trying to put on a Rat Pack-style show (with Mike Glosek, a comic formerly out of Buffalo as our third), but we suffered from lack of advertising.

It should be a great week, and a great way to get into the Christmas spirit.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY