Thursday, March 19, 2009-11:00 A.M.
Good morning, readers from blogger.com, Facebook, MySpace, and ComedySoapbox. I'm delighted that you chose to take a few minutes to read me and see what's on my mind.
In the past few years that I've been putting fingers to keyboard, I've attempted to chronicle my journey in the world of standup comedy and professional entertainment. At key points in my life, I've deviated from that path to share personal musings, recognize departed family and friends, and discuss current events of interest.
I've always attempted to keep a balance; to provide as much information as possible to give a real look at what my life on the road is like, but not so much that it becomes a boring exercise. Sometimes I manage the task quite handily, and sometimes you read about my roast beef sandwich that I made in my hotel room after a show.
My life has always seemed to have been chopped up into four-year increments; I do something for four years, and then move on. I spent four years in college, four years managing the Comix Cafe, and now toured the country for eight years in the comedy clubs. I guess I enjoyed this part of the ride so much, I did two tours. And now I'm starting what I have to assume is another four-year stint hosting the college game show "Dash For Dollars."
I'm absolutely loving it, and each college that I visit brings a new challenge. Some schools are bigger than others, some are situated in densely populated urban settings, others out in the country among the cornfields. Some colleges provide huge performance venues, others have access to more intimate spaces. I welcome the challenge that each school provides, and work according to the specifications.
The thing that they all have in common is the trust they put in me to provide a great show, and I work very hard to make sure that I deliver on that promise. The students are the stars of the show, not me, and I try not to forget that. I deliver the show with the promise of fair play, sportsmanship, and the idea that a positive attitude will be rewarded, and not just greed. And some audiences are better at accepting that than others. I roll with the punches, do my job and let the chips fall where they may. A roller coaster has to creek slowly up a hill to provide the rush of the plunge down the other side.
The great advantage that this new opportunity has afforded me is that I'm working constantly, doing colleges mostly during the week, and leaving weekends open for club work, which I still enjoy. The disadvantage is that the time I've been allowed to spend at home to reconnect with my family and decompress has shrunk, and made those moments more precious. But a curious side effect has also taken hold, and that is that I'm absorbing even more news now than I used to. There's a great deal of down time on the road, and I've got all the tools at my disposal to absorb a ridiculous amount of information. In the vehicle, I have satellite radio, and now that XM and Sirius have merged, there's about 250 channels to surf through. Every hotel has some sort of cable package, and my laptop provides constant connection to the internet, which I access for what seems like every waking moment. Today, they pushed a USA Today under my door. I literally can't stop the information from flowing.
With all that being said, I come to my point; I finally understand why our economy collapsed. From what I understand, the problem stemmed from the housing market. Banks were writing mortgages at sub-prime rates, which allowed people to purchase homes they couldn't afford. At the same time, housing prices were going through the roof because everyone could basically get the financing they needed to purchase the homes. As demand went up and the supply stayed constant, the price went up; simple economics. Then the banks, knowing that many of these mortgages were going to wind up in foreclosure, went to companies like AIG to insure the loans, which was smart. The problem was that AIG was insuring the loans at a much greater ratio than their actual asset ability to provide. They would then bundle these debts as securities and made them available to investors, and of course, they weren't worth the paper they were printed on because they were unsustainable debts backed by money that just wasn't there.
So when regular working folks who had these mortgages for homes they couldn't possibly afford started defaulting, the banks started collecting on the insurance of these bad mortgages, and the whole house of cards fell down. AIG failed, which meant that the banks holding all of these bad mortgages failed, and the investors who plowed money into AIG lost their investments, which in many cases represented their retirement funds.
There are other factors in play, and I don't have a background in economics so I can't really comment, but it seems that the whole mess is predicated on a few simple factors; first, that Americans couldn't pass up the idea that they could live in a house beyond their means to maintain, and second, that the banks couldn't pass up the profit that they would make writing mortgages far and above the business that they would normally do, and not see it as a risk because they were able to get the loans insured. And there was no regulation going on at any point of the cycle.
People who know me know that I would have no problem laying the blame for this squarely at the feet of the Republican President of the last eight years, but there is essentially no one person who can shoulder the blame. President Calvin Coolidge famously said, "The business of America is business." Capitalism should exist for the purpose of individuals making money, providing a comfortable lifestyle, allowing ones self to raise a family, and to secure a retirement free of worry. The social contract, though, is that money should be earned, and be based on something; usually the sweat of one's brow or the product of a factory or field. That's all there is on the playing field, folks....goods and services. Products and labor. And when we start shifting around air, we blow up a balloon that has no choice but to pop.
But who can blame the financial sector for contriving such a scheme? We don't have goods and services anymore. We allow China to make all of our consumer goods, and we ship our jobs to Mexico and India and anywhere else we can, favoring the 60 cents a day worker over our American minimum wage which stifles a corporation's profitability. So there's nothing left to do but trade in money, and bundled debt disguised as securities. And watch the stock market drop like a rock that moments ago was skipping along the surface of the lake.
We need a way out. The Republicans cry "tax cuts!" but how much of a tax cut could you provide for someone to keep them in their home? To rebuild their shattered nest egg? To allow a company to start hiring workers again and provide them an income with which to start anew? I personally don't think it's possible.
I think the answer is that we have to start making things again. We need to open factories, hire workers here in the United States, and start elevating the middle class...because the middle class is the class that actually consumes the goods.
I don't know the ins-and-outs of farm subsidies, but I do know that there's less food in the world than there are people who need to be fed. Why are we not producing as much food as possible? Instead of sending cash overseas in the form of foreign aid (which I believe we should be doing, absolutely) why are we not sending boatloads of grain? There are probably factors I'm not considering like spoilage, cost of distribution, etc, but again, I don't claim to be an expert. I'm just a man crying out in the wilderness looking for answers.
Can we start working again? Can we reclaim our American dream?
How about this....health care seems to be on a lot of people's minds, and rightfully so. The state of health care in this country is unsatisfactory by anyone's standards except for perhaps the pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance agencies. Every doctor I've spoken to (not enough for a sample, but enough to make me say this without hesitancy) is in favor of a single-payer health care system. Preventative medicine seems to be the area in which we particularly lag in this country. And that means that illnesses, ailments and conditions don't get treated until they are in the drastic stages, and they become more difficult to cure. How much do we waste by allowing people to get that sick? And how much does overall production suffer due to lost time on the job by workers who are out sick? Has anyone calculated that cost?
And of course, all of this speculation falls on the shoulders of one man; President Obama. I trust President Obama, and I think a lot of Americans do, too. Currently, his popularity is riding around 60%, but even that number is moving downward as impatient Americans look for answers and results. He understands that in order for us to dig our way out of the hole, we need shovels. And right now, the government is in the best position to provide those shovels.
Obama's plan at this point seems to be a carbon copy of Franklin Roosevelt's plan, to start building infrastructure (which to be fair, we do need) and creating jobs. We almost need a Marshall plan to rebuild America much as Japan was rebuilt after World War II. There are critics of Obama's plan, to be sure, and the rhetoric seems to center around the idea that "You can't spend your way out of a recession." The criticism shrivels a bit when you change the word "spend" into the word "invest." Building safe bridges, levies, dams, roads and highways is an expenditure, to be sure, but it is an investment. Just as having up-to-date schools to educate and train the next generation of Americans is also an expenditure, it is no less an investment.
My father lived through the Great Depression, and now it looks as though I'll get the opportunity to do the same. And I've decided that perhaps this is something that America needs right now. In times of trouble, we pull together and help each other, we share what we have and we lift each other up. We speak more softly and we listen a little more carefully, because we're all in this together. And we embody the great American spirit that all things are possible if we stick together, join hands, contribute our talents to the pool and push in the same direction.
We need hope, not despair. We need to roll up our sleeves and start working again. And we need each other.
There is an old English proverb that goes like this; "Fear knocked at the door and Faith answered, and lo, no one was there."
Have faith in God, each other, and yourself. We can do this. And if you know someone who needs encouragement, please send this along as a text or a link.
Let's get to work.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
Not to over dramatize, but I woke up this morning feeling like a gunfighter who had to shoot 50 cowboys the night before.
I'm in Canton, NY, the home of SUNY Canton, and the first return engagement of the Dash For Dollars Comedy Game Show in my tenure as host.
When last I checked in, I was heading towards Warwick, Rhode Island and the Comedy Zone at the Showcase Cinemas. The drive from Rutland, Vermont wasn't very long, but it did take me through Boston. I think sometimes that directions provided by a GPS system or calculated by Mapquest, RandMcNally.com or some other service, are not the best directions because even though they calculate the directions as being the fastest or shortest routes, they don't take into account the rush hour traffic (or even general daytime congestion) that can occur in major metropolitan areas. As soon as I noticed that the GPS was sending me to Boston, I gritted my teeth, but kept on going because it was early afternoon and I figured I'd catch a break.
Well, as it turned out, I did catch a break and even though there was a slowdown or two, I wound up making it into Rhode Island with plenty of time to spare. I checked in to the hotel and didn't see many cars, but the hotel was full; that's because there was a college women's basketball tournament going on, and everyone had arrived on a single bus. And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking, "I'm in a hotel filled with female college basketball players, why didn't this shit ever happen when I was single?" Don't get me wrong, I love my wife, but her turnaround-jumper is for shit. Ha ha, just kidding, I love you honey, stop hitting me.
I was working at the Comedy Zone with fellow road dog Mutzie from New Orleans, Louisiana. Mutzie and I work a lot together, and I think that's part and parcel of the Comedy Zone's faith in us to deliver a great show. The room at the Showcase Cinemas was a new endeavor, and even though there had been comedy done in movie theaters before (Buffalo had the famous Como 8 comedy night, lovingly re-named the "Coma 8" by disenchanted Western New York comics for the less-than stellar turnouts and reactions from the sparse audiences), but this was a whole different animal. The Showcase Cinemas had literally turned one of their 16 screening rooms into a real comedy club, complete with tables down in the front, a great stage, beautiful sound and lighting, a full restaurant menu (not just popcorn, but they had that, too), and a liquor license! They really did the place up nice, and it was a joy to perform there. They had printed up really nice lobby cards, those big posters that you see in theaters that specialize in live theater, plays and stuff like that, and there in glorious color was my new headshot! After the weekend was over, the cards were going to be discarded in favor of the next week's performers, so Mutzie and I grabbed one each for a souvenir. It was really a great weekend, with plenty of folks coming in, many for the first time, and I think Mutzie and I made a good impression on them.
During the day on Saturday I did the road comic thing, getting up early to grab the complimentary continental breakfast and then doing laundry, and napping because I knew that Sunday morning I was going to need to beat some weather. A big snowstorm was coming, and I had one day to drive to my next game show date in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I got up early enough on Sunday to get coffee, jump in the van, and get out of town before the first snowflakes could hit the ground. I will compress the next 13 hours into as small a space as possible; I drove to Indiana, stopped for gas several times and also to use the bathroom, talked on the phone, listened to talk radio, and tried not to let the uninteresting terrain of Pennsylvania and Ohio hypnotize me into driving off of the road. When I reached the hotel in Fort Wayne, I was exhausted. Even though it's just driving in a van, it's pretty tough work, especially if you're sharing the road with truckers jacked up on coffee, energy drinks, truck stop amphetamines (caffeine pills, my ass) and deadlines with delivery incentives.
I got about 6 hours of sleep and woke up the next morning, not completely sure exactly where I was. Luckily, the Student Activities director at the college called my cell phone and I snapped back to current reality. My venue had been changed at the college, so I got up and bee-lined for the proposed area. There were some difficulties, as in, the cash booth that is the center piece of my game show didn't fit into the building I was assigned to do the show. I had been warned to expect this sort of thing and prepare in advance, so I used my vast improvisational skills to figure out how to do the show without it, and even though it was a small turnout, we had a great time, the students loved the show, and I got out of there with a feeling of job satisfaction that I had done the best job I could. In retrospect, it was good thing that I didn't have to load in the cash booth, because the standard rider on the college contract is that the school provides help to load the unit in. The single person who was assigned to me was a pregnant secretary. She was helpful, but that wasn't the "two helpers" I was expecting. Pre-natal volunteers rarely carry their own weight in such circumstances, as said weight is in the single digits.
After the show it was back east to Cleveland, Ohio, where I did a very exciting show at Cuyahoga Community College in the downtown area. The school was in the general vicinity of the Cleveland Improv comedy club, so I was somewhat familiar with the area. I caught a break in the morning as one of my pre-show duties is to visit a bank and replenish the cash that is necessary to put in the money booth, and broken into the correct increments. You can't just shove any amount of money you want in there, it has to be $500 and in the proper amount of bills. The hotel had a cash machine in their lobby, and after chatting with the folks at the desk, they told me that they were both willing and able to break the $20 bills that the ATM would provide into the bills that I would need. It saved me a trip, and I used the time savings to relax with the paper, some coffee, and a hot bowl of oatmeal (always working on my cholesterol, I am).
The real fun of the week was to happen the next day, in Middletown, Ohio, home of the Middletown campus of Miami of Ohio University. I got to the hotel just a little before 7 in the evening, in time to enjoy the manager's reception in the lobby, which garnered me free nachos. I put together a bowl with some nice hot cheese sauce (I somehow always undermine my efforts to work on my cholesterol) and retired to my room to enjoy movies on HBO and an early night's sleep. The next morning, I was up with the birds and ready to start my day.
I headed down to the breakfast area to put together a plate with some eggs, sausage, and a nice bowl of oatmeal. I grabbed some coffee and skim milk and set myself up at a table facing the wide-screen television in the breakfast room. I was enjoying my breakfast and the local newscast, when an older gentleman, probably in his 50's, sat down at the table next to me with his plate.
This gentleman had put together a huge amount of food, eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, and it was all chopped up together into a big mound. He was a portly type, with a clean flannel shirt, tucked into his jeans, and wearing a pair of wide suspenders. He had a bald head, but a big white beard that made me think of Santa Claus for some reason. He looked like a blue-collar type, and for some reason, I figured he was an electrician or something. The table he chose was parallel to mine, and he was facing the TV, and literally was no farther away from me than a foot. The tables in the breakfast area were quite close together.
After he put his plate down, he got up and changed the station on the TV, which immediately pissed me off. Shared television etiquette dictates that you can't just change the station without asking if anyone else was watching the program that was on (which I was), and also first-come, first-served comes into play as well. And to make matters worse? This son-of-a-bitch put on FOX NEWS. So now I am doubly pissed....he jumped the TV for his own purpose, fuck everyone else who was there first, and he's a right-wing conservative. I sat there and stewed in my own anger, because I never would have just assumed that I could switch off the local news and choose some left-leaning program that I would have liked, I would always have some sort of sense of decorum for those in the room that wouldn't enjoy such programming.
So I'm sitting there hating this contemptuous individual, and a lady in a sports jacket comes over and addresses him. "Sir, are you a hotel guest?"
And there's a pause. I know immediately that he's not a guest, and he just snuck in to cadge the free breakfast.
"I'm with (inaudible) up in room (inaudible)." He's sitting right next to me, I'm right there in the middle of this, and even though I know this guy's getting his comeuppance, I'm uncomfortable.
"Sir, the breakfast is a courtesy for our hotel guests. You can't help yourself AND YOU'VE BEEN TOLD THIS BEFORE." The son-of-a-bitch has done it before! I'm delighting in the embarrassment of the situation. I try not to smirk, finish my coffee and get the hell out of there.
Now, I'm not going to sit here and try to draw some parallel between people who watch Fox News and people who steal complimentary hotel breakfasts that they're not entitled to. But it's interesting, is it not, that this cat did what he did? He wandered in from off the street (and if he's done this before, he's a local resident), helped himself to some food he had no intention of paying for, commandeered the television set to his own liking, and sat there with no qualms.
It seems like a sense of entitlement to me. It seems like (at it's worst) THEFT. Conversion for personal gain. And this sense of entitlement, from a man who I assume because of his choice of Fox News, a conservative-leaning programmer, would rail against such things as the cost of this entitlement lays squarely on the backs of the people who PAY for lodging in the hotel. So much for individual achievement, huh? So much for the rejection of entitlements, Socialist ideas, the idea that everyone should be fed and cared for.
Coincidentally, there were some folks milling around in the breakfast area earlier, before Mr. Suspenders showed up, and they were speaking German, which I don't speak. But there is a German word, and you may have heard of it, known as Schadenfreude. Translated, this word means secretly delighting in the misfortune of others. I confess that I felt this as I made my way to the elevator, that this man who I don't like was found out to be a thief, a hypocrite, and was told off by the hotel staff. My show was fine, and there was an eight-hour drive home, and I whistled all the way.
I mentioned the story to my mother-in-law the next day, and she postulated that maybe the guy was homeless. Maybe he couldn't afford food. In truth, he was too clean and well groomed to make me think that he was indigent in any way, but that begs another question; why would a homeless guy be watching Fox News? The Right's whole shtick seems to be that if you're down on your luck, it's because you didn't work hard enough, and giving you a handout is hurting you because it will take away your impetus to work harder and do better for yourself.
It's hogwash, by the way. It assumes that everyone has equal access to the tools of success, and there's no such thing as bad luck. Tell it to someone who has a child with a catastrophic illness, a birth defect, a special need. Tell it to someone who just isn't mathematically inclined and gets enough B's on their high school transcript that they aren't eligible for an academic scholarship, but their family is also too well off to qualify for a needs-based scholarship. Tell it to someone who for a million different reasons, falls through the cracks and works as hard as they can, but still wind up with a bare-bones subsistence life.
Boy, wouldn't it be great if it were different? We could all afford our own eggs and sausage. We wouldn't worry about someone taking the toast off of our plate. "Why should I share my breakfast with that guy? I earned this breakfast. Tell him to get a job."
My breakfast was provided by the hotel, and the hotel room was paid for by the college I was performing at that day, as a part of my compensation. I worked for my breakfast. And here's the worst part of the story....if Mr. Suspenders was truly in need, truly hungry, homeless, down on his luck, his wife's in the hospital with breast cancer and her illness has drained their savings down to the last dime he had to spend on breakfast, if he had come up to me with any of those stories, I would have given him my breakfast. Regardless of his choice of television shows. I would have made up a plate for him, chopped up the sausage and eggs, put the gravy on, and sat with him outside in my van, heat blowing, while he ate his breakfast.
Because I love people. I hate to see people hurting. I hate to see them go without, to be down, to feel like no one's on their side. It's why I'm a Liberal. If I have ten dollars and you have nothing, then the truth is we both have five dollars and we're eating at Subway. And next week, maybe you'll have ten dollars and I'll be broke, but it won't matter because you'll honor our social compact and we'll be at Subway, having a sandwich and enjoying the feeling that says we're not alone today. It's why we live in cities, close to each other. It's why we have Neighborhood Watch (Socialist idea), neighborhood schools (Socialist idea), why we go to church together (Socialist, Socialist, Socialist) and donate to charities, and build playgrounds and let our children play together and why we work together. We are not alone. We don't rise and fall based on our own merits. We need each other.
Don't let anyone tell you different.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
I'm in Canton, NY, the home of SUNY Canton, and the first return engagement of the Dash For Dollars Comedy Game Show in my tenure as host.
When last I checked in, I was heading towards Warwick, Rhode Island and the Comedy Zone at the Showcase Cinemas. The drive from Rutland, Vermont wasn't very long, but it did take me through Boston. I think sometimes that directions provided by a GPS system or calculated by Mapquest, RandMcNally.com or some other service, are not the best directions because even though they calculate the directions as being the fastest or shortest routes, they don't take into account the rush hour traffic (or even general daytime congestion) that can occur in major metropolitan areas. As soon as I noticed that the GPS was sending me to Boston, I gritted my teeth, but kept on going because it was early afternoon and I figured I'd catch a break.
Well, as it turned out, I did catch a break and even though there was a slowdown or two, I wound up making it into Rhode Island with plenty of time to spare. I checked in to the hotel and didn't see many cars, but the hotel was full; that's because there was a college women's basketball tournament going on, and everyone had arrived on a single bus. And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking, "I'm in a hotel filled with female college basketball players, why didn't this shit ever happen when I was single?" Don't get me wrong, I love my wife, but her turnaround-jumper is for shit. Ha ha, just kidding, I love you honey, stop hitting me.
I was working at the Comedy Zone with fellow road dog Mutzie from New Orleans, Louisiana. Mutzie and I work a lot together, and I think that's part and parcel of the Comedy Zone's faith in us to deliver a great show. The room at the Showcase Cinemas was a new endeavor, and even though there had been comedy done in movie theaters before (Buffalo had the famous Como 8 comedy night, lovingly re-named the "Coma 8" by disenchanted Western New York comics for the less-than stellar turnouts and reactions from the sparse audiences), but this was a whole different animal. The Showcase Cinemas had literally turned one of their 16 screening rooms into a real comedy club, complete with tables down in the front, a great stage, beautiful sound and lighting, a full restaurant menu (not just popcorn, but they had that, too), and a liquor license! They really did the place up nice, and it was a joy to perform there. They had printed up really nice lobby cards, those big posters that you see in theaters that specialize in live theater, plays and stuff like that, and there in glorious color was my new headshot! After the weekend was over, the cards were going to be discarded in favor of the next week's performers, so Mutzie and I grabbed one each for a souvenir. It was really a great weekend, with plenty of folks coming in, many for the first time, and I think Mutzie and I made a good impression on them.
During the day on Saturday I did the road comic thing, getting up early to grab the complimentary continental breakfast and then doing laundry, and napping because I knew that Sunday morning I was going to need to beat some weather. A big snowstorm was coming, and I had one day to drive to my next game show date in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I got up early enough on Sunday to get coffee, jump in the van, and get out of town before the first snowflakes could hit the ground. I will compress the next 13 hours into as small a space as possible; I drove to Indiana, stopped for gas several times and also to use the bathroom, talked on the phone, listened to talk radio, and tried not to let the uninteresting terrain of Pennsylvania and Ohio hypnotize me into driving off of the road. When I reached the hotel in Fort Wayne, I was exhausted. Even though it's just driving in a van, it's pretty tough work, especially if you're sharing the road with truckers jacked up on coffee, energy drinks, truck stop amphetamines (caffeine pills, my ass) and deadlines with delivery incentives.
I got about 6 hours of sleep and woke up the next morning, not completely sure exactly where I was. Luckily, the Student Activities director at the college called my cell phone and I snapped back to current reality. My venue had been changed at the college, so I got up and bee-lined for the proposed area. There were some difficulties, as in, the cash booth that is the center piece of my game show didn't fit into the building I was assigned to do the show. I had been warned to expect this sort of thing and prepare in advance, so I used my vast improvisational skills to figure out how to do the show without it, and even though it was a small turnout, we had a great time, the students loved the show, and I got out of there with a feeling of job satisfaction that I had done the best job I could. In retrospect, it was good thing that I didn't have to load in the cash booth, because the standard rider on the college contract is that the school provides help to load the unit in. The single person who was assigned to me was a pregnant secretary. She was helpful, but that wasn't the "two helpers" I was expecting. Pre-natal volunteers rarely carry their own weight in such circumstances, as said weight is in the single digits.
After the show it was back east to Cleveland, Ohio, where I did a very exciting show at Cuyahoga Community College in the downtown area. The school was in the general vicinity of the Cleveland Improv comedy club, so I was somewhat familiar with the area. I caught a break in the morning as one of my pre-show duties is to visit a bank and replenish the cash that is necessary to put in the money booth, and broken into the correct increments. You can't just shove any amount of money you want in there, it has to be $500 and in the proper amount of bills. The hotel had a cash machine in their lobby, and after chatting with the folks at the desk, they told me that they were both willing and able to break the $20 bills that the ATM would provide into the bills that I would need. It saved me a trip, and I used the time savings to relax with the paper, some coffee, and a hot bowl of oatmeal (always working on my cholesterol, I am).
The real fun of the week was to happen the next day, in Middletown, Ohio, home of the Middletown campus of Miami of Ohio University. I got to the hotel just a little before 7 in the evening, in time to enjoy the manager's reception in the lobby, which garnered me free nachos. I put together a bowl with some nice hot cheese sauce (I somehow always undermine my efforts to work on my cholesterol) and retired to my room to enjoy movies on HBO and an early night's sleep. The next morning, I was up with the birds and ready to start my day.
I headed down to the breakfast area to put together a plate with some eggs, sausage, and a nice bowl of oatmeal. I grabbed some coffee and skim milk and set myself up at a table facing the wide-screen television in the breakfast room. I was enjoying my breakfast and the local newscast, when an older gentleman, probably in his 50's, sat down at the table next to me with his plate.
This gentleman had put together a huge amount of food, eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, and it was all chopped up together into a big mound. He was a portly type, with a clean flannel shirt, tucked into his jeans, and wearing a pair of wide suspenders. He had a bald head, but a big white beard that made me think of Santa Claus for some reason. He looked like a blue-collar type, and for some reason, I figured he was an electrician or something. The table he chose was parallel to mine, and he was facing the TV, and literally was no farther away from me than a foot. The tables in the breakfast area were quite close together.
After he put his plate down, he got up and changed the station on the TV, which immediately pissed me off. Shared television etiquette dictates that you can't just change the station without asking if anyone else was watching the program that was on (which I was), and also first-come, first-served comes into play as well. And to make matters worse? This son-of-a-bitch put on FOX NEWS. So now I am doubly pissed....he jumped the TV for his own purpose, fuck everyone else who was there first, and he's a right-wing conservative. I sat there and stewed in my own anger, because I never would have just assumed that I could switch off the local news and choose some left-leaning program that I would have liked, I would always have some sort of sense of decorum for those in the room that wouldn't enjoy such programming.
So I'm sitting there hating this contemptuous individual, and a lady in a sports jacket comes over and addresses him. "Sir, are you a hotel guest?"
And there's a pause. I know immediately that he's not a guest, and he just snuck in to cadge the free breakfast.
"I'm with (inaudible) up in room (inaudible)." He's sitting right next to me, I'm right there in the middle of this, and even though I know this guy's getting his comeuppance, I'm uncomfortable.
"Sir, the breakfast is a courtesy for our hotel guests. You can't help yourself AND YOU'VE BEEN TOLD THIS BEFORE." The son-of-a-bitch has done it before! I'm delighting in the embarrassment of the situation. I try not to smirk, finish my coffee and get the hell out of there.
Now, I'm not going to sit here and try to draw some parallel between people who watch Fox News and people who steal complimentary hotel breakfasts that they're not entitled to. But it's interesting, is it not, that this cat did what he did? He wandered in from off the street (and if he's done this before, he's a local resident), helped himself to some food he had no intention of paying for, commandeered the television set to his own liking, and sat there with no qualms.
It seems like a sense of entitlement to me. It seems like (at it's worst) THEFT. Conversion for personal gain. And this sense of entitlement, from a man who I assume because of his choice of Fox News, a conservative-leaning programmer, would rail against such things as the cost of this entitlement lays squarely on the backs of the people who PAY for lodging in the hotel. So much for individual achievement, huh? So much for the rejection of entitlements, Socialist ideas, the idea that everyone should be fed and cared for.
Coincidentally, there were some folks milling around in the breakfast area earlier, before Mr. Suspenders showed up, and they were speaking German, which I don't speak. But there is a German word, and you may have heard of it, known as Schadenfreude. Translated, this word means secretly delighting in the misfortune of others. I confess that I felt this as I made my way to the elevator, that this man who I don't like was found out to be a thief, a hypocrite, and was told off by the hotel staff. My show was fine, and there was an eight-hour drive home, and I whistled all the way.
I mentioned the story to my mother-in-law the next day, and she postulated that maybe the guy was homeless. Maybe he couldn't afford food. In truth, he was too clean and well groomed to make me think that he was indigent in any way, but that begs another question; why would a homeless guy be watching Fox News? The Right's whole shtick seems to be that if you're down on your luck, it's because you didn't work hard enough, and giving you a handout is hurting you because it will take away your impetus to work harder and do better for yourself.
It's hogwash, by the way. It assumes that everyone has equal access to the tools of success, and there's no such thing as bad luck. Tell it to someone who has a child with a catastrophic illness, a birth defect, a special need. Tell it to someone who just isn't mathematically inclined and gets enough B's on their high school transcript that they aren't eligible for an academic scholarship, but their family is also too well off to qualify for a needs-based scholarship. Tell it to someone who for a million different reasons, falls through the cracks and works as hard as they can, but still wind up with a bare-bones subsistence life.
Boy, wouldn't it be great if it were different? We could all afford our own eggs and sausage. We wouldn't worry about someone taking the toast off of our plate. "Why should I share my breakfast with that guy? I earned this breakfast. Tell him to get a job."
My breakfast was provided by the hotel, and the hotel room was paid for by the college I was performing at that day, as a part of my compensation. I worked for my breakfast. And here's the worst part of the story....if Mr. Suspenders was truly in need, truly hungry, homeless, down on his luck, his wife's in the hospital with breast cancer and her illness has drained their savings down to the last dime he had to spend on breakfast, if he had come up to me with any of those stories, I would have given him my breakfast. Regardless of his choice of television shows. I would have made up a plate for him, chopped up the sausage and eggs, put the gravy on, and sat with him outside in my van, heat blowing, while he ate his breakfast.
Because I love people. I hate to see people hurting. I hate to see them go without, to be down, to feel like no one's on their side. It's why I'm a Liberal. If I have ten dollars and you have nothing, then the truth is we both have five dollars and we're eating at Subway. And next week, maybe you'll have ten dollars and I'll be broke, but it won't matter because you'll honor our social compact and we'll be at Subway, having a sandwich and enjoying the feeling that says we're not alone today. It's why we live in cities, close to each other. It's why we have Neighborhood Watch (Socialist idea), neighborhood schools (Socialist idea), why we go to church together (Socialist, Socialist, Socialist) and donate to charities, and build playgrounds and let our children play together and why we work together. We are not alone. We don't rise and fall based on our own merits. We need each other.
Don't let anyone tell you different.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Meeting Across The River (Bruce Springsteen)
Thursday, February 26, 2009-11:55 P.M.
Good evening from the cold, snowy, wind-swept, frigid, warmth-challenged town of Rutland, Vermont, home of The College of St. Joseph (CSJ). I'm in the middle of the big tour, taking the Dash For Dollars Comedy Game Show out on the road, as well as my own hilarious comedy show.
This week, I knocked two more states out of the box, New Jersey and Vermont. Believe it or not, in 20 years of doing standup comedy, I'd never performed in either state, and they both border my home state of New York. Well, that monkey's finally off my back! I started out Sunday night heading south for Jersey, the town of Carneys Point to be precise, and even though it's in southern New Jersey, it is really a Philadelphia suburb. I got in rather late due to some unexpected weather that wasn't horrible but the snow was obfuscating the white lines on route 81 and I couldn't see a damn thing. By the time I got into New Jersey, everything was fine and I was off to the races.
The show went off fine, although I had to do some 11th hour prop-shopping. In the game show, we use several wacky props, and while most of them are re-used, some of them get consumed, like toilet paper and bubble gum. I set up my show, and then ran out for said props, returning with plenty of time to spare. The show was fine, but afterwards, I was bushed; I got in late the night before and really didn't wind up getting a good night's sleep, and coupling that with a 9 AM report time, I was pretty spent.
After the show, I dragged my feet and then finally packed up and headed for Newton, New Jersey, located in the northern part of the state. I didn't have a hotel reservation, as the college decided instead to provide me with a lodging stipend. The problem was that when I arrived, all the hotels were sold out. I wound up staying in a location slightly farther away from the college than I would have preferred, but even though it was a mom 'n' pop, they had wireless internet, a fridge and microwave in the room, and all the comforts of home. They even provided shampoo.....take *that,* Motel 6!
I had a day off so I used the time productively, getting the van an oil change, doing some writing, and mostly listening to and dissecting President Obama's address to Congress. Wednesday morning, I checked out and made my way to Sussex County Community College, where my reception was warm and welcoming. They even gave me a special parking tag that allowed me to basically park right up against the building where the game show was being staged, and that was quite appreciated. The cash booth is cumbersome enough, without considering a 25 gallon storage tote full of props, the tripods and frames for the backdrop and the vinyl backdrop itself, four hula hoops and a putter....it's a pain toting all that stuff in from parts unknown!
The Monday morning show was hard, and I expected that it would be. Monday mornings, it's hard to get motivated and excited. But the Wednesday show was like pulling teeth! I couldn't predict how difficult it would be to come onto a college campus and basically give away money, and get ignored like a guy at an off-ramp with a cardboard sign that said "Hungry-Homeless-Help." But there I was, begging for some sort of interaction with a crowd of students who couldn't be bothered. Oh well. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.
After the show, I headed north to Rutland, Vermont, and the College of St. Joseph where I currently reside. No game show for me this evening, rather, my own headlining set. CSJ is a small college, but the people opened their doors to me and really made me feel welcome. The advantage of the size of the school is that everyone is on a first-name basis. The school provided me with on-campus accommodations, basically a dorm room, which was perfect. I got in Wednesday night and settled in, visiting the "downtown" area of Rutland in search of dinner and a LAN cord to take advantage of the internet connection in the dorms. I found a decent Chinese buffet, and after dinner, retreated to the dorm for a good night's sleep.
Today, I had lunch with Rob Lukaskiewicz, the gentleman in charge of student affairs and my gracious host. We had a nice chat and spoke of many things, including the challenges of parenthood, student involvement on college campuses, and the book I'm writing about standup comedy. He had his fingers crossed regarding the attendance of the show (the "town hall" meeting of the night before drew zero) and we were pleased that the total attendance fell just a few heads short of our goal. The show itself was staged in a beautiful 200-seat theater, and it was the type of venue I wish I had the opportunity to play in all the time. After the show, I chit-chatted with some of the students, then grabbed some sandwiches from the on-campus sub shop and retreated to my room to watch movies on DVD and of course, compose this blog.
Tomorrow, it's off to Warwick, Rhode Island, and a two-day engagement at the Comedy Zone (I've heard nothing but good things) and then Sunday is a day off to make it to Fort Wayne, Indiana for the game show. Tuesday and Wednesday I make my way back home with gameshow dates in Cleveland and Middletown, Ohio, and then Thursday night, I'll be judging the finals of the standup comedy competition back home in Rochester. Friday night, the game show runs back up to Canton, NY (my first repeat engagement since taking the gig) and then a weekend off before heading to Connecticut, West Virginia and Virginia. March is shaping up to be a very busy month, and that's fine with me. I love the stage and the opportunity to perform for appreciative audiences. And to be completely honest, I'm happy to have a job in a time when a lot of people don't, either for the want of a job or just having lost a good one. And I'm doubly lucky that it's a job that's so much fun, it doesn't even feel like work.
Stay warm....the winter's almost over.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Good evening from the cold, snowy, wind-swept, frigid, warmth-challenged town of Rutland, Vermont, home of The College of St. Joseph (CSJ). I'm in the middle of the big tour, taking the Dash For Dollars Comedy Game Show out on the road, as well as my own hilarious comedy show.
This week, I knocked two more states out of the box, New Jersey and Vermont. Believe it or not, in 20 years of doing standup comedy, I'd never performed in either state, and they both border my home state of New York. Well, that monkey's finally off my back! I started out Sunday night heading south for Jersey, the town of Carneys Point to be precise, and even though it's in southern New Jersey, it is really a Philadelphia suburb. I got in rather late due to some unexpected weather that wasn't horrible but the snow was obfuscating the white lines on route 81 and I couldn't see a damn thing. By the time I got into New Jersey, everything was fine and I was off to the races.
The show went off fine, although I had to do some 11th hour prop-shopping. In the game show, we use several wacky props, and while most of them are re-used, some of them get consumed, like toilet paper and bubble gum. I set up my show, and then ran out for said props, returning with plenty of time to spare. The show was fine, but afterwards, I was bushed; I got in late the night before and really didn't wind up getting a good night's sleep, and coupling that with a 9 AM report time, I was pretty spent.
After the show, I dragged my feet and then finally packed up and headed for Newton, New Jersey, located in the northern part of the state. I didn't have a hotel reservation, as the college decided instead to provide me with a lodging stipend. The problem was that when I arrived, all the hotels were sold out. I wound up staying in a location slightly farther away from the college than I would have preferred, but even though it was a mom 'n' pop, they had wireless internet, a fridge and microwave in the room, and all the comforts of home. They even provided shampoo.....take *that,* Motel 6!
I had a day off so I used the time productively, getting the van an oil change, doing some writing, and mostly listening to and dissecting President Obama's address to Congress. Wednesday morning, I checked out and made my way to Sussex County Community College, where my reception was warm and welcoming. They even gave me a special parking tag that allowed me to basically park right up against the building where the game show was being staged, and that was quite appreciated. The cash booth is cumbersome enough, without considering a 25 gallon storage tote full of props, the tripods and frames for the backdrop and the vinyl backdrop itself, four hula hoops and a putter....it's a pain toting all that stuff in from parts unknown!
The Monday morning show was hard, and I expected that it would be. Monday mornings, it's hard to get motivated and excited. But the Wednesday show was like pulling teeth! I couldn't predict how difficult it would be to come onto a college campus and basically give away money, and get ignored like a guy at an off-ramp with a cardboard sign that said "Hungry-Homeless-Help." But there I was, begging for some sort of interaction with a crowd of students who couldn't be bothered. Oh well. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.
After the show, I headed north to Rutland, Vermont, and the College of St. Joseph where I currently reside. No game show for me this evening, rather, my own headlining set. CSJ is a small college, but the people opened their doors to me and really made me feel welcome. The advantage of the size of the school is that everyone is on a first-name basis. The school provided me with on-campus accommodations, basically a dorm room, which was perfect. I got in Wednesday night and settled in, visiting the "downtown" area of Rutland in search of dinner and a LAN cord to take advantage of the internet connection in the dorms. I found a decent Chinese buffet, and after dinner, retreated to the dorm for a good night's sleep.
Today, I had lunch with Rob Lukaskiewicz, the gentleman in charge of student affairs and my gracious host. We had a nice chat and spoke of many things, including the challenges of parenthood, student involvement on college campuses, and the book I'm writing about standup comedy. He had his fingers crossed regarding the attendance of the show (the "town hall" meeting of the night before drew zero) and we were pleased that the total attendance fell just a few heads short of our goal. The show itself was staged in a beautiful 200-seat theater, and it was the type of venue I wish I had the opportunity to play in all the time. After the show, I chit-chatted with some of the students, then grabbed some sandwiches from the on-campus sub shop and retreated to my room to watch movies on DVD and of course, compose this blog.
Tomorrow, it's off to Warwick, Rhode Island, and a two-day engagement at the Comedy Zone (I've heard nothing but good things) and then Sunday is a day off to make it to Fort Wayne, Indiana for the game show. Tuesday and Wednesday I make my way back home with gameshow dates in Cleveland and Middletown, Ohio, and then Thursday night, I'll be judging the finals of the standup comedy competition back home in Rochester. Friday night, the game show runs back up to Canton, NY (my first repeat engagement since taking the gig) and then a weekend off before heading to Connecticut, West Virginia and Virginia. March is shaping up to be a very busy month, and that's fine with me. I love the stage and the opportunity to perform for appreciative audiences. And to be completely honest, I'm happy to have a job in a time when a lot of people don't, either for the want of a job or just having lost a good one. And I'm doubly lucky that it's a job that's so much fun, it doesn't even feel like work.
Stay warm....the winter's almost over.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Monday, February 16, 2009
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
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
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (Bruce Springsteen)
February 6, 2009-9:35 P.M.
Helldrive 2009 is officially over. Actually, it's been over for almost a week now, but I had to get out from under some things here at home before I could even sit down and write about the experience.
Helldrive 2009 is just a cute nickname I gave a two-week tour that I just completed. I always used to say that once a year, I torture myself with a routing just to keep myself honest. Now, after 5 or 6 years of doing that, I've entrusted the task to others, to make sure it gets done with no screw-ups.
Helldrive 2009 started on Wednesday, January 21st. Ray Salah and I were tapped to be the judges for The Comedy Club's "Last Comic Sitting" contest (www.thecomedyclub.us) and it was an interesting night, to say the least. I spotted stolen material from every generation of comedian from Pat Cooper all the way up to some thinly concealed Jim Gaffigan. I spotted every one of them, including evergreen theft-pots David Brenner and Lenny Bruce. I guess the rationale is that these budding comic wanna-bes are the only ones who ever listened to these records and there's no way they're gonna get nabbed. Well, they all got nabbed and none of them won.
After the show, I dropped Ray off at his house and picked up Joel Lindley for an overnight drive to Huntington, West Virginia. I'll spare you the gory details other than we got there in time for Joel to be spirited off to a radio interview and I collapsed into my sleep-number bed at the Pullman Plaza. That night, after readjusting and napping, I began my slate of shows at the Huntington Funny Bone. All I can say is "wow." What a great room, great people, great staff, perfect sound and lights and stage. It was literally perfect as far as the stage being just the right size to stalk around, just the right height to be seen from everywhere in the room without rising too lofty, just everything was exactly as it should have been. I didn't have one show the whole week that I wanted back; every once in a while, I'll say something that I just shouldn't have said, and the whole show will go to shit. This week, I was like Rumpelstiltskin, weaving gold out of straw. The room really spoiled me for every other comedy club I've had the pleasure of playing.
The Funny Bone is in a downtown mall/entertainment complex, and they have a trade-out agreement with the movie theater. I got to see Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" and I have to say that it was just excellent. The movie wasn't entirely perfect, but it surely would have gotten a nine out of 10 from me if I were asked to rate it. If you're on the fence based on reviews you've seen or your own personal judgement of the trailers and previews, go see it and tell me I'm wrong that it was an excellent performance by Clint Eastwood. If you remember the movie "Heartbreak Ridge" that Eastwood did in the 80's, where he played Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway, this is like the continuing adventures of Gunny.
At the end of the weekend, namely Sunday night, Joel and I turned in our sets for the Sunday club-goers and bid farewell to snowy Huntington, piling into the car for the ride home. West Virginia was snowy and the roads were icy, winding and treacherous, but we made it home alive. I slept about two hours (!) and then got up, showered, and left again to hit the road. I picked up Ray and the van with the Dash For Dollars game show stuff in it and we headed towards Columbus, Ohio and Ohio Dominican University. Ray had even less sleep than I did, and opted to stay at the hotel and catch up with his shut-eye while I did the show. Running on adrenaline, caffeine and a sense of duty, I finished the show and returned to the hotel where I picked up Ray and we headed out for a late dinner. We found a family-style restaurant and some country cooking, and then returned to the hotel where I managed to fall asleep mid-sentence. I woke up at 5 in the morning with my stage clothes still on and my glasses askew.
The next morning, we headed off towards Chicago and managed to hit some of that horrible winter weather that was crushing the Midwest. We drove through Indianapolis, where they forgot what snowplows looked like, and pirouetted and sashayed all across the highway. By the time we reached Merrillville, Indiana, we bunked down for the night, figuring the next day would be easier as we were far enough north to be out of the storm. We got a good night's sleep and headed off early for Harold Washington College, which is located at the corner of Smack and Dab in downtown Chicago. To say that the city is congested is an understatement; parking is not only at a premium, it's expensive as hell. I wound up digging down for $50 (no lie) to park the van for the duration of my four hour work-day. The overhead train tracks wreaked havoc with my GPS and cell phone, and as hypnotizing as Chicago is from the skyline view you get when travelling west on the 90, I guess I wouldn't do very well living there with my sense of claustrophobia that I didn't even know I had.
The evening's dinner was Cracker Barrel, and food never tasted so good. It was damn near 5 PM and neither Ray nor I had eaten a bite since the day before. I had catfish and a loaf of biscuits and Ray had some sort of roast beef platter. Then we hit the road, traveling back through Indianapolis where I cashed in my Speedway loyalty card points and purchased gasoline for $1.17 a gallon. We headed south towards Cincinnati and finally, the highway turned to crap and we grabbed the first hotel we found, a Comfort Inn. The next day, we piloted our way through Kentucky and into Tennessee and some ice-storm ravaged country, but the roads were cleaned and salted and I guess it varies from community to community whether or not they can afford such luxuries as salt and plows, but the roads stayed clean well towards our final destination. We ate a Golden Corral buffet dinner (I know all the sweet restaurants, eh?) and had a little floor-show as a party who arrived just before we were about to leave bitched out a floor manager and a kitchen manager over an entire section of the restaurant that hadn't been bussed.....there were dirty dishes everywhere, and 90% of the patrons had tipped their server and gone. The young lady who was working point on this party of ten or more diners seemed nice at first, helping the one waitress who was working the section bus the tables and mentioning nicely that she had waitress ed before and knew how hard it was. They quickly cleared about three tables and shoved them together so that the party could sit down, and then she went into full puma mode, seeking out someone with a supervisor's name tag that she could dress down in the middle of the place. I looked down and away, and left my server another buck.
We kept moving until around midnight, and I managed to find a Motel 6 that I'd stayed at last year in Newport, Tennessee. It was just dumb luck that I stopped at that exit for gas, and started to recognize everything from my visit last summer. This was the town that I saw the first available midnight showing of The Dark Knight, and camped out two days in between engagements for The Comedy Zone in Clarksville and Johnson City, Tennessee. The Motel 6 is super clean, and offers free internet, and that's unusual for Motel 6's, they usually try to get you to pay around $3.50 for a day's use (which isn't bad, to be honest). The next morning, we chewed up the last few hours and motored towards Salisbury, North Carolina, and Catawba College, for the last date of the Dash For Dollars tour. We set up and did a "teaser" for the show in the student cafeterias, and then hung out and killed time for a couple of hours until showtime. We did the show, packed up the van, and headed for home, once again hitting horrible weather in West Virginia. It seemed that the high elevations were getting horrible snow, and then we'd come down a hill and everything was clear again. I drove until the Pennsylvania border and then pulled into a rest area for a couple hour's sleep.
By the time I woke up, it was daylight, and off we headed again. We stopped for gas at a Sheetz and grabbed some breakfast and dog-legged it the rest of the way home, pulling in at maybe 1 o'clock or so. But it didn't end there, because Ray's driveway was full of snow and we had to shovel a spot to stow the van. I don't know what energy I was tapping because I cleared the space out in what felt like about five minutes. I transferred all of my luggage into my waiting Camry and headed home. Pam and Harmony had gone out for some children's event, story time or some such thing, I can't really remember and to be honest, when she told me what it was, I was a zombie. I tried to sleep, but that wasn't happening. I laid in bed until the alarm rang, twitching with caffeine, Red Bull and coffee, and several dark cola drinks. I showered and dressed and headed to my evening engagement, two shows at a restaurant called Patti's Pantry.
Patti's Pantry is located on Dewey Avenue in Rochester, just minutes from where I grew up. I did two 50-minute shows to a mostly middle-aged group, and had a great time doing it. There was an added bonus as a few of my friends came out to see me; the first show, Jon "Lumpy" Dubner, his wife, and a couple of friends surprised me. Jon was a mainstay at Yuk Yuk's, the first full-time comedy club that Rochester ever had. He was always and continues to be a good friend and a person who is filled with the stuff that good karma is made out of. He took some pictures with his digital camera and posted and tagged them on Facebook and with apologies from the source material, they were pretty good.
Second show, my good friend Mark Block came out. Mark is a former co-worker of mine in the Great Lakes Entertainment productions of Joey and Maria's Comedy Wedding, Joey and Maria's 25Th Anniversary, and the Soapranos. He is also my tax preparer, and the first and only person who has ever invited me to Passover supper. We had a good time hanging out backstage, which was really just a smaller dining room away from the main dining room, and while I wished I could have spent more time with him, I was coasting on fumes after 10 days of running myself like a dog and had to get home. I was telling my wife how things went, when apparently I fell asleep in the middle of a sentence and woke up at 5 in the morning with my stage clothes still on and my glasses askew.
All day Sunday I felt like hell, bones aching, dry mouth from all the caffeine, and of course, hating the snow and the cold which feels like it will never end. I drifted in and out from the Super Bowl, not really caring to watch Pittsburgh outgun the Cardinals. It was like watching a schoolyard bully push around a kid with asthma, only in this story, the kid with asthma actually put up a decent fight towards the end. At the end of it all, my team won......THE E-STREET BAND.
Yesterday, the cycle ended as it began, Ray and I judged another week of the competition at The Comedy Club, and today, I finished compiling paperwork for my health insurance. I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders, but the big machine starts up again on Saturday, where I do two shows in Rochester at PeRe (it's a club) and then hit the road to Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. More of the same, but in a different order this time.
I hope the weather's good.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Helldrive 2009 is officially over. Actually, it's been over for almost a week now, but I had to get out from under some things here at home before I could even sit down and write about the experience.
Helldrive 2009 is just a cute nickname I gave a two-week tour that I just completed. I always used to say that once a year, I torture myself with a routing just to keep myself honest. Now, after 5 or 6 years of doing that, I've entrusted the task to others, to make sure it gets done with no screw-ups.
Helldrive 2009 started on Wednesday, January 21st. Ray Salah and I were tapped to be the judges for The Comedy Club's "Last Comic Sitting" contest (www.thecomedyclub.us) and it was an interesting night, to say the least. I spotted stolen material from every generation of comedian from Pat Cooper all the way up to some thinly concealed Jim Gaffigan. I spotted every one of them, including evergreen theft-pots David Brenner and Lenny Bruce. I guess the rationale is that these budding comic wanna-bes are the only ones who ever listened to these records and there's no way they're gonna get nabbed. Well, they all got nabbed and none of them won.
After the show, I dropped Ray off at his house and picked up Joel Lindley for an overnight drive to Huntington, West Virginia. I'll spare you the gory details other than we got there in time for Joel to be spirited off to a radio interview and I collapsed into my sleep-number bed at the Pullman Plaza. That night, after readjusting and napping, I began my slate of shows at the Huntington Funny Bone. All I can say is "wow." What a great room, great people, great staff, perfect sound and lights and stage. It was literally perfect as far as the stage being just the right size to stalk around, just the right height to be seen from everywhere in the room without rising too lofty, just everything was exactly as it should have been. I didn't have one show the whole week that I wanted back; every once in a while, I'll say something that I just shouldn't have said, and the whole show will go to shit. This week, I was like Rumpelstiltskin, weaving gold out of straw. The room really spoiled me for every other comedy club I've had the pleasure of playing.
The Funny Bone is in a downtown mall/entertainment complex, and they have a trade-out agreement with the movie theater. I got to see Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" and I have to say that it was just excellent. The movie wasn't entirely perfect, but it surely would have gotten a nine out of 10 from me if I were asked to rate it. If you're on the fence based on reviews you've seen or your own personal judgement of the trailers and previews, go see it and tell me I'm wrong that it was an excellent performance by Clint Eastwood. If you remember the movie "Heartbreak Ridge" that Eastwood did in the 80's, where he played Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway, this is like the continuing adventures of Gunny.
At the end of the weekend, namely Sunday night, Joel and I turned in our sets for the Sunday club-goers and bid farewell to snowy Huntington, piling into the car for the ride home. West Virginia was snowy and the roads were icy, winding and treacherous, but we made it home alive. I slept about two hours (!) and then got up, showered, and left again to hit the road. I picked up Ray and the van with the Dash For Dollars game show stuff in it and we headed towards Columbus, Ohio and Ohio Dominican University. Ray had even less sleep than I did, and opted to stay at the hotel and catch up with his shut-eye while I did the show. Running on adrenaline, caffeine and a sense of duty, I finished the show and returned to the hotel where I picked up Ray and we headed out for a late dinner. We found a family-style restaurant and some country cooking, and then returned to the hotel where I managed to fall asleep mid-sentence. I woke up at 5 in the morning with my stage clothes still on and my glasses askew.
The next morning, we headed off towards Chicago and managed to hit some of that horrible winter weather that was crushing the Midwest. We drove through Indianapolis, where they forgot what snowplows looked like, and pirouetted and sashayed all across the highway. By the time we reached Merrillville, Indiana, we bunked down for the night, figuring the next day would be easier as we were far enough north to be out of the storm. We got a good night's sleep and headed off early for Harold Washington College, which is located at the corner of Smack and Dab in downtown Chicago. To say that the city is congested is an understatement; parking is not only at a premium, it's expensive as hell. I wound up digging down for $50 (no lie) to park the van for the duration of my four hour work-day. The overhead train tracks wreaked havoc with my GPS and cell phone, and as hypnotizing as Chicago is from the skyline view you get when travelling west on the 90, I guess I wouldn't do very well living there with my sense of claustrophobia that I didn't even know I had.
The evening's dinner was Cracker Barrel, and food never tasted so good. It was damn near 5 PM and neither Ray nor I had eaten a bite since the day before. I had catfish and a loaf of biscuits and Ray had some sort of roast beef platter. Then we hit the road, traveling back through Indianapolis where I cashed in my Speedway loyalty card points and purchased gasoline for $1.17 a gallon. We headed south towards Cincinnati and finally, the highway turned to crap and we grabbed the first hotel we found, a Comfort Inn. The next day, we piloted our way through Kentucky and into Tennessee and some ice-storm ravaged country, but the roads were cleaned and salted and I guess it varies from community to community whether or not they can afford such luxuries as salt and plows, but the roads stayed clean well towards our final destination. We ate a Golden Corral buffet dinner (I know all the sweet restaurants, eh?) and had a little floor-show as a party who arrived just before we were about to leave bitched out a floor manager and a kitchen manager over an entire section of the restaurant that hadn't been bussed.....there were dirty dishes everywhere, and 90% of the patrons had tipped their server and gone. The young lady who was working point on this party of ten or more diners seemed nice at first, helping the one waitress who was working the section bus the tables and mentioning nicely that she had waitress ed before and knew how hard it was. They quickly cleared about three tables and shoved them together so that the party could sit down, and then she went into full puma mode, seeking out someone with a supervisor's name tag that she could dress down in the middle of the place. I looked down and away, and left my server another buck.
We kept moving until around midnight, and I managed to find a Motel 6 that I'd stayed at last year in Newport, Tennessee. It was just dumb luck that I stopped at that exit for gas, and started to recognize everything from my visit last summer. This was the town that I saw the first available midnight showing of The Dark Knight, and camped out two days in between engagements for The Comedy Zone in Clarksville and Johnson City, Tennessee. The Motel 6 is super clean, and offers free internet, and that's unusual for Motel 6's, they usually try to get you to pay around $3.50 for a day's use (which isn't bad, to be honest). The next morning, we chewed up the last few hours and motored towards Salisbury, North Carolina, and Catawba College, for the last date of the Dash For Dollars tour. We set up and did a "teaser" for the show in the student cafeterias, and then hung out and killed time for a couple of hours until showtime. We did the show, packed up the van, and headed for home, once again hitting horrible weather in West Virginia. It seemed that the high elevations were getting horrible snow, and then we'd come down a hill and everything was clear again. I drove until the Pennsylvania border and then pulled into a rest area for a couple hour's sleep.
By the time I woke up, it was daylight, and off we headed again. We stopped for gas at a Sheetz and grabbed some breakfast and dog-legged it the rest of the way home, pulling in at maybe 1 o'clock or so. But it didn't end there, because Ray's driveway was full of snow and we had to shovel a spot to stow the van. I don't know what energy I was tapping because I cleared the space out in what felt like about five minutes. I transferred all of my luggage into my waiting Camry and headed home. Pam and Harmony had gone out for some children's event, story time or some such thing, I can't really remember and to be honest, when she told me what it was, I was a zombie. I tried to sleep, but that wasn't happening. I laid in bed until the alarm rang, twitching with caffeine, Red Bull and coffee, and several dark cola drinks. I showered and dressed and headed to my evening engagement, two shows at a restaurant called Patti's Pantry.
Patti's Pantry is located on Dewey Avenue in Rochester, just minutes from where I grew up. I did two 50-minute shows to a mostly middle-aged group, and had a great time doing it. There was an added bonus as a few of my friends came out to see me; the first show, Jon "Lumpy" Dubner, his wife, and a couple of friends surprised me. Jon was a mainstay at Yuk Yuk's, the first full-time comedy club that Rochester ever had. He was always and continues to be a good friend and a person who is filled with the stuff that good karma is made out of. He took some pictures with his digital camera and posted and tagged them on Facebook and with apologies from the source material, they were pretty good.
Second show, my good friend Mark Block came out. Mark is a former co-worker of mine in the Great Lakes Entertainment productions of Joey and Maria's Comedy Wedding, Joey and Maria's 25Th Anniversary, and the Soapranos. He is also my tax preparer, and the first and only person who has ever invited me to Passover supper. We had a good time hanging out backstage, which was really just a smaller dining room away from the main dining room, and while I wished I could have spent more time with him, I was coasting on fumes after 10 days of running myself like a dog and had to get home. I was telling my wife how things went, when apparently I fell asleep in the middle of a sentence and woke up at 5 in the morning with my stage clothes still on and my glasses askew.
All day Sunday I felt like hell, bones aching, dry mouth from all the caffeine, and of course, hating the snow and the cold which feels like it will never end. I drifted in and out from the Super Bowl, not really caring to watch Pittsburgh outgun the Cardinals. It was like watching a schoolyard bully push around a kid with asthma, only in this story, the kid with asthma actually put up a decent fight towards the end. At the end of it all, my team won......THE E-STREET BAND.
Yesterday, the cycle ended as it began, Ray and I judged another week of the competition at The Comedy Club, and today, I finished compiling paperwork for my health insurance. I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders, but the big machine starts up again on Saturday, where I do two shows in Rochester at PeRe (it's a club) and then hit the road to Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. More of the same, but in a different order this time.
I hope the weather's good.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Beautiful Day (U2)
Happy Inauguration Day! It's a wonderful day, if for only the idea that power in our nation's government passes peaceably from one man's hands to another's without bloodshed. There are certainly a lot of countries in the world today that cannot make that boast.
Harmony was under the weather today, so we kept her out of school and watched the inauguration ceremony on television. She's only four years old, so much of the broadcast was lost on her, but years from now, I'm sure she'll be happy to announce that she watched the events unfold live.
I am officially sick to death of Winter. The cold weather never used to bother me, and as a matter of fact, I used to enjoy it, but lately travel has become difficult and the impact of the cold on my health and the health of my family has greatly undermined our quality of life.
On Friday the 9th, I was booked to perform a showcase in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the Smith Agency, and the agents who peddle my gameshow "Dash For Dollars" to colleges around the country. They wanted to see my regular standup act and what I bring to the table. The show was in a small bar/restaurant that was filled to capacity and this was despite a winter snowstorm gripping the state of Michigan. The next day, the plan was to drive home back to Rochester and enjoy the weekend with my family; no dice. The storm that was torturing Detroit was blowing snow up around the Port Huron, Michigan area, and put me at a standstill before I could cross over to Canada and cut across Ontario back to Upstate New York. I wound up at a small motor lodge in Port Huron thanks to my trusty TomTom GPS device that is able to locate hotels and points of interest. The going rate for hotels that night was around $115, and I just didn't feel like spending that kind of money. Instead, I found a motor lodge that was letting rooms go for only $35, although they were a little short on services.
For one, they had no wireless internet. For that matter, they had no phones, so I couldn't even dial up if I wanted to. The two rooms that were available, a double and a king suite, were the same price, so I told the desk clerk I would take the double. He said, "Would you like to see the room first?" I figured an offer like that wouldn't be tendered for no particular reason, so I took the key and headed over to room #7.
Room #7 was not better than I assumed it would be. The furniture was ramshackle at best, the bathroom a monument to neglect and a bad grout job. The deal-breaker, though, of this budget-conscious choice was the smell of the room. I could only describe it as thinking that the last renter was a man who couldn't stop peeing while he was cleaning a fish.
I returned to the desk and asked to see the king suite, and moments later, headed over to unit #4. Happily, the room didn't smell unpleasant; rather, there had been some sort of room deodorizer applied that made it smell kind of nice. The furniture wasn't any better and the bathroom was only slightly better, and I decided that this was what I was going to get for $35.
I checked in, drove down the road to a small mini-mart and grabbed some food and bottled water, and spent the rest of the evening watching football and movies on cable. The next morning, the roads were plowed and I headed east. The roads weren't entirely clear, but I had at least a fighting chance to get home in one piece. The day before, somewhere along the way between Lansing and Flint, Michigan, I avoided a 17-car pile-up created by slick roads and cars following each other without the proper space between them.
After a few days at home, the frigid, sub-zero weather set in. I was scheduled to perform at Immaculata University in Exton, Pennsylvania, the first morning of the worst of the cold snap. I picked up my comedy buddy Ray Salah and we headed south to the Philadelphia area, stopping on the New York State Thruway to replenish the window-wash fluid. An examination of the wipers also showed that they were not in the best repair, and a stop at Target rectified that. The college was a small one, with only around 850 students, but they had a good attendance at the evening show, and the drive back was relatively painless. Ray accompanied me to another gig last week, an engagement at the Dunkirk, NY Loyal Order of Moose, with Buffalo comedians Nick Siracuse and Blaine Kelly. At first, Ray was exceedingly grumpy, but after having the time to pal around with old comedy buddies, he loosened up and enjoyed the evening. On stage, I told some real-life stories of our adventures together, which were precipitated on Ray's distinct cackle being acknowledged from the stage by both Nick and Blaine earlier in the show. The crowd had "got to know" Ray only from what we had said about him on stage, and I felt that the groundwork was laid to tell the stories, which went over well. On the drive back home, which was snowy, dangerous and long, we laughed about how well the bits had gone, even though I'd never told those stories on stage before.
This week, it's a week-long engagement at the Funnybone in Huntington, West Virginia, and then a week of college shows, culminating in a Saturday show back in Rochester for my buddy, Danny Liberto. I'm happy to be busy, because at least it's keeping my mind off of how cold I am and how much I can't wait for winter to be over.
Stay warm and be good, and make sure that when you've driving, you give the car in front of you at least one delineation (car length) for every 10 miles of speed you're travelling.
Peace!
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Harmony was under the weather today, so we kept her out of school and watched the inauguration ceremony on television. She's only four years old, so much of the broadcast was lost on her, but years from now, I'm sure she'll be happy to announce that she watched the events unfold live.
I am officially sick to death of Winter. The cold weather never used to bother me, and as a matter of fact, I used to enjoy it, but lately travel has become difficult and the impact of the cold on my health and the health of my family has greatly undermined our quality of life.
On Friday the 9th, I was booked to perform a showcase in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the Smith Agency, and the agents who peddle my gameshow "Dash For Dollars" to colleges around the country. They wanted to see my regular standup act and what I bring to the table. The show was in a small bar/restaurant that was filled to capacity and this was despite a winter snowstorm gripping the state of Michigan. The next day, the plan was to drive home back to Rochester and enjoy the weekend with my family; no dice. The storm that was torturing Detroit was blowing snow up around the Port Huron, Michigan area, and put me at a standstill before I could cross over to Canada and cut across Ontario back to Upstate New York. I wound up at a small motor lodge in Port Huron thanks to my trusty TomTom GPS device that is able to locate hotels and points of interest. The going rate for hotels that night was around $115, and I just didn't feel like spending that kind of money. Instead, I found a motor lodge that was letting rooms go for only $35, although they were a little short on services.
For one, they had no wireless internet. For that matter, they had no phones, so I couldn't even dial up if I wanted to. The two rooms that were available, a double and a king suite, were the same price, so I told the desk clerk I would take the double. He said, "Would you like to see the room first?" I figured an offer like that wouldn't be tendered for no particular reason, so I took the key and headed over to room #7.
Room #7 was not better than I assumed it would be. The furniture was ramshackle at best, the bathroom a monument to neglect and a bad grout job. The deal-breaker, though, of this budget-conscious choice was the smell of the room. I could only describe it as thinking that the last renter was a man who couldn't stop peeing while he was cleaning a fish.
I returned to the desk and asked to see the king suite, and moments later, headed over to unit #4. Happily, the room didn't smell unpleasant; rather, there had been some sort of room deodorizer applied that made it smell kind of nice. The furniture wasn't any better and the bathroom was only slightly better, and I decided that this was what I was going to get for $35.
I checked in, drove down the road to a small mini-mart and grabbed some food and bottled water, and spent the rest of the evening watching football and movies on cable. The next morning, the roads were plowed and I headed east. The roads weren't entirely clear, but I had at least a fighting chance to get home in one piece. The day before, somewhere along the way between Lansing and Flint, Michigan, I avoided a 17-car pile-up created by slick roads and cars following each other without the proper space between them.
After a few days at home, the frigid, sub-zero weather set in. I was scheduled to perform at Immaculata University in Exton, Pennsylvania, the first morning of the worst of the cold snap. I picked up my comedy buddy Ray Salah and we headed south to the Philadelphia area, stopping on the New York State Thruway to replenish the window-wash fluid. An examination of the wipers also showed that they were not in the best repair, and a stop at Target rectified that. The college was a small one, with only around 850 students, but they had a good attendance at the evening show, and the drive back was relatively painless. Ray accompanied me to another gig last week, an engagement at the Dunkirk, NY Loyal Order of Moose, with Buffalo comedians Nick Siracuse and Blaine Kelly. At first, Ray was exceedingly grumpy, but after having the time to pal around with old comedy buddies, he loosened up and enjoyed the evening. On stage, I told some real-life stories of our adventures together, which were precipitated on Ray's distinct cackle being acknowledged from the stage by both Nick and Blaine earlier in the show. The crowd had "got to know" Ray only from what we had said about him on stage, and I felt that the groundwork was laid to tell the stories, which went over well. On the drive back home, which was snowy, dangerous and long, we laughed about how well the bits had gone, even though I'd never told those stories on stage before.
This week, it's a week-long engagement at the Funnybone in Huntington, West Virginia, and then a week of college shows, culminating in a Saturday show back in Rochester for my buddy, Danny Liberto. I'm happy to be busy, because at least it's keeping my mind off of how cold I am and how much I can't wait for winter to be over.
Stay warm and be good, and make sure that when you've driving, you give the car in front of you at least one delineation (car length) for every 10 miles of speed you're travelling.
Peace!
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
Friday, January 2, 2009
Gettin' Better (Tesla)
Friday, January 2, 2009-11:30 P.M.
Good evening, and welcome to the first Tetta blog of 2009. When last you left me, I was being discharged from the hospital after having a blood clot in my left leg treated.
The last few weeks, in addition to the holidays, have been about the work of healing up and getting better while still working to support my family. I had to miss the Smith Agency Christmas Party, which I was very much looking forward to, because it was just too long a drive to safely make. I wound up doing short jaunts to the Mountainview Inn in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and the Funny Farm in Gloversville, New York, to maintain some income and semblance of normality. I have to invest in some supportive hosiery for my legs to tolerate longer road trips...I'd heard of such garments, but never worn them or even to this date, seen them. That's on my list of "things to do" for this week."
I was aware of a big-ass snowstorm heading towards Western New York the day before the Greensburg date, and had made arrangements to drive down early, thus missing the storm, but couldn't take advantage of their offer to check into the hotel a day early because I had a mandatory blood-draw the next day. I'm on a blood thinner called Coumadin (generic equivalent Warfarin) and it's completely hit-or-miss when they prescribe the medication because everyone's blood is different and you can't just go by height and weight. Too weak a dose, and blood clots could reoccur. Too strong a dose, and your blood becomes thin enough that a small cut will keep bleeding until you die. They want to see a coagulation rate between 2 and 3. My previous draw had shown a level of 3.2, so I was told to back off the medication. As I drove through the storm on Friday morning, I was contacted and told my level had rocketed to 4.8, definitely going in the wrong direction, and was told to discontinue the medication and then pick up again in half-doses. I had gotten to the lab Friday morning when they opened at 9:00 A.M., gave them the blood they required and drove off into the storm.
The drive from Rochester to Buffalo and then southwest to the Pennsylvania border usually takes about two hours. On Friday, it took a full 4 1/2 hours to make the trip, and the trip was fraught with terror. Ice kept building up on my windshield, and I had to do that scam where you grab the windshield wiper out your driver's side window and thwap! it across the windshield to break off the ice. In doing so, I snagged a fingernail and tore it, and went nuts trying to find a pair of nail clippers (that I always have with me). I found them in my travel bag and gave myself an emergency manicure, and when I put everything back, I buried my cell phone and then went nuts, thinking it had fallen out of my pocket at the Kwik-Fill. When I finally arrived in Greensburg, I was tired, shaky, unshaven, but on time with two hours to spare. The weather in Greensburg when I arrived was 54 degrees and raining.
The gig was cool, and even though it was a small crowd. I worked with "Big Al" Goodwin, and we got along nicely, talking shop and finally putting a human being together with the headshot I'd seen on comedy club walls across the country. After the show, I had to move my room because the room they gave me had no heat, and even though it was a beautiful old historic hotel with amazing fixtures, it was just too cold to be comfortable. They were able to move me with no problems, and I spent the night, hoping the New York State Thruway would be cleared off the next morning.
On Saturday, I hit the road as early as possible, which was 10:30 after showering and packing. The drive was clear and the snow started falling again when I pulled into Rochester. I gassed up and got home, taking 45 minutes to change clothes and begin the drive to Gloversville, NY. On the way, I picked up Steve Natarelli, a Rochester area comic, and we headed to the Funny Farm. We got there about 40 minutes before showtime after speeding in the snow on the back roads of Wayne County and finally joining some of the holiday traffic on the Thruway. The show was sparsely attended due to a Christmas Party cancellation, but we had fun and the comics on the bill did their job. My middle act was John Briggs, a "smart" comic from the Capital District, and some of the other comics from the area hosted and did guest spots. I got Steve a spot and he did very well. When I hit the stage, I'd just let it fly based on being in the car all damn day, and it was fun and funny. Opener Jon Hausmann sent me the following letter:
Granted it's a sample of THREE appearances, but last night was easily your best night there, in spite of the single-digit audience. Maybe you should strive to be exhausted and disoriented ALL the time. Same was true of Briggs. I've now seen him so many times - he was 'ON' last night. Don't know why.
I emceed there last week - audience was about 80 people (including, surprise to me - my BOSS'S BOSS) - and they were DEAD. Not the comics' fault - they audience was just catatonic. The only reactions Headliner Greg Aidala was able to get from them was by swearing liberally at them. Seemed to work - didn't even need punch lines, just channel Redd Foxx and they laughed. Seemed like a DEF Comedy Jam show I watched once in which my wife and I looked at each other and said "What the hell are they LAUGHING at?".
Anyway- you did good last night, not that it matters to Sylvia, but at least you gave 100% to those that came. I liked your bit about "knocking on doors", although in Gloversville after 2 or 3 doors they'd probably run you right out of the trailer park. - Jon
I like the Funny Farm, but it seems every time I go there, it's a holiday, or Mother's Day, or some such crowd-killing circumstance. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw, but Sylvia and Rich are fine hosts, and it's a gig, so we run with it.
Christmas weekend, it was a triumphant return to Rochester and the new comedy club in Webster, NY called "The Comedy Club" (http://www.thecomedyclub.us/) and a feature spot with Rochester's own Joel Lindley. We had a very funny guy named Patrick Dodd do a spot on the Friday early show, and even though he's from Rochester (and brought about 50 friends and family members with him), I'd never seen him work as he got into comedy only after moving to Atlanta. He rocked the room, and it was a great show.
Saturday night, it was a "Comix Cafe reunion show" at the late show. It wasn't a true reunion because the club had quite a bit of turnover in the 10 years they were open, so it was mostly the new incarnation of the staff, many of which currently work at the Webster club. They were good 'n' hammered by showtime, and it caused a little disturbance in the showroom from their table talk, but it was nice to see a lot of the old faces again.
The rest of the week was sponsored by Danny Liberto of the Comedy Company, as I did a spot at his open mic at the Otter Lodge in Brighton, and then headlined his show at the Raddison hotel in Corning, NY the next evening with D-Lo Danny Brown in support. The open mic was packed, and I mean packed, and during the first comic's set (a guest spot by Rochester's own Sky Sands), local comic Billy T. Anglin and I hauled chairs out of the back room to accommodate the couple of dozen people who found themselves standing. It was a great audience to work in front of, and it was only the shear number of comics that caused some folks to have to leave early. The gig in Corning was fun, although it was less like comedy and more like work. Pamela made the 90-minute ride with me and upon entering the showroom, I knew it would be tough as the hotel had already put noisemakers on the tables (the ENEMY of New Year's Eve comedy shows)-anyone with any NYE savvy knows that you don't hand those out until after the show's over. I taped, but it was a highly distracted audience, and not a show that I would want to save. At one point, I addressed a table in the back that were talking to each other the way you'd talk to people at a rock concert; loud and with no consideration of the people around you. After asking them if there was a problem, quite a few table basically told them to shut the fuck up, and then I spent a few minutes berating the drunkest of the table. I'd worked the room for Danny before and always had a great time, but these folks were not focused in any way for comedy, so we just got the money and then enjoyed New Year's Eve. Danny and D-Low chose to head back to Rochester, and Pamela and I sought out a Denny's (the only food available that time of the night), and celebrated by over-tipping the waitress for pancakes and a club sandwich.
Today it was back to the business of maintaining my health, and an early-morning blood draw showed my blood with a coagulation rate of 2.6, pretty much perfect. I met with my doctor later in the day, and he was pleased with the results. He took me off of three of the medications I'm on, including Januvia, which was costing me around $260 a month. I'm happy to be out from under any medications, including that costly little fucker. I just have to keep doing what I'm doing in terms of diet, and step up my exercise, which shouldn't be all that hard, although my left foot still has some swelling and that's made me just a little tentative about taking up the treadmill again. I just have to be creative and figure out how to work some upper body into the mix so that I'm not depending on just my legs to help me work up a sweat. The tour begins again with a club appearance in Grand Rapids, Michigan next Friday, and then the college tour starts up again with a "Dash For Dollars" show in Pennsylvania, and then I picked up a week at the Funny Bone in Huntington, West Virginia, courtesy of my pal, Joel Lindley. See kids, it's all networking in this business.
So belated holiday greetings to anyone I might have missed this season, we got our Christmas cards out on the fly because of my stay in the hospital, and didn't mean to stand anyone up. The good news is that I'm still here, still strong, and looking forward to being around for a long time.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
P.S. Not bragging, but I just did the books for 2008, and I actually showed growth over 2007, and that's even with a drastically reduced income from the sale of souvenir merchandise. I guess I'm in show business for at least another year. Peace, y'all!
Good evening, and welcome to the first Tetta blog of 2009. When last you left me, I was being discharged from the hospital after having a blood clot in my left leg treated.
The last few weeks, in addition to the holidays, have been about the work of healing up and getting better while still working to support my family. I had to miss the Smith Agency Christmas Party, which I was very much looking forward to, because it was just too long a drive to safely make. I wound up doing short jaunts to the Mountainview Inn in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and the Funny Farm in Gloversville, New York, to maintain some income and semblance of normality. I have to invest in some supportive hosiery for my legs to tolerate longer road trips...I'd heard of such garments, but never worn them or even to this date, seen them. That's on my list of "things to do" for this week."
I was aware of a big-ass snowstorm heading towards Western New York the day before the Greensburg date, and had made arrangements to drive down early, thus missing the storm, but couldn't take advantage of their offer to check into the hotel a day early because I had a mandatory blood-draw the next day. I'm on a blood thinner called Coumadin (generic equivalent Warfarin) and it's completely hit-or-miss when they prescribe the medication because everyone's blood is different and you can't just go by height and weight. Too weak a dose, and blood clots could reoccur. Too strong a dose, and your blood becomes thin enough that a small cut will keep bleeding until you die. They want to see a coagulation rate between 2 and 3. My previous draw had shown a level of 3.2, so I was told to back off the medication. As I drove through the storm on Friday morning, I was contacted and told my level had rocketed to 4.8, definitely going in the wrong direction, and was told to discontinue the medication and then pick up again in half-doses. I had gotten to the lab Friday morning when they opened at 9:00 A.M., gave them the blood they required and drove off into the storm.
The drive from Rochester to Buffalo and then southwest to the Pennsylvania border usually takes about two hours. On Friday, it took a full 4 1/2 hours to make the trip, and the trip was fraught with terror. Ice kept building up on my windshield, and I had to do that scam where you grab the windshield wiper out your driver's side window and thwap! it across the windshield to break off the ice. In doing so, I snagged a fingernail and tore it, and went nuts trying to find a pair of nail clippers (that I always have with me). I found them in my travel bag and gave myself an emergency manicure, and when I put everything back, I buried my cell phone and then went nuts, thinking it had fallen out of my pocket at the Kwik-Fill. When I finally arrived in Greensburg, I was tired, shaky, unshaven, but on time with two hours to spare. The weather in Greensburg when I arrived was 54 degrees and raining.
The gig was cool, and even though it was a small crowd. I worked with "Big Al" Goodwin, and we got along nicely, talking shop and finally putting a human being together with the headshot I'd seen on comedy club walls across the country. After the show, I had to move my room because the room they gave me had no heat, and even though it was a beautiful old historic hotel with amazing fixtures, it was just too cold to be comfortable. They were able to move me with no problems, and I spent the night, hoping the New York State Thruway would be cleared off the next morning.
On Saturday, I hit the road as early as possible, which was 10:30 after showering and packing. The drive was clear and the snow started falling again when I pulled into Rochester. I gassed up and got home, taking 45 minutes to change clothes and begin the drive to Gloversville, NY. On the way, I picked up Steve Natarelli, a Rochester area comic, and we headed to the Funny Farm. We got there about 40 minutes before showtime after speeding in the snow on the back roads of Wayne County and finally joining some of the holiday traffic on the Thruway. The show was sparsely attended due to a Christmas Party cancellation, but we had fun and the comics on the bill did their job. My middle act was John Briggs, a "smart" comic from the Capital District, and some of the other comics from the area hosted and did guest spots. I got Steve a spot and he did very well. When I hit the stage, I'd just let it fly based on being in the car all damn day, and it was fun and funny. Opener Jon Hausmann sent me the following letter:
Granted it's a sample of THREE appearances, but last night was easily your best night there, in spite of the single-digit audience. Maybe you should strive to be exhausted and disoriented ALL the time. Same was true of Briggs. I've now seen him so many times - he was 'ON' last night. Don't know why.
I emceed there last week - audience was about 80 people (including, surprise to me - my BOSS'S BOSS) - and they were DEAD. Not the comics' fault - they audience was just catatonic. The only reactions Headliner Greg Aidala was able to get from them was by swearing liberally at them. Seemed to work - didn't even need punch lines, just channel Redd Foxx and they laughed. Seemed like a DEF Comedy Jam show I watched once in which my wife and I looked at each other and said "What the hell are they LAUGHING at?".
Anyway- you did good last night, not that it matters to Sylvia, but at least you gave 100% to those that came. I liked your bit about "knocking on doors", although in Gloversville after 2 or 3 doors they'd probably run you right out of the trailer park. - Jon
I like the Funny Farm, but it seems every time I go there, it's a holiday, or Mother's Day, or some such crowd-killing circumstance. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw, but Sylvia and Rich are fine hosts, and it's a gig, so we run with it.
Christmas weekend, it was a triumphant return to Rochester and the new comedy club in Webster, NY called "The Comedy Club" (http://www.thecomedyclub.us/) and a feature spot with Rochester's own Joel Lindley. We had a very funny guy named Patrick Dodd do a spot on the Friday early show, and even though he's from Rochester (and brought about 50 friends and family members with him), I'd never seen him work as he got into comedy only after moving to Atlanta. He rocked the room, and it was a great show.
Saturday night, it was a "Comix Cafe reunion show" at the late show. It wasn't a true reunion because the club had quite a bit of turnover in the 10 years they were open, so it was mostly the new incarnation of the staff, many of which currently work at the Webster club. They were good 'n' hammered by showtime, and it caused a little disturbance in the showroom from their table talk, but it was nice to see a lot of the old faces again.
The rest of the week was sponsored by Danny Liberto of the Comedy Company, as I did a spot at his open mic at the Otter Lodge in Brighton, and then headlined his show at the Raddison hotel in Corning, NY the next evening with D-Lo Danny Brown in support. The open mic was packed, and I mean packed, and during the first comic's set (a guest spot by Rochester's own Sky Sands), local comic Billy T. Anglin and I hauled chairs out of the back room to accommodate the couple of dozen people who found themselves standing. It was a great audience to work in front of, and it was only the shear number of comics that caused some folks to have to leave early. The gig in Corning was fun, although it was less like comedy and more like work. Pamela made the 90-minute ride with me and upon entering the showroom, I knew it would be tough as the hotel had already put noisemakers on the tables (the ENEMY of New Year's Eve comedy shows)-anyone with any NYE savvy knows that you don't hand those out until after the show's over. I taped, but it was a highly distracted audience, and not a show that I would want to save. At one point, I addressed a table in the back that were talking to each other the way you'd talk to people at a rock concert; loud and with no consideration of the people around you. After asking them if there was a problem, quite a few table basically told them to shut the fuck up, and then I spent a few minutes berating the drunkest of the table. I'd worked the room for Danny before and always had a great time, but these folks were not focused in any way for comedy, so we just got the money and then enjoyed New Year's Eve. Danny and D-Low chose to head back to Rochester, and Pamela and I sought out a Denny's (the only food available that time of the night), and celebrated by over-tipping the waitress for pancakes and a club sandwich.
Today it was back to the business of maintaining my health, and an early-morning blood draw showed my blood with a coagulation rate of 2.6, pretty much perfect. I met with my doctor later in the day, and he was pleased with the results. He took me off of three of the medications I'm on, including Januvia, which was costing me around $260 a month. I'm happy to be out from under any medications, including that costly little fucker. I just have to keep doing what I'm doing in terms of diet, and step up my exercise, which shouldn't be all that hard, although my left foot still has some swelling and that's made me just a little tentative about taking up the treadmill again. I just have to be creative and figure out how to work some upper body into the mix so that I'm not depending on just my legs to help me work up a sweat. The tour begins again with a club appearance in Grand Rapids, Michigan next Friday, and then the college tour starts up again with a "Dash For Dollars" show in Pennsylvania, and then I picked up a week at the Funny Bone in Huntington, West Virginia, courtesy of my pal, Joel Lindley. See kids, it's all networking in this business.
So belated holiday greetings to anyone I might have missed this season, we got our Christmas cards out on the fly because of my stay in the hospital, and didn't mean to stand anyone up. The good news is that I'm still here, still strong, and looking forward to being around for a long time.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
P.S. Not bragging, but I just did the books for 2008, and I actually showed growth over 2007, and that's even with a drastically reduced income from the sale of souvenir merchandise. I guess I'm in show business for at least another year. Peace, y'all!
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