Tuesday, September 25, 2001 6:59:25 AM
Starbuck's McKnight Road Coffee and scone
I am relatively fresh back from a trip to Columbus Ohio. For what reason I give you a straight answer. Every year in order to retain the certificates (Refrigeration and HVAC), which as of 9/17/01 carry the POWER of licenses, that are assigned to me as a contractor in the State of Ohio; I must be (yea and verily) renewed. That renewal takes the form of 10 hours of training in Ohio law, safety, regulations and, of course, some cash. It is not a daunting ten hours that has me running the gauntlet, regulators lined up on both sides of the hotel lobby, pelting me with loose leaf pages stripped from the BOCA Building Code, OSHA devils flagellating me with fall protection harnesses, college professors beating me with plaster busts of Newton spewing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, nevertheless it takes its toll. I begin to wonder.
What, I am saying to myself (and parenthetically to you) does any of this have to do with comedy. It's a cold world out there. Too flip! I've got this stuff down cold! Not even true. Cold fusion? Well, that was a joke! Hey, here's a little known principal. The act of making things cold is actually the process of removing heat. Okay, so about twenty-five years ago I quit a job as traffic manager at a television production center, after a really miserable stint as Program Director at a community radio station and took a job at a commercial refrigeration company run by a maniac. Out, as is said, of one really big black bottomed sizzling frying pan into one particularly virulent wild fire. But it turned out that I really liked refrigeration and all the intricacies that it placed on my palette. It tickled me brain! The funny thing was that the closer I chased the subject, the closer I got to my essence. Just like writing. Just like comedy. It all comes down to the same thing! Comedy/Refrigeration an unlikely Janus perhaps. But I am pleased to wear both faces. Waiter!? An ice cube or two for my mint julep, perhaps a TV dinner! Oh, yes, put on the tellie, Neddy Seagoon or Monty Python, I think?