This Might Get a Little Heavy by Ralphie May

Author:Ralphie May
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

PART 3

LOS ANGELES: 1998–2010

11.

LOS TRUE ANGELES

Like every good modern story about struggle and success in Los Angeles, mine begins with a Mexican who needed a ride to work.

His name was Joey Medina, and actually he was Puerto Rican, but that’s less funny, so just ignore that part. Joey is a great comic from New York City who has always done a little bit of everything: a little bit of acting, a little bit of producing, a little bit of hosting, a little bit of radio, and obviously a little bit of touring. He’s a hustler, which is probably why we hit it off.

In June 1998, Joey flew into Houston from Los Angeles, where he was living, to do a week of shows in the run-up to the third annual Latino Laugh Festival in San Antonio. Showtime had turned the previous two years of the festival’s stand-up program into a television series, so the gig had become a real draw. Agents and managers were coming in from LA for it; so were studio and network executives. In the first half of the decade they’d struck gold with sitcoms built around white stand-up comics, and they’d had some success with shows around black comics like Thea Vidale and Steve Harvey. I guess they figured they could do it again, this time by turning down the toaster and going a little less brown.

Joey and I got to talking about it after his last Laff Stop show. He’d just finished up a three-year stint hosting a radio show in Tucson the year before, and this sounded like a great opportunity for him to take the next big step. I was happy for him and was heartened for myself. If Joey could make it happen—if he could go big time—maybe I could too. Our paths weren’t dissimilar, and here he was hopping flights, crisscrossing the country doing club and festival dates. Joey laughed. Flights? He wasn’t flying unless he absolutely had to. Flying costs money. He was taking the bus to San Antonio.

The bus? Joey Medina was a popular comedian and a successful Puerto Rican man. The only greyhounds he should have been dealing with were the ones you race, not the ones you ride. Besides, this was central Texas in the summer. I’m pretty sure four or five hours on a bus full of poor people trudging across that stretch of land violates the Geneva Convention.

“You know what, you shouldn’t be riding no bus. I’ll take you,” I said.

I was making good money by then, what with all the defensive-driving classes I was teaching on top of my regular spots and my now-thriving smokable-horticulture distribution company. I could take a day or two off to drive him and hang out. It’s not like I wanted to hang out with any of those fucking pricks in Houston, anyway.

When we got to San Antonio, Joey introduced me around and immediately started telling everyone that I’d given him a ride all the way from Houston. They were blown away.

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