Legend has it that in the 11th century, St. George slew the dragon that was killing the villagers, but then another dragon came, and another and another. But George kept killing them until they were all defeated.
Standing among the piles of defeated dragons, one villager said to another, “Boy, that George just keeps goin’, don’t he?”
“Well,” the other villager replied, “It’s what the guy does.”
OK, I made some of that up, but it does make a great opening line, don’t you think?
I’m an old ex-stand up comic, and I’m still inventing opening lines to keep you focused. It’s what I do.
Here’s a true one. I was standing in the parking lot outside the Comedy Store in Hollywood one night in the long ago, where comics waited for their chance go on. I came off after suffering a stoned and sleepy audience.
Another comic, the late, great Steve Landesberg, (a detective on ABC’s sitcom “Barney Miller”) asked me,“How’s the house?”
“It’s Cleveland, and it’s raining,” I said.
That was my first impression, and it stuck. In the coming months, I heard it repeated by others.
“It never rains in Hollywood,” Steve said. “ It’ll get better; funny is what you do.”
He was right. I was back the next night.
I used that Cleveland line for years and years after that night, through every rainy day and night, every dead audience, lost job, broken heart, bad haircut and fever blister.
It’s been 30 years since that night in the Comedy Store parking lot, and I’m still here trying to make you laugh.
Sometimes you’re a great audience, some weeks, it’s “Cleveland, and it’s raining,” but I don’t give up on you, because “it’s what I do.”
Here in Maine, we’ve had the rainiest July since 1915 that’s been delaying excavation of the old Stern’s building, and stalling progress on the big dream of Paul J. Schupf’s Art Center.
But after every storm, the boys in their helmets and brightly colored vests and work gloves were out there again, digging, plowing and hauling away.
One day during the sixth or seventh downpour, She looked out the window. “Oh, those poor guys, they must hate this, not being able to finish.”
“It’s just Cleveland, and it’s raining,” I said. “They’ll finish. It’s what they do.”
She remembered the old line and laughed. For some time now, She has had bad pain in both legs that makes it hard to walk. She has plenty of “Cleveland nights,” but she manages. It’s what she does.
Today, as the dragons of disease, COVID and delta, lick at us with fiery tongues, grand old Joe Biden is having a streak of his Cleveland nights and days, trying to push his dreams and plans for a cleaner more productive America, through a tough audience of reluctant suited dragons.
Despite the miraculous work of the scientific warriors, the great, misled herd of “refuseniks,” the great anti-science scoffers and doubters confused by a torrent of rhetoric, cover their eyes and block their ears, while watching their friends and families suffer and die.
But they persist. Sadly, it’s what they do.
There will be endless Cleveland nights for us all. It’ll get worse. The dragons may get bigger and scarier.
But the arts center will get built, actors and dancers, the toughest humans on the planet, will fill the stage, movies will fill the screen, painters will find their north light, and I will still stand here on this paper stage, day after rainy day, to try to move you.
It’s what I do.
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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