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JEAN HELLERMeet Ken Reed: the voice of curbside parking at TIA and part-time comic.
Ken Reed stands on a small stage with his cap turned backward and a bottle of Michelob Ultra in his hand and tells a room full of total strangers some of the most intimate details of his intimate life.
"The Catholic Church now has a Web site where we can confess our sins online," Reed tells the audience. "I can now sit at home - naked - and confess my sins while my sins are really fresh to me. The first thing you do is select your sin from a drop-down box, which is also a real cool checklist for the weekend."
After confessing online, Reed says, he tried to pay with plastic.
"I got a message, "Your credit card has been rejected. (Pause.) Go to hell."'
None of this is factual, of course, but it gets huge laughs for a man who set out to be an airline pilot and wound up a planner and noise officer at Tampa International Airport by day and a standup comedian by night.
Nearly everyone who has ever used TIA has met Reed, or at least his voice. He made that incessant recording that plays outside of the arrivals and departures doors reminding motorists that curbside parking is for pickup and dropoff only.
"I had my dad with me one day, and the recording came on, and his eyes got real wide when he recognized my voice," said Reed, 41 of St. Petersburg. "I think he was prouder of that than anything the rest of his kids ever did."
A woman's voice repeats Reed's message in Spanish. "My dad asked if that was me, too, and I said, "No, Dad, I don't do voices."'
Reed's comedic career was launched 11 years ago while he was at Tampa club called Comedy Works. "There was a card on the table, "Think you're funny? Take a class,"' Reed said. "So I did. It cost like $100 and was run by comics. At the end of the class, you did three to five minutes on stage."
What followed were nights of performing at "open mike" shows, where wannabes perform for free to prove their abilities.
"Club owners get to know you, see you can do a reliable five to 10 minutes and maybe try you out as an emcee," said Reed, who graduated from Purdue University's aviation program in 1985. "My first paying job was at a place called Sidesplitters on N Dale Mabry. I think I earned about $200. It's never going to replace my day job. Unless Letterman should call ..."
Reed's boss, Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, is circumspect about his employee's second job.
"It's his hobby," Miller said. "Some people go out and play racquetball for fun. Ken stands up in front of total strangers and tells jokes."
Miller has never seen Reed on stage.
"But I should," he said. "I hear he's pretty good."
Miller's next chance will be Sunday when Reed performs at Paradise Lakes, Pasco County's big nudist resort.
Will he perform in the nude?
"No, no, absolutely not, not me," Reed says. "I've heard that some guys do get nude, but I'm not one of them. Never."
Reed and his wife, Becky, who met more than two years ago through an online dating service, have been married for less than two months. But Becky was in his act almost as soon as they began dating.
"I think I started to appear maybe a week after we met," Becky said. "Nothing's sacred. It's a very odd feeling, especially when it's in front of my family, friends and co-workers. Of course when people find out I'm married to a comedian, they all want to catch the act. It's sort of embarrassing, but as long as it's funny, I don't really care."
Except for once: the show Reed did the night before their wedding.
"My whole family was there, and finally I just had to walk out," Becky said. "I kept thinking, he can't say those things in front of my grandparents."
Most of the stories that involve Becky aren't true, or at least not completely so.
"Oh, gosh, no," Reed says. "Those stories were in my act before we ever met. I just slid her into the starring role."
And most are not repeatable here.
Nor is the story about his mother having nine children.
One story that can be told, and is actually true, is the crab cake tale.
Reed was away and Becky made crab cakes for dinner. She didn't like the fish odor in the house, so she lit several scented candles to clear the air. The house caught fire.
"It worked," Reed says. "I couldn't smell crab cakes anywhere."
As an airport employee, Reed is best known for working with neighborhoods that are under the paths of aircraft arriving and departing TIA. Miller's long-standing policy is to do whatever is possible to minimize the noise impacts. Reed's job is to carry out that policy.
"I never make jokes about the people concerned over the noise, because I'm in total sympathy with them," he says.
He is not above making the occasional joke, however, about the airport.
One of his favorites is an art project on the wall of the ticketing level of the Landside terminal. It consists of white tiles with royal blue handprints on them. In the middle of the handprints are the words, "Hello Tampa Bay." Beside each letter is the hand gesture that translates the letter into sign language.
"I've known deaf people," Reed says. "They could all read. (Pause) Isn't that like building a handicap ramp for people who stutter?"