Hello.

My name's Ramona Rivas.

I'm from Cleveland, Ohio.

I used to live out there with my sister because it was super duper free.

I comedy because I can say whatever I want when I'm on stage, because sometimes I don't get to do that when I'm offstage because it might be seen as aggressive, but if I'm on stage, you can kind of just have to adjust it and think about it without being able to get upset or, you know, interact in a tangible way.

Like, I talk to you, listen, you laugh like that's the exchange.

It's not anything different.

Oh, no.

Americans are really into policing people's personality when they're comfortable.

I know.

I know.

America is inclusive.

Our founding document starts with We the people.

Oh, my God, that's not inclusive.

We all have a good time, by the way.

AUDIENCE Tonight, that means we all had a good time, if I might.

We the people had a good time.

You like who wasn't the person?

I mean, I feel like comedy is so ingrained in most of pop culture.

There's a White House Correspondents dinner.

It's always a comedian who hosts it.

When they have an award ceremony.

It's usually a comedian or comedic entity hosting the event because it is a skill set that's like valuable to build upon if you're having a live experience.

And it also translates to a literature can be funny, you know, it's in everyday like you hang out with your friends who make you laugh the most.

You don't hang out with your w the people who make you cry as much unless you're dating them, in which case you probably are doing both.

He doesn't like one on one situations.

That same day I had picked it was just me and him and I was like, You want to go get some ice cream or some food?

His I would just wait for the other two.

And I was like, Why can't we just go now?

Just be mean you and then we'll come get them and do something else.

He was like, I was on my one on one situation giving people the space to to actually have authentic connections and moments without.

Most time you go to a show, you just kind of in your own little bubble and then you leave.

You leave before it pops.

We come in and all our bubbles merge with it's like a community.

So I'm going to slowly make a song by the end of the night.

And if you feel like singing, submitting, or rapping over the song, you're more than welcome to.

But if you bad everyone's gonna know I got some stuff on Sirius XM, so I started of passive income without having to work.

And like I got my first goes, I got a backlog of money and I got out I yo, what do people with money do?

Because I only by art, that's the first thing.

And then I started thinking I was I could just open the pool for the whole community.

That's how I was growing because I got $2,000.

There's food.

If you if you didn't eat, you don't even have a little bite, which gives her oil in there.

Oh, and then sofrito.

You can make this from scratch.

You can find it.

Goya.

I hope it looks a little different.

No, darling.

This in the that I always read.

For some reason I get it homemade at home, but it's much more horrible range of mom of the owner makes it marginally more so.

And you think as a professional performer, you know those little things I had hotter talking to the mic how to like keep it down when you at the bar and there's a show happening but you're inside everyone's different of what you it it was so far and she so all she just got the performer so she's kind of out of breath that she was accepting And so but people started yelling turn out to ex all were this frail old black woman accepting a lifetime achievement award.

And I was like comedy has taken me a lot of places.

It's taking me all over the world.

You know, I've traveled all over the country and performed.

I've spent a significant amount of time in New York, in Los Angeles, 2008.

I got to go do this thing called the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is a huge festival in Edinburgh, Scotland.

And that was really cool because that's like a big there's like thousands of shows on.

And just to be able to run my own hour there, I did my hour 22 times while I was in Scotland.

I did like 58 shows over the course of like 22 days.

I, like my youngest nephew, is a little bit of a weirdo.

Like he walked in on me.

I was playing a basketball game on my PlayStation one day.

He's I don't understand why you play this game so much as I always because I'm not athletic enough to play actual basketball.

He's like, No, I get that part.

His I just don't understand.

Like, why do people play basketball?

Like, what's the point of a game of basketball?

And I was like, Oh, you score more points than the other team and you win.

And he's like, Well, why do people want to win?

What's the point of winning?

And I was like, I think it has something to do with their dad's comedy scene.

The song, every comedy scene is its own kind of unique thing.

I mean, it's vibrant.

You can get up every night of the week in Cleveland, you can get up every night.

I live in New York for a year, multiple times, play.

It's very hard to get up every night of the week unless you're past at a certain amount of clubs and good in the indie scene.

And like, you know, there's comics who moved out there who like go from performing, you know, once or twice a night to you're doing once a month, twice a month.

So it's a big drop off out there.

So it's Cleveland's got a very accessible comedy scene.

It's a very equitable comedy scene in the sense of like you could get a lot of stage time without having to jump over a bunch of hurdles or drive super far.

You know, if you live in Dayton, you might have to drive to Columbus, drive to Louisville, drive to Cincinnati to get up that night.

Cleveland You use Lakewood or Cleveland Heights or, you know, Parma.

Everything's really kind of relatively close.

And I was like, You don't want to play these sports, man.

He's like, Now I'm like, Why not?

He thought about for a second.

He was like, I guess I just don't like trying.

I'm a standup comedian with specials on Comedy Central.

It's been a Latino, been on a Netflix show.

I'm an actor.

I've been on Broad City Crashing.

I'm a writer, just mostly fanfiction, and then I'm a music producer.

I got two albums out and I'm a community builder.

I run a show every Sunday at Dunlap's Corner Bar in Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm an eminent Latino.

Just because of all those things.