Dustin Meadows

You guys ever do that thing where you accidentally make eye contact with a girl but before you can nervously look away something just ignites in your respective gazes and suddenly your brain’s all “I love you! Let’s have a house and a 401k plan together, maybe even a tire swing and white picket fences and I promise I’ll make you feel like you’re the only girl in the world!” but then you’re all Eminem and snap back to reality and you realize that she’s screaming “You did this to me!” as the police drag her away and you look down and you realize that by distracting her for that brief moment you interrupted what was apparently some kind of assassination attempt on the president who you didn’t even know was in your town, never mind that he’s standing next to you but by just being there you got in the way of the girl’s zip-gun bullet and you look down to see you’re bleeding from your chest and when the paramedics ask if you’re okay you just numbly look up and say “I can’t feel anything” and they patch you up at the scene and you walk home and fall asleep alone again?

“If I can’t have you, no one will!” is a really creepy and overly possessive thing for a guy to say to a girl. My version’s a lot safer and completely harmless and goes something along the lines of “If I can’t have you then obviously somebody better looking who hasn’t thrown their life away is clearly going to make you a really happy lady now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go home and see how much alcohol it takes to convert my brain from a sadness factory to a happiness machine except oh, wait, alcohol poisoning and I’m dead.”

This past Saturday I went on the road with my buddy Anthony O’ Connell to Ohio University’s weekly open mic. Athens is a place that I spent a huge chunk of time in over a three year period, so it’s sometimes a little bittersweet on the occasions when I return because of all the stupid memories it drudges up.

Despite that, I had a great time showing Anthony what this wonderful little town had to offer, from Haffa’s Records to (NERD ALERT!) Universe of Superheroes and the absolutely wonderful O’ Betty’s Hot Dogs. We killed time at Donkey Coffee where I very narrowly lost a game of Scrabble and shamed my house for centuries.

The show was phenomenal and had one of the best crowds I’ve ever performed in front of, and after the crummy shows Anthony and I had the night before, Saturday was exactly what we needed. The comedy scene in Athens is amazing and all of the people there are among some of the best people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. We wound the night down at a small party, then treated ourselves to D.P. Dough before the drive back where we listened to “Niggas in Paris” and the Replacements because we are punk rock.

The shitty nights of comedy are always hard to deal with and they sometimes make you feel like just completely giving up on such a sick dream. But I stick with it because of nights like Saturday and because of the great people I get to meet along the way of this fucked up journey.

Some nights are pretty cool.

You guys ever do that thing where you’re watching a movie or a TV show and a couple does some obnoxious, cute couple thing and you turn and say “That is so us!” but you realize that no one’s there and then you turn back to what you were watching, silent until something happens that reminds you of a painful romantic experience you once had and then you start shouting at the television set until your roommates tell you to shut up and then you wake up naked next to a deer and realize it was all a dream and while you may be alone for the rest of your life, at least you’re probably a werewolf so that’s kind of cool, right?

Hey, dummies. Wanna get drunk? Wanna watch Curb Your Enthusiasm? Wanna get drunk and watch Curb Your Enthusiasm? Here’s a pretty obvious drinking game to play.

Take a drink when…

• Larry says “Pretty pretty pretty good.”
• Susie says some variation of “Fuck you Larry!/What the fuck is wrong with you?/Get the fuck out of my house!”
• Larry runs afoul of Jeff’s parents
• Larry gives someone “The Eye” (Take three drinks when someone gives Larry “The Eye”)
• Larry pays the consequences for his earlier actions
• Larry and Susie have the Western Showdown Moment
• A celebrity appears as themselves (Jerry Seinfeld, Shaquille O’ Neal, et cetera)
• Larry refuses to follow a mundane social convention (The Cut-Off, 2nd Tip, et cetera)
• Larry or Jeff lies
• Larry is chastised for conducting himself improperly in a social situation
• Somebody mentions Seinfeld
• Larry calls someone an asshole/prick/etcetera or Larry gets called an asshole/prick/etcetera

Take a shot when…

• The episode has a happy ending for Larry

Any Given Friday, circa 2000-2002: I was typically playing Dungeons & Dragons and feeling incredibly lonely since that’s generally the state of most anyone in high school, regardless of popularity.

Friday, May 11, 2012 aka RIGHT NOW: I’m sitting at home alone with a bottle of Jack Daniels and staring at a blank Word document that I’ve convinced myself I’m going to fill in with new material or all those screenplays I’ve been putting off. My guitar is next to me, neglected, it hasn’t been used to generate new material in months. The promise of channeling all my frustration into something creative has yet to occur. The stand-up I was supposed to do tonight was canceled a few days ago. A party I thought was tonight is next week. My only plans seem to have fallen through. The excitement of learning my team is performing in the Del Close Marathon in New York City has quickly faded. So instead I’m listening to the newest Hot Water Music album and drinking alone. I’ve spent 28 years on this earth and I have nothing to show for it, nothing of any lasting significance. I’m more and more convinced that nothing’s going to come from my stupid band or my stupid comedy or my stupid writing. And even if it was, there’s no one to share that joy with, which is almost worse than not being successful. With no real career prospects, I’ve hit a brick wall creatively and financially. The things I want to do with my life seem less and less attainable with each day that passes by. And it’s nobody’s fault but my own. I’ve been in this rut for some time, and there’s a number of factors that led me here, most of them self-inflicted. But I see other friends further ahead in their lives or on their way to where and what they want to be if they haven’t already reached it, and I feel like I’m nowhere close, like it’s too late. Some days, what began as a persona seems to be what’s in control and I think I’m beginning to grow comfortable with that fact.

I did this to myself.

Last night I had to borrow gas money from a friend and sit in backed up traffic for nearly forty minutes to play to a crowd of less than thirty who could’ve given a shit less that I was in a comedy competition. I wasn’t the person they were there to see, so the majority didn’t care and a few didn’t seem to realize the social convention of “if you’re at a comedy show and you’re not the one with a microphone you should shut the fuck up.” I did five minutes of material that has killed before (it was almost verbatim the same set I did at Wild Goose a few weeks ago) to a “meh” reaction. I spent the remainder of the show smoking and drinking with Bob Cook and awaiting the inevitable announcement that I didn’t advance because only two of my friends showed up. It’s the first time I haven’t advanced beyond the first round since the very first time I did the contest.

I’m over it at this point. I’m less angry that I lost and more pissed at the fact that I wasted gas and time for a crowd who didn’t give a shit that I was there. Some of the people who advanced were first timers, people who thought “Hey, I’ll give this comedy thing a shot” and then their friends come out to support them so they have that safety net of guaranteed laughter. They don’t realize that more often than not, they’re gonna have the night I had last night which ended in disappointment rather than feeling like Rocky at the end of the second one where he beats Apollo Creed. Most nights you’re Apollo Creed in Rocky IV. You show up and storm the stage, all pomp and circumstance and America and James Brown only to be crushed by failure (played by Dolph Lundgren, obviously).

But that’s what this is. Busting your ass to get stage time, hoping that you’ll do well and praying you didn’t travel x amount of miles to eat shit in front of a crowd of complete strangers. The people who see comedy and think “Oh, this seems fun, I’ll go do a contest every now and then” don’t realize that the people who are serious about this are sick. Not in a bad way, but I’ve made the comparison before that doing stand-up is like being in an abusive relationship and to keep coming back to it after all the abuse is definitely not a healthy behavior. But it’s the only way to get better at it. It’s the only way to improve and start getting better shows and work your way up, and even then it’s not a guarantee. It’s not like going on a diet where you know that if you eat right and exercise frequently, you’ll get results. You can go to open mics and get shows and road dog it from time to time, but ten years down the road you could still drop in on a local showcase or contest or what have you and still get crucified on stage.

I did this to myself.

You guys ever do that thing where you stare at your reflection in the mirror and pretend that you’re Ryan Gosling because you know if you were Ryan Gosling the girls you were in love with would want to be with you but then you’d realize soon after that they’re only in love with the physical idea of Ryan Gosling and not the Ryan Gosling who exists beneath that handsomely sculpted surface and you spend the rest of your days living a lie, never knowing who really loves you for you and who just wants to be with you because you’re such a beautiful man but then the fantasy ends and you realize that you’re still alone and in spite of what integrity you once had you wish that for just one moment you were Ryan Gosling because it’d be worth putting up with shallow girls just to feel something, anything at all?