By V. Paul Vertucio

From the Duluth News-Tribune Sept. 13, 2002

Darrin Meyer always liked being in the spotlight, so he thought being a television journalist would be a good idea.

He also liked being funny and making people laugh to get attention, something he realized was being repressed after three years of studying broadcast journalism at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“By the time I was a junior and senior, they wanted you to do straight news all the time. They didn’t want you to show personality, they didn’t want you to tell jokes in your stories,” said Meyer, 31. “When I was going to college in the early ‘90s, there weren’t very many cable options, so they were training me for CNN.”

If Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ had been around then, it would have been Meyer’s ideal gig. He’d like hosting a program that features current events and issues in a comic light.

Instead Meyer became a stand-up comic by way of open mic night at Duffy’s Tavern, a college bar in Lincoln. Over the past nine years, he has developed a straight-up, gimmick-free act that focuses on jokes from the rude and crude (think TV’s “South Park”) to current affairs.

Meyer brings his act to the Tap Room, 600 E. Superior St., at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. He’ll share the stage with fellow veteran comedian Jeff Shaw.

Meyer thinks of himself as a “Dennis Miller meets Jerry Seinfeld” kind of comic. Half his shtick deals with goofy or strange things in everyday life, while the other half is a rant against the world.

For the past four years, comedy has been Meyer’s professional life. He figures he’s got a good shot at making it big. He’s gunning for David Letterman’s job on late-night television.

“I think comedy is on the upswing again. For a while in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, it was on TV a lot, so people were just sick of it,” he said. “Now, it seems people really want to see (comedians) again.”

Meyer tours about 200 days a year across the country, performing at comedy clubs, private parties, college bars and corporate events in 35 states.

His goal is to be booked at least every weekend, even if it means performing at a prom party or prison. He played the Nebraska State Penitentiary a few years ago, which Meyer said was probably his most uncomfortable gig and the only one he was glad didn’t provide him with a place to sleep for the night.

“These people are supposed to be in prison for punishment and then they send me in. I didn’t know if I was supposed to be the punishment,” Meyer said.

Meyer said he tries to tailor his shows to the particular crowd and region. He loves Minnesota audiences because they laugh at all his stuff. The challenging crowds are in Southern states because everywhere else Meyer can make fun of the South and be a hit.

“Down in Alabama, they still think the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ was a documentary,” Meyer said. “In West Virginia, I got bored and went into a West Virginia chat room (online). One guy wrote, ‘I hate ignorant women,’ but he spelled ignorant as i-g-n-o-r-a-t-e.”

Meyer has sometimes said the wrong thing to the wrong crowd and fired them up in protest. In Colorado, he said he hated country music and an angry woman shouted, “But it tells the truth.”

At a Southern club, Meyer made fun of NASCAR and drew many angry responses from the audience. He later turned that experience into a joke about angering a NASCAR fan who gets into his car and chases Meyer down after he left the club.

“But I lost him because he didn’t know how to turn right,” is Meyer’s punch line.

Sometimes Meyer’s humor has bombed, which happens to every comic. But, more often than not, he said he has done well enough to get pushed to the next level of comedy, going from the opener to the feature act. Now he wants to become a headliner in clubs where he can get noticed.

“It’s all about making connections with people who book the rooms, with other comics, with clubs. It’s just about making your way up the totem pole,” Meyer said. “The good thing and the bad thing is there’s no safety net, just you, the mic, and the crowd.”