I Am Sergio Dipp

It took less than 24 hours for Sergio Dipp to go from unknown to household name. I wasn’t watching Monday Night Football, but kept seeing his name pop up on my facebook feed. And it was a really weird sensation…hearing everyone talking about how he screwed up. It made me feel bad for the kid. It made me not want to watch his sideline report.

And what struck me about that is how much I’ve changed. I used to be the kid who watched the “Boom Goes the Dynamite” clip over and over again. In my early 30s, in the years before the divorce I needed guys like that to point and laugh at in order to feel good about myself.

But, with a little more life experience and self-reflection, I’ve concluded over the years since that I am Sergio Dipp. I am the Boom Goes the Dynamite kid. Put together a highlight reel of all the things I’ve fucked up and all the times I’ve said the wrong thing and the internet would love me too.

But, why do people love to hate? Why were people so quick to crucify Dipp last night? I guess, looking back to when that was the way I would have watched his MNF lowlight, I have to conclude that a lot of people feel as shitty about themselves as I do. And the point and laugh model is a nice, quick fix.

Or the Trump routine of getting criticized and needlessly firing back with personal attacks on his accuser. Like with meryl streep. He essentially said that her opinion of him doesn’t matter, because she’s “one of the most overrated actresses.” There’s no self-reflection or ability to listen to the potential validity of her comments. Or even a defense of why she’s incorrect. She’s overrated. End of argument.

And, I think the core of that kind of trump behavior and the need twitter and facebook users had last night to mock Sergio dipp are similar. We feel shitty about ourselves. Everyone does. And we handle that in different ways.

“Oh my god what an idiot that guy is” has the same net effect that the trump/streep interaction had. Putting yourself above the dipshit who crashed and burned on live tv. or putting streep down as being overrated. if we are cool with who we are, wouldn't we just feel sorry for the kid and praise streep's brilliant acting ability? but, we're not, so we put them down to build ourselves up.

I finally watched the video back and just cringed. In part, because it reminded me of the time I tried out for last comic standing, with absolutely zero stand up experience.

I guarantee I sounded worse than Sergio. None of what I’d written came out of my mouth. It was like I did not have control over my own vocal chords and someone else was speaking unfunny, disjointed sentences at an impossibly fast pace.

And maybe that was just what I needed to transition from boom goes the dynamite finger pointer to pointing that finger back at myself. I cringed watching Sergio because I’ve felt those feelings. And my stage had an audience of 3. i can't imagine what that kid must be feeling now as it sinks in how many people have watched him fuck up.

But, who really fucked up? He’s the one being ridiculed, but there is no way in hell whoever greenlighted him being on the air should have. No one knows that person’s name. that person isn’t getting called out. Sergio is. And even watching his twitter video where he apologizes, you can tell he’s just not polished enough to be on that stage. And he would still be anonymous if he hadn’t been allowed to be on the air.

But, here he is. He wanted to be there. And the people in charge put him there before he was ready. Now he has to pick up the pieces.

And I feel like that’s what my whole life is. Picking up the pieces. What the fuck just happened? How do I recover from this one? Okay. I can breathe now. Wait. Again? It’s just like this cycle of failed relationships and being let down and having shit not break my way.

I haven’t felt like myself in a really long time. And I think a big part of that is not writing as much as I used to. a friend checked in at a frank turner show last night and that made me start my morning listening to frank and it was just the reset I needed.

The line that got me was “we’re lovers and we’re losers. We’re heroes and we’re pioneers.” Frank is fucked up. And he writes songs for his people. He doesn’t try to fit in or write hits or give a shit about what’s popular. He writes from the heart. And it’s a very broken and tortured heart at that.

But, there was something to the words “loser” and “pioneer”. Those were the words that hit me. frank is a pioneer for the losers. creating a new unit of measure where the only thing that matters is the real. There’s a scale the world uses that is completely fucked. The real doesn’t matter. The surface does. And I sure as fuck come out on the loser side of that scale. And thank god.

Ahhhh. See…this…this is why I write. I got where my head needed to get to just now. My marriage. My church life. My time in corporate America. All the scales that don’t matter in the end weighed me every minute of every day. I’d tiptoe onto the scale, hoping I wasn’t too fat. And over and over the scale would mock me, by simply reading “loser”.

So when I hit that last comic standing stage, I received confirmation that the scales that the people around me and my own lack of self-worth were sizing me up with were 100% correct. I am a loser. Everyone around me sees it. I feel it. My humor is my ticket to not having to feel that. And then, oh shit…I’m not funny either?

I was a wreck after that. But, I was a wreck before that. And I’ve been a wreck off and on since. Mostly on. But, that’s the thing…I can pretend. I was brought up to play a part. You wear khaki pants one day a week. And know the right bible verses and all the fucked up feelings and fucked up realities of our family aren’t relevant. But, motherfucker that’s not me. pretending isn't my thing. the shit that has happened to me has fucked me up, maybe beyond repair. and slapping a membership to christ church on damaged goods isn't going to help.

I’m a loser. End of argument. And the losers and the less thans and the fuck ups do not feel comfortable at church. Which is completely backwards. But, it is reality. And so, I’ve learned to seek out other people who are like me by putting my shit on the table. And that’s where life means something to me. In story time with other broken hearted people.

Think back to when tiger woods was a god. There was this commercial nike did with a bunch of kids saying, “I am tiger woods.” What a fucked up commercial. No one is as good as he was back then. None of those kids are tiger woods. And who is tiger woods really? Not the athlete, but the person. Is he someone we would want our kids to emulate?

Anyway, my point with that is that I would love to see a reboot of that commercial with a bunch of average kids in school, with lowlights of them tripping or fucking up an oral report. And all of them saying, “I am Sergio Dipp.”

Why the fuck are we okay with a scale which says we have to bow down and worship our athletic heroes and point and laugh at people who are human? We need scales that measure all of us as equals not that make us feel better than or less than other people.

And we need people like frank turner continuing to scream out on behalf of the losers and the outsiders. I think he is a big deal back in England, but why the fuck is he playing 300 capacity rooms in des moines? For people like me man. And that’s why I write this blog. For people like us. (I actually sent frank a link to my blog post about his show and he was kind enough to take the time to respond)

And when you have moments in your own life like Sergio did last night, even little ones, it’s easy to get down and stay down. For me, it’s easy to not want to write. Or pour myself that 4^th jack and diet mountain dew. Or start to think that I wish I looked like the other parents at my kids’ schools. Or that I had a leading lady. Or whatever the fucked up voices in my head have to say to keep me down.

I write to silence those voices. I write to reset. And get back on track. Well, shit man…who could look at my life and say I’ve ever been “on track”. But, the point is I have to write. Just to get through the day. And maintain even a small level of mental health. My head goes south in a hurry if I’m not on my writing

And there are times where I question whether any of the effort I put in is worth it. There’s a great new-ish country singer called Tyler Childers. He puts words together brilliantly. And writes about jesus as readily as he writes about cocaine. One of his lines that got me was “My sweat and my wages they don't seem to weigh out. I'm gettin' more aches than I'm gainin' in gold.”

The pain I feel daily. And the things I’ve lived through. They make for a pretty fucked up mindset. But, writing this gives me something that is incredibly valuable, but impossible to measure. and really, i only notice the value of it when i'm not writing and my head gets back to super fucked.

but, writing flips my head from fucked to hopeful. I might not do anything in this life but struggle, but god damn I hope that there is value in all the work I put in for the sake of my kids and anyone else who reads this stuff and relates.

I wrote this ani difranco lyric earlier in this post and it didn’t really fit, so I’ll just slap it in here at the end. She says, “i’m not trying to give my life meaning, by demeaning you.” And I think that’s the point of this blog. Demeaning myself as a conduit to conversation with other people who have been made to feel demeaned. I’m not tiger woods. I am Sergio dipp.