Dylan Carlino: Eat, Gay, Love

In com­e­dy, as in life, all roads lead to some­where, quite often a bar. For Dylan Car­li­no, our 300^th episode guest, and Cap City Com­e­dy Club’s Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin 2023 Win­ner, the roads seem to both start and end with Eliz­a­beth Gilbert.

Yes, she of the sem­i­nal book/​movie/​ever bur­geon­ing empire of Eat, Pray, Love. Car­li­no sum­mons Gilbert’s name moments into the inter­view with Valerie Lopez, and trust me she’ll be back mul­ti­ple times. (Actu­al­ly, lis­ten to the episode, I’ve giv­en you lit­er­al­ly no rea­son to trust me, yet.) Match­ing Gilbert plug for plug is CW dar­ling Colton Dowl­ing, whose empire is a tad small­er but — much like the man’s mus­tache — shows no signs of stop­ping. We’ll return to both titans in a few.

Carlino’s sto­ry doesn’t start in Austin; to find his ori­gins we have to turn to the pic­turesque area of Mass­a­chu­setts known as The Berk­shires. The city’s cur­rent tagline, ​“Life is Call­ing”, sug­gests to me that – if it is – it’s not call­ing droves of peo­ple to The Berk­shires. It’s where Car­li­no first start­ed per­form­ing, with the ground­break­ing rou­tine of ​“smok­ing weed and telling peo­ple I was­n’t gay”. No great come­di­an nails it out of the gate, as he reviews his own mate­r­i­al: ​“Lackluster…no one was buy­ing it”.

The cohost of pod­cast Some Of This Is Bad (with oth­er-co-host Dowl­ing) had dreams aplen­ty in that dreamy berg: being a nurse, being a writer, try­ing standup. So, after high school, Car­li­no pur­sued them the way he knew best, say­ing he kicked the sum­mer off by ​“get­ting real­ly fat and work­ing at a gas sta­tion”. As we know, that more than qual­i­fies a per­son for the pro­fes­sion he ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to pur­sue. (If it isn’t clear yet, check the bit in our name before the ​“Wham”.)

Every­one’s first open mic is usu­al­ly a coin toss, with fame and glo­ry on one face, and a bomb on the oth­er. For Car­li­no, he came up lucky the first time, and ​“felt like I was killing it”. The sec­ond out­ing got the reverse side, as he strug­gled to com­pete with bar-side TV’s and chat­ter, utter­ly tank­ing with the same mate­r­i­al. But it got him noticed, and soon he was get­ting tapped to appear reg­u­lar­ly as an open­er for comics vis­it­ing from such lofty heights as New York City. With his con­fi­dence grow­ing, he got the chance to attend a work­shop with the afore­men­tioned Gilbert, and it played no small role in Car­li­no’s next steps.

​“It’s me, and…like hun­dreds of upper mid­dle class white women hold­ing each oth­er and cry­ing,” Car­li­no says, laugh­ing about the expe­ri­ence. From the tears flowed per­son­al break­throughs, and he cred­its the three days as seri­ous­ly one of the best things that’s ever hap­pened to him. Eat, Pray, Love is noth­ing if not about get­ting out of your rut and into the world, and Car­li­no was ready to take the leap; life, it seemed, was call­ing after all, and the num­ber was from out of state. He’d recent­ly lost 75 pounds, which no doubt did­n’t hurt the spring in his step, and decid­ed to take the leap.

​“I typed in ​‘gay cities in Amer­i­ca’ ”, Car­li­no jokes by way of explain­ing his choice to pick up and move to Port­land. (Austin was also on the list, but we did­n’t make the cut at the time. Some­thing to strive for!) Once set­tled, he set a per­son­al goal of land­ing a pop­u­lar Port­land show called Dough, and made it after a mere four months. In a bit of fore­shad­ow­ing, Car­li­no also appeared in the cov­et­ed Willamette Week (not entire­ly unlike our beloved Austin Chron­i­cle) ​“Fun­ni­est Five” show­case, ulti­mate­ly tak­ing sec­ond place in the con­test. We gave him first place, just sayin’.

Not a bad start for a guy who first thought Kathy Grif­fin was the only come­di­an out there. ​“I did­n’t know that stand up com­e­dy was even some­thing that was happening…I thought Kathy Grif­fin was the only per­son who had ever done this, because all I watched was Bra­vo,” Car­li­no jokes of his ear­ly intro­duc­tion, not­ing ​“then I found out who Sarah Sil­ver­man was.” 

This is where we are legal­ly required to inter­rupt the good times and remind every­one that a pan­dem­ic hap­pened. For Car­li­no, it meant it was time for anoth­er lifestyle change. ​“I sat in Port­land and drank in my house,” he recalls, when he was­n’t walk­ing the streets and feel­ing like the star of a film about the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse”, or the even dici­er role: man­ag­ing a Mas­sage Envy dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. (“Can you even imag­ine any­thing dark­er?” Car­li­no jokes.)

When talk turns to the move to Austin, Valerie pulls out her now-almost-sig­na­ture seg­ment – where each pull a card from Esther Perel’s game Where Should We Begin. It turns out Car­li­no is famil­iar with Per­el, hav­ing heard of her via, you guessed it, Eliz­a­beth Gilbert. But Gilbert now must take a rare back­seat as Colton Dowl­ing enters the sto­ry. (If you’ve seen him, you know he would­n’t fit back there anyway…the man has stature.) I can’t do jus­tice to the sto­ries of Car­li­no and Dowl­ing meet­ing, or how they came to col­lab­o­rate, or even how Car­li­no is nev­er real­ly sure where Dowl­ing is; I sug­gest (nay, insist) you lis­ten to the episode.

Suf­fice to say, the two – both new­ly sober – hit it off, becom­ing fast friends. ​“We go on walks three days a week,” Car­li­no says, which is ​“free and better…than gain­ing weight and los­ing mon­ey”. The top­ic of tor­so vies with Gilbert in num­ber of appear­ances in this episode, as well as on stage in his mate­r­i­al. As some­one who has also rid­den the body image roller­coast­er, I can iden­ti­fy with Car­li­no’s seem­ing­ly coun­ter­in­tu­itive insis­tence that he ​“thinks high­ly of [him­self]”, but just ​“does­n’t like [his] body”. Nev­er one to keep things too seri­ous, he soon fol­lows up with a promise: ​“give me [the FPIA win­nings mon­ey] and 6 months, and I’ll look like Joan Rivers”.

With the 2023 FPIA under his belt (as his belt? in his belt?), Car­li­no is quick to note that doesn’t plan to leave Austin any­time soon. The noto­ri­ety of the win, ongo­ing pod­cast with Dowl­ing, and oth­er projects in the works give him plen­ty to work and build on for what looks like a bright future. A Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val spot tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­lows an FPIA win, and Car­li­no is ready to take it on. ​“I’m just keep­ing going, no mat­ter what hap­pens,” he says, and would ​“love to do at all…blow up and go on tour…things like that.”

It’s worth not­ing that Car­li­no also jokes that he could see him­self ​“get­ting rich, quit­ting com­e­dy, and remak­ing Phoebe Bridgers albums”, word for word, in his own voice. Our take­away is that Dylan Car­li­no is ready to take on the world, in what­ev­er form and fit he needs to do so. It’s some­thing that Eliz­a­beth Gilbert (and of course Colton Dowl­ing) would eat, pray, lov­ing­ly sup­port, and so do we.

Fol­low Dylan

• Insta­gram — @dylanpcarlino
  
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​c​a​r​lino2
• Tik­Tok — @dylanpcarlino
• Youtube
  • Dylan — youtube​.com/​@​d​y​l​a​n​c​a​rlino
  • Some of This is Bad Pod­cast — youtube​.com/​S​o​m​e​o​f​t​h​i​s​i​s​b​a​d​p​o​dcast

Dylan can be seen and heard:

• Some of this is Bad Pod­cast — co-host­ed with Colton Dowling
• 2023 Cap City Com­e­dy Club Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin Winner