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SHOWS!
Fictional Roast: Pixar, Comic Con LA, Saturday December 3rd, 3:30pm
I’ll be cosplaying as Buzz Lightyear in a roast of other Pixar characters. Should be fun.Julian Stern Keeps Trying #3, Comedy Nook, Sun December 4th, 1:15pm-2:45
Julian Stern Keeps Trying #4, Comedy Nook, Sun December 11th, 1:15pm-2:45
12 Comics of Christmas, Fourth Wall Cafe, Sun December 11th, 8pm
Hello Sternal Journalists!
Crazy couple weeks, but I did successfully run 12 miles today which is something I’ve been trying to get back to for a while and because it’s been a while, I forgot to properly use my anti-chafe BodyGlide so I got absolutely stigmata’d in the nipple department. It’s officially winter.
But in other news, I made my second appearance at Roast Battle on Tuesday. Roast Battle, if you don’t know, is a long-running cult classic live comedy show where comedians are paired up to roast each other. Each comedian writes three roast-style jokes about their opponent as well as a couple extras in the case of tie breakers or comebacks, and they hurl them at each other in front of a crowd.
I should say before you read on, these are generally not nice jokes. Anything is fair game and it attracts the types of comics who, over the past five years, suddenly got really into free speech and being on the wrong sides of various human rights issues.
For reference, my entrée to the roast world was another show called Fictional Roast where comedians play various characters from fictional universes and say things like:
“Molly Weasley’s vagina is so cavernous and labyrinthian, she requires the aid of ten Gringott’s goblins just to put a tampon in.”
That one was me. I was dressed in full Dumbledore regalia when I said it. And that comes much more naturally to me, saying these things under the guise of a parody take on some beloved character, than it does to just be Julian being mean on stage.
BUT I still do it and that’s because some of the comedians I respect the most are really, really, really good at roasting. People will throw around a cliché that roasting is the “purest form of joke writing.” I don’t think that’s completely true. But I do think it’s the form of joke writing that most purely rewards brevity.
And Sternal Journalists… we all know I could use every lesson in brevity I can get.
So when my dear friend Luke challenged me to a roast, I couldn’t say no.
Spoiler alert: I lost by a hair, but it was a great battle and frankly a much more fruitful experience than the time I won. Any time I leave my comfort zone, I try to look back at what I learned and what I’d do differently next time. And since it was a great time, I thought I’d share the battle and the thought process.
Trigger warning: the roasts include references to hypothetical and actual self-harm, bigotry, and child abuse. So even though I don’t think we cross any lines, totally understand if you don’t wanna start you week with that and I’ll see you at Julian Stern Keeps Trying which I promise will only have references to hypothetical self-harm.
My mindset: So the first roast I did, I was very wordy and the judges decimated me for that (oh yeah, there are Roast veterans as the judges who, after your battle, make fun of both of you). I still technically like the jokes I told, but they were way too long for the format. And the DJ started playing the Jeopardy theme song loudly over my last joke before I even finished the setup which is a moment I will replay every day for the rest of my life.
SO I wanted to be briefer. I aimed for ten words or less for each joke (at my first roast, they were clocking in at 80-100) but mostly landed around 20.
My opponent: Luke and I, though both very funny imo, are ideologically opposed in most ways you can be. He’s a pretty devout Christian and a bit of an edgelord. I am (his words) his wokest friend. He’s also a divorce lawyer, Canadian, diabetic, a virgin (see: devout Christian), had an alcoholic mother, does not do well with any physical touch beyond fist-bumps, and made multiple suicide attempts as a child. And to top it all off, he looks like this:
I wrote jokes for every single component I just listed.
My goals for the roast:
Touch on every thing worth making fun of about Luke
Get a couple of comebacks in
Be funny
Be brief
Put on a good show with Luke
The Battle:
I’ve lightly transcripted below, but I think it’s easier to get the rhythm and the feel of the room as the audio recording. The three things this recording doesn’t capture are Luke and I’s answer for the “why are you roasting him” question they start every battle with—
Mine was “I don’t know that Luke was molested, but he doesn’t like physical touch, so this is the only way he’ll let me hug him.”
His was, “I’ve been enjoying reading his white raps and his newsletter he calls the Sternal Journal, but I wanna push him to write a suicide note in his Expiry Diary.” (Thanks for the plug, Luke!)
—and a great roast from a judge about how we “look we’re having a Dahmer-off” (both white guys with scary frame glasses) which devolved into some lightly homophobic chatter about who would and wouldn’t engage in the sexual activities that Jeffrey Dahmer did.
JULIAN ROAST 1: As a devout Christian, Luke believes he was created in God’s image, so I guess God looks like Boomhauer with polio.
LUKE ROAST 1: Julian has a tattoo on his inner lip that says K-Town and a face that says gentrification.
JULIAN COMEBACK: At least I don’t look like I smell like boogers.
JULIAN ROAST 2: Luke loves Jane Austin, probly cuz he’s full-a white pride and prejudice.
LUKE COMEBACK: I don’t know what’s worse for Black people. Me being a white supremacist or you being a white rapper.
Audience [chants]: They’re both bad! They’re both bad!
LUKE ROAST 2: Julian… you have a manbun and a boy penis.
Audience [chants]: How’s he know! How’s he know!
JULIAN COMEBACK: He sucked mine for free! [a reference to the Dahmer chatter from the opening.]
JULIAN ROAST 3: You know, for being so pro-life, Luke sure has tried to kill himself three times.
LUKE ROAST 3: Julian tries to mix music with comedy, but I wish he’d try to mix sleeping pills with alcohol.
THE RESULT: We got great feedback from the judges, including one of them saying I looked like “I peel string-cheese while talking to women.” Phenomenal roast. The only judge who had actually been there for the whole thing said he liked Luke slightly better and then the audience clinched it for Luke by applause-o-meter. But I was very happy. Looking back at the goals:
Touch on every thing worth making fun of about Luke
Impossible. Why did I even think I could do this? I did get his looks, his obsession with Jane Austen, his Christian Right-ness and general conservatism, and his ehh sad childhood (which, it goes without saying, but people only do Roast Battle if they’re okay with things like this being made fun of. I knew he was cool with it). I’m proud of the diversity in what I made fun of, but I’d say I failed this one.
Get a couple of comebacks in
Sucess! “looks like he smells like boogers'“ is actually my favorite of the jokes I wrote about him, but was worried it was too out there to land. A fellow comic suggested that I use it as a comeback and it was a great idea. The other one where I tried to reference the Dahmer fellatio talk was a whiff. It was a little homophobic and pretty unoriginal, but the audience was chanting and I felt like I should say something. In retrospect, a quip about his virginity could have landed better here, but hindsight’s 20/20.
Be funny
Did it! I was fairly confident about these jokes being right for the format and funny to me, but it was good to have the audience validate it.
Be brief
Proudest of this! As someone whose whole being is long-winded, I really worked to make sure I didn’t have a single extraneous word and was able to whittle them down to jokes that were 21, 10, 12, and 15 words respectively, about an 83% increase in efficiency from my last roast.
Put on a good show with Luke
Yeah we did. The audience liked it, the judges liked it, we liked. I woulda liked to win but Luke hade me fair and square, and I’ll take a loss that feels like a win over a win that feels like a loss any day.
Overall areas for improvement:
I will still chase the holy grail of making fun of every single thing worth making fun of about someone over just three jokes. I had one joke that involved Canada, virgin, divorce lawyer, and the phrase “1-800-The-Cuck-Canuck,” but it never worked when I was road testing it.
Comebacks: I knew Luke would say something about my looks, so I planned to slot in the “looks like smells like boogers” bit when he did. But otherwise I thought too specific in terms of what he would make fun of and had not prepared to respond to more classic roast topics e.g. boypenis which was pretty much everyone’s favorite joke of the night, so if I had any chance at winning, it probably involved having a quick comeback for that one.
I will question hoity-toity cultural references even if they’re relevant. I liked White Pride and Prejudice, but you could almost literally hear on the recording people saying “OoOoh this guy knows his Jane Austen and he’s trying to impress us.” But they still laughed! So who knows!
Overall, 10/10 experience. I am proud to be a very talented shock-comic’s wokest friend and still give him a run for his money in a battle of meanness, and more importantly? I got the hug.
Recommendations
What We Owe the Future. Book. I just started this book by philosopher William McKaskill which makes a case for longtermism, or acting with the consideration that we could be some of the earliest humans and what we do will have profound effects on real people in the future. It’s climate change, but it’s a lot more than that.
Glass Onion. Movie. I didn’t like it as much as Knives Out, and I actually have some real problems with it, but if there was another Benoit Blanc tomorrow, I would still watch it immediately.
Falling for Christmas. Movie. This Lindsay Lohan Netflix knockoff Hallmark Christmas movie is much worse than Glass Onion, but I had lower expectations going in and therefore enjoyed it significantly more.
Stone 26th Anniversary IPA. Beer. This is a great malty IPA. The antidote to hazies.
That’s all for now! Hope you have a wonderful week and please only be mean to each other within the confines of a mutually agreed upon battle of wits.
Love,
Julian
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos.