I Got Roasted!

Boy oh boy, did I get fucked with. First of all, the ultimate fucking with, fucking with my stagefright and inability to memorize.

Schadenfreude convinced me that Friday night's show was a regular show for the most part. The "wraparound" would be a roast, that there would be three sketches that were roast sketches, three guest spots, and four other sketches.

Little of this was true.

But I still wrote three new monologues and tried to memorize them in 24 hours. We were going to "send off" some of my "memorable" "characters." Scruffy McMuffin, Brent Wickerman, Redneck Randy.

but no.

I came out as Scruffy McMuffin to give my first of four monologues that I hadn't memorized very well. Right as I got into the monoglogue (and nobody was laughing, I like to imagine they were instructed not to...but I don't think it was that well organized) and began humping a microphone stand in a giant McMuffin costume Kate came out and stopped me.

"Adam, stop...PLEASE stop. We're not doing a show. We're really doing the roast of Adam Witt."

Very sneaky.

I was so relieved. Each of the monologues was very long, and moments before the show I was hastily scribbling cue cards for each of the monologues, which I will be putting up all week with pictures.

In addition to writing and memorizing my monologues, I had to go to the Village Discount Outlet and buy costuming for a fake Sam Kinison, Rita Rudner, and John Pinnette. I wonder if part of the joke the group planned was to load me up with things to do in addition to memorize three monologues. I spent two hours in the thrift store and only two of the props got used for a total single minute of viewable time. $26 for one minute of Sam Kinison/Rita Rudner references.

I'm sure there's a "priceless" joke in there somewhere, and I'm sure it's super funny.

And then there came a relentless torrent of friends giving me shit all set up by the Schad crew. Don Hall, a man on my short-list of favorite people, gave me a healthy dose of Don-inspired vitriol, and I believe made a great Dick York joke.

Andy Eninger, who I've known for fifteen years (wow), brought one of my early Chicago sketches onstage and did an analysis of my comic structure and lack of female roles.

Justin set up a game in which he marched people in front of me and asked me if I knew their names, which is a GREAT BIT, because I do forget a lot of people's names. But they went easy on me. The brought our intern from 99-00, Sara Tolbert, onstage. I don't think I've ever forgotten her name.

Kara Buller and Megan Powell came up playing fake ex-girlfriends, talking about how bad I was as a boyfriend. I gotta tell ya, I'd love to add those two to my list of ex-girlfriends. Looking good. Kara came up to me before the show (as I was memorizing lines I'd never speak) and I must admit, I forgot her name.

In between every act, Justin would come up and call me a fucking fag. He started the whole thing by saying he'd been listening to the Artie Lange Roast and all they did was call him a fucking fag every minute, Justin then called me that a fag at least 20 times.

Joel Friend, Josh Kaufmann, Robert Buscemi, and Tony Sam, who really killed. And to top it all off Mike & Dwayne did their best song ever called "Sketch Show." Which is my new theme for life.

The roast was great, it was pretty emotional. It's really really super weird crazy insane unthinkable crazy that I just had my last regular Schadenfreude show, that I'm moving, that everyone was saying good luck to me in L.A. Why are they saying this? Is this really what I'm doing? It's like it's out of my hands and some unseen force has pushed me in this direction and I am helpless to stop the tide of random life events.

I'll have the video up tomorrow, it's a lot of footage to crunch, it was like a 90 minute roast.

Thanks to everyone who came and roasted me and gave me so many memories over the last ten years to think about as the whole roast was transpiring.

God I hope I don't fuck this up.

UPDATE!!

Oh my sweet CHRIST! I just went to the screening room to see the funniest video I've ever seen!. You must go now, it turns out Tim Schadenfreude (for whom the group is named) recorded a goodbye greeting when I first announced I was moving to L.A. in 1999. I just laughed really really hard.

"Let me ask you something? Do I look okay?"