On August 23rd 2018, our Toastmasters club had a special event: A Roast of one of our most beloved members, Eric Linder. Eric recently earned the Distinguished Toastmaster designation, also known as a DTM. The DTM is the highest level of educational achievement in Toastmasters. Prerequisites to attain a DTM are substantial, with members generally taking 3-8 years to earn the award. Find out more about Toastmasters International Distinguished Toastmasters program on this link => Distinguished Toastmaster.
In a way of celebrating our members who received the coveted DTM designation, our club has performed roasts to acknowledge their accomplishment by poking a little fun at them.
Did you attend Eric Linder’s Roast?
For those who have not attended a roast before, a roast is an event where someone is being honored. The person honored is subjected to jokes at their expense. Traditionally the roasters, the people making fun of the honoree, are the family and friends of the person being honored. These friends and family members will start off by making jokes towards people in the crowd or their fellow roasters. Then the jokes move to the spotlighted member and finally end on a nice note praising the highlighted member.
Unfortunately for Eric he doesn’t have any friends (this is an example of a roast joke)! A call was made out to members in the Toastmaster club to help roast him while celebrating his accomplishments.
Here’s how the roast went down!
The Roastmaster (also known as the MC of the evening) was Bob Dietrich. Bob is an accomplished speaker who has also achieved his DTM. He did the best he could to keep the roast on schedule and full of laughs. Unfortunately Bob is just not very funny, so he failed at the 2nd part!
The roasters of the evening were: Shadi Abudayyeh, Matt Mounier, Diane Horton, Sue Linder (Eric’s sister!), Antonio Garcia, Sureal Sparx, Yesica Vazquez, Dave Zarella, Chris Hammell, and finally, Eric Linder himself. Some of the roasters were incredibly hilarious (such as reigning club’s funniest member Shadi Abudayyeh) and some of the roasters were, to put it mildly, not funny (Yesica Vazquez). Many of the jokes at these events are quite rude, risqué, and unbecoming of me listing them here, so I’ve taken the liberty of including some not as adult jokes here that received laughs.
I’m not saying that Antonio has a big forehead, I’m just saying it was a stunt double in the movie Three Billboards.”
There’s an old saying that says nice people can’t be funny. Tonight, Diane Horton will prove that.”
Matt likes to call himself the Mortgage Millennial, which explains why everyone hates him.”
#notmypresident”
Lou Weimann, our Club’s Sergeant-At-Arms commented on his experience of attending this roast:
“There are so many benefits to being a member of Toastmasters 7. One benefit I never knew about was the comradeship the group members share which leads to hilarious events like this ROAST. I never thought I could laugh so hard and almost piss my pants countless times. The jokes were so funny and I am so glad I didn’t miss this event. As if I needed any additional positive reinforcement for joining Toastmasters 7 months ago… but this ROAST is that additional awesomeness. Thank you, Eric Linder, for being a great person, a great sport and most importantly a great mentor to us all! “
Video credit to Bob Dietrich
Check out these photos from the Roast by our awesome photographer, Antonio Garcia – Access only available to SDTM7 members:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bEiLzzkaJo0Mjy95SLk58OnQIwK5LQr2