Faces of Three Village: Gavin Stern, Comedian

You may recognize Gavin Stern as the face behind the YouTube video The Stony Brook resident is a regular performer at New York Comedy Club on E. 24th St. in New York City. Originally from Westchester, Stern, 25, has also lived in suburban Michigan and West Palm Beach, Florida.

What you may not know is that this comedian has a slightly more serious side, too: he started medical school but hated it, eventually leaving the program. But he decided to work on two Master's degrees concurrently, one in public health at New York Medical College and one in science journalism at Stony Brook University. When he was 16 years old, doctors found a tumor in his brain – which he can joke about now, knowing it wasn't exactly life threatening. Read on to find out more.

Patch: How did you get your start in standup?
Stern: I did a little standup comedy in college, and talent shows and things like that. I get to medical school, and there’s two comedy shows a year to kind of lighten the mood. Because I hated it, I really didn’t do that well. As I progressed in medical school, I started doing "The worst medical student in the world" standup act. ... If I hadn’t gone to medical school and went through absolute hell for two years, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into standup comedy. My whole act was built around that experience. It was funny, the way things turned out.

Patch: Can people relate to the medical school act?
Stern: It’s a really mysterious thing, medical school, because so many people are exposed to aspects of medicine because of TV and popular culture. But very few people actually see it. All of these inside jokes, experiences, I’m able to articulate things that are so screwed up about it, or weird. For instance, how screwed up it is when you’re dissecting cadavers ... and then you go to lunch. I saw open a person’s skull, scoop out the brains out of the skull, and put them in jars. And now I’m expected to stand in line at Dunkin’ Donuts with everyone else.

Patch: So what did you get out of medical school, if anything?
Stern: One of the things that I think did help was being able to talk to medical students and just scientists in general. ... It really taught me what those people are like and kind of the language. Now if I’m going to be a science journalist, I can talk to these people and relate to them. I’m probably never going to use the two years of chemistry that I did in college, but when I go to cover this Time Magazine Top 100 scientist and he’s talking about electrovoltaic cells, I know what he’s talking about. I’ve kind of become a rogue agent within that whole culture that allows me to go in and speak to them.

Patch: When you were in high school, were you a class clown type?
Stern: I was kind of always clowning around in school because for me, a lot of the stuff I was asked to do felt easy. But I don’t say that in an arrogant way because it actually hurt my grades. I think the talent that I had was that I could pick things up really quickly. I didn’t get serious into my studies until early in my junior year of high school. I had 1,000 people in my HS class. I think I was number 499 in my class rank. I just made it into the top 50 percent. But then I started to get headaches. My father’s a radiologist and so I went to get an MRI. Then they found out that I had a brain tumor. It turned out it wasn’t something to worry about. It was a 2.5-centimeter lipoma on my hypothalamas. ... But there was a two-week period of time when I didn't know, and I thought I was a goner. After that, I got more serious with school, and my grades actually got better. I eventually finished just outside the top 5 percent of my high school class."

Patch: You've referred to comedy as "tragedy with time." Is the tumor something you can look back on and laugh at?
Stern: I have a nickname. It's "G-Plex." That stands for having a Gavin complex. It’s sort of the way that my personality is described. I have my own kind of sense of humor. It permeates most of my interactions with people. The joke that I have is that the G-Plex is sort of secreted from the tumor. ... It’s pretty cool because on an MRI it lights up like a light bulb. I think of it as sort of the source of my powers.

Patch: In your Hurricane Irene refrigerator video, we see a mouse in your fridge. Was that a pet mouse?
Stern: There’s a funny story behind that. That is a pet mouse. I bought her in medical school because it was kind of lonely in my apartment. I went to the pet store and I could buy a hamster for $5, or I could get this mouse for a buck. I figured if I get this mouse, it kind of really owes me, because it would have been food [to a snake]. I named her Tyrosinase. That’s a science joke. ... She’s an albino, and tyrosinase is the defective enzyme that causes albinism. ... See, I did learn a thing or two in med school.

Patch: How do you like living in Three Village?
Stern: I’m mostly hanging out on campus because I’m still kind of exploring it. I have to say about Long Island in general, I think Long Island is fantastic. It actually to me is kind of like a combination of Michigan and south Florida. The way that the suburbs are laid out reminds me of south Florida. But the place also has attitude, and it also has ... I cant quit put my finger on it ... it has an attitude and a style that kind of reminds me of the Midwest. If you haven’t lived in most places you wouldn’t realize it. ... I never liked Florda that much. I could do without that part of Long Island, but I’m getting to like it. I think I’m going to stick around.

Catch Gavin Stern at the New York Comedy Club this Saturday at 10 p.m., follow him on Twitter, or check out his website.