A short movie I loved, a long movie I loved, plus some civic engagement tips
And an oldie but goodie
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New to the SternJourn? It’s a place where Julian (me) promotes shows; and talks about comedy, writing, productivity, and whatever the hell else he [I] want(s). Check out the best of 2024, 2022, 2021, or 2020 [I’ll get around to a best of 2023 at some point]!
Shows!
[Orange County] Durty Nelly’s Costa Mesa. Saturday July 12
[Santa Monica, CA] 100 Julian Sterns, Ranked By Hotness Alone. Friday July 18.
[New York, NY] Clip That! Thursday, July 24.
[Edinburgh, Scotland] 100 Julian Sterns, Ranked By Hotness Alone. August 2-20.
[Future Shows] Fill out this form to lemme know what city you’re in if you wanna see me perform there! Takes 5 seconds! Helps me make my grand plans!
Hello Sternal Journalists,
Hope you had a pleasant holiday weekend. I’ve been destroying my soul trying to edit a sketch and produce a short film, but I also had some nice time with friends and actually have been doing a pretty solid job of keeping up routines that are good for my mental health (thank you, Calm app, and stretching while watching Welcome to Wrexham Season 4).
BUT speaking of mental health, I know a lot of people have been stressed about things in the world recently, and I realized that, while I talk a fair amount about my now recent time on neighborhood council, I never really say what one can do in Los Angeles neighborhood council. And I mean anyone. Like, if you live in LA, you can do this sometime in the next couple weeks if not tomorrow!
(P.S. if you don’t live in L.A., I bet your town or city has something like this.)
(P.P.S. I know this is meant to be a comedy and recommendations newsletter more than civic engagement, so if you want that, just scroll down).
But back to what you can do. It’s kind of dumb and condescending of me to just say, “Get involved!” So what if I said, “Exercise to right to tactically complain!”
Yeah, that sounds more fun. So here are…
3 ways you can tactically complain at your neighborhood council:
Make public comment. This is the purest complaint. You can go to almost any committee or council meeting, and there will at the beginning be time for “general public comment.” So if you want to complain about or root for something that is agendized, you have to wait until that item comes up. But if you want to complain about or root for anything else, you get to say it at the beginning of the meeting. There are strict rules about length (normally a minute), but this is a great time to go to your neighborhood council and say, “Hey, are you all or have you all ever thought about doing anything about [annoying thing that annoys me].” Then, they have to tell you and either you get to find out what they’re doing or you get to say, “Hey! You should do something about that, and I’ll help.”
Petition for a Community Impact Statement. A Community Impact Statement is basically just a letter supporting or denouncing an active City Council File (these are like their bills). So if you ever hear that the City Council is considering something you love or hate, you can go to your neighborhood council and ask them to support it or oppose it. These letters don’t have any enforceable consequences, but it adds up and it creates a paper trail of when your City Councilmember listened to or ignored you.
Petition for a Request for Action. This is like a Community Impact Statement, but it’s for something that is not already being considered. So it’s so open-ended. Sky’s the limit. This is of course not to say that the Neighborhood Council has to agree to put it forward (same for CIS^), but if you go in good faith, most of the people there will at least want to explain why they can’t support a certain RFA or CIS, though hopefully you have a great idea and they’ll support it.
Anyway, that was all pretty boring. Here’s a clip of Poop Train that I recently posted to social media because the people were demanding it. Let’s rock:
And now…
Recommendations!
F1. Movie. I know nothing about racing, but and/or so I loved this movie. Casting off the charts. Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Tobias Menzes! The therapist from Ted Lasso! And Hans Zimmer with the score. Slap some new tires on your ride and drive, do not walk, to see this movie in theaters.
F1. Score. You heard me. Hans Zimmer. Doing for some reason a Miami cocaine 80s soundtrack that absolutely slams.
Gregory Go Boom. Short film. I forgot about this short film starring Michael Cera and written/directed by Janicza Bravo (Zola), but it is dark and hilarious and skin-crawl cringe. If you you can handle all those, it also has a pretty sick score.
Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic. Race. Even if you can’t avoid the spoiler caption of this mile showdown including American heavy hitters Yared Nuguse and Cole Hocker, it’s a pretty thrilling race. I knew what was gonna happen and was still pretty surprised.
The Bear. Television Show. Halfway through this season, and it’s pretty good! Also, I looked it up and The Bear might be the only prestige show of the streaming era to actually program on a regular, annual basis. Each of the past four seasons has premiered almost a year to the day after the previous one.
Call me old fashioned, I like that!
Alrighty folks, that’s it this week! If you’re in LA, buy your tickets to my show on Friday July 18 now! It might sell out! Here is a picture of me doing stand up last week to show how comfortable I am at it:
Love!
Julian!