Bare Minimum Monkey Monday: A sketch
which you will pretend never existed should I ever need to redact this
Est. Read Time: 6 minutes. Read Time brought to you once again by the Ashburton Energy + Hair Logistics Group, in association with the Bradley Hills Bureau of Corrections + Housing.
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SHOWS (LA unless otherwise stated!):
*let’s take a moment to appreciate that this time last year, I had very infrequent shows and now I’m really hitting a nice cadence! Thank you for your help getting there!*
Secret D.C. Show. May 26th. Downtown, 8pm, hmu for deets!
Comedy Loft (D.C.). May 28th. featuring for the great Sam Salem. I want to get so many people in here that Sam doesn’t have any fans, and it’s all my fans and they become his fans. Please help.
Under the Umbrella @ The Crow. June 6th. 8pm. Tix and deets to come!
Near Me Theater. June 15th. 8:30pm. Tix and deets to come!
Pizza Party @ The Crow. July 22nd. Tickets to come! Westside, free parking!
Helloooo Sternal Journalists,
Loved the response to last week’s 5 Favorite Roads! Shout out to people on Instagram who shared their favorite roads, Las Flores and Camp Blue Road! Roads are great. They get us places.
This week, I’ve written a sketch. Well, I’m back to writing sketches generally, a practice I left some years ago to focus mostly on stand up and because sketch comedy (as well as improv) took way longer than stand up to “come back” after the pandemic. This resulted in a significantly more heinous global stand up scene, and proved that we really need the balance of power between improv, sketch, and stand up for a healthy comedy ecosystem. Thank god that clowning came in and evened things out while improv and sketch were figuring their shit out. This could be its own Sternal Journal, but it is not. Because this week, I spent most of my writing time banging out this one sketch.
I wanted to share this sketch here for a few reasons:
I am not a huge Shea Serrano (The Ringer, New York Times #1 best-seller) fan, but I subscribe to his e-mail list and I especially love how free-wheeling he is with sharing details about his work that other writers might feel precious about. I am no best-seller or Ringer writer, but I strive to do a similar where sometimes I reward you, the reader’s, loyalty by saying “fuck it, come on in. See what I’m cooking up even though it’s not done.” I also think that Sternal Journalists either (a) are writers themselves or (b) know a lot about various creative processes, or (c ) are interested in learning about them. So there should be something for everyone.
I think it’s a funny sketch.
I hope to do it on stage and maybe film it and it could be cool for you, the reader, to see that progression towards. I am not worried about burning the jokes because, in my experience, people forget about ones stuff immediately after seeing it.
I want people to know that I am available for sketch writing and sketch writing-style stuff.
I have full confidence that if I ever want to use this for a submission to something that asks for only unpublished pieces, I can edit and redact this page and none of you will rat me out. Do not rat me out.
So without further ado, here is my dumbass sketch, Bare Minimum Monkey Monday. Actually, one ado: there are a couple of memes in this script. I obviously know this is highly unusual, but I thought it was easier to just put them in there then describe themes they appear during the sketch. If I have offended any formatting pearl-clutchers, I apologize. Now, there are actually no further ados.
Hope that was fun. Please let me know if it especially was or was not. I do take your feedback into account!
Recommendations!
I Saw The T.V. Glow. Movie. Okay, this is a definite recommendation from me, but I feel inclined to also mention that after watching, the friend and I who saw it stood by the fountain at the Grove, scratching our heads and saying things like, “Was that good?” and “It might have been amazing, but it could have been terrible?” and the like. So maybe you won’t immediately love it. It is structurally um challenging, but it is also the most effective 90s kid nostalgia I have ever seen. The ubiquity of Fruitopia machines! The majesty of parachute day in P.E.! Standing sheepishly in the voting booth with your mom! It has it all! It is basically an A24 version of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? which also happens to be about a fictional version of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. Album. I forgot about this Lonely Island concept album (which has an accompanying visual album on Netflix) about Oakland A’s Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. I recently relistened and liked it way better than I remember. It is silly and I don’t get most of the baseball references, but I liked it. Maybe it’s better as an album than as a visual (I first consumed it by watching it).
The Interview: Anne Hathaway. Podcast Episode. The New York Times has a new interview podcast. I really liked the Charlamagne tha God episode and also this one, especially because Anne Hathaway says that she recently got into watching stand up specials and especially loved Adam Sandlers 100% Fresh, which is a musical comedy special so hoooly shit, Anne Hathaway might one day want to hear my song about her.
Michael Cohen and Rosie O’Donald: A Love Story. Article. I love redemption arcs and unlikely friendships and, in the late 90s, when my mom was home with my sister on maternity leave, I would get home from school every day and watch some Rosie O’Donnell Show with them, so this checked all the boxes for me.
Normally, I use this area to say that you can upgrade to paid if you’re rich. I hugely appreciate those of you who have, but nobody should ever feel pressured to! (Although huge thanks to my recent new paid subscribers! You have made it slightly easier to do this!) AAAAALSO though, if you’re the type to hit a like or leave a comment and you just haven’t thought of doing it on the SternJourn yet, come on in! Lemme know if you love or hate the recs! All engagement unfortunately is good engagement. But if you do not have time, get outta here and don’t worry about it! I’ll see ya next week!