Big Pine Mini Recap + A Fun Lil' Clip
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SHOWS
Laughing Skull Festival in Atlanta, GA - Thursday 10/17-Sunday 10/20 - tix to come; shows every day!
If you’re in New Orleans, some exciting news coming very soon!
Helloooo Sternal Journalists!
Just returned from Chandler, Arizona’s Big Pine Comedy Festival where I had a lot of fun, met a lot of people, did 7 shows in 5 days, and won a Best of Fest Award! The award itself was a mug. Here I am with my friend Ray Lau, showing off our mugs.
Ray won 7x as many awards as I did, but is only 1.4x funnier than me. Congratulations, Ray, but I am hot on your tail, and I learned all your secrets this weekend. (Watch Ray’s excellent Don’t Tell set here).
Comedy festivals are fun. They are also stressful and exhausting. Hence, I am cannibalizing some social media content from last week. If you already saw this on Instagram or YouTube, sorry! Scroll down to check out the recs!
If you haven’t already seen this, it’s a fun little riff from an open mic I did two weeks ago. I am generally against sharing open mic clips, but sometimes open mics are more like shows, and the Lyric Hyperion’s Hoopla is like that.
Anyway, I found out right before going on stage that the guy who filmed the show so that we could buy the footage for a very reasonable (almost too reasonable) rate had just booked a role on General Hospital. I was excited for him, but also a little sad that, despite that success, he was still makin’ our little clips. So here’s my rant about that:
It is cathartic to share this because, all week at Big Pine, I and most other comics were very aware of the opportunities we might be able to procure and therefore had to bring our best stuff and had to make sure to vary our best stuff and and and AAAHHH, but sometimes, one must just riff and f around on stage. So I value the big important shows, but I also value these dinky, profound f-arounds.
Anyhoo, next week if people care, I’ll share the fruitful and emotional rollercoaster of doing comedy in a city where it was ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE DEGREES OUTSIDE.
Coincidentally, I believe I also made 112 friends. I can’t wait to run it back in Atlanta in October!
But for now…
Recommendations!
Jokes I Can Only Tell Here. Comedy Special. John Novosad is a comedian based out of Denver and he was far and away the comics’ favorite comic this weekend. He’s a funny guy and you should check out his stuff. I know we got some Denver-ites reading the Journ, so check out one of his shows if you can!
Big Time Album. Musical Comedy Album. My friend Max Castillo (prolifically bigtimemaca on IG and tiktok) has just dropped his first full album. The songs are fire, the album art is impeccable, blast it and have a blast.
T Pain. Song. The East London geezers Pete and Bas are back, and this is my favorite song of theirs since Stepped Into The Building.
A Gentleman in Moscow. Book. I seem late to the party on this, and I’m only about a quarter of the way through, but I’m thoroughly enjoying, especially because it kinda reminds me of Grand Budapest.
Alrightyyyy,
that’s all! I’ll do something more writerly next week, I PROMISE!
Love!
Julian!
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!
"send the hot clip with the good lighting"
[you're killin it!]