Happy Six Years of the Sternal Journal
Plus: Went to War with Booktok! Shows in San Diego this weekend!
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] Spotlight Hollywood - Tues Dec. 10 @ 8p.m.
[LA] Comedy Confessions - Fri Dec. 13 @ 8p.m.
[San Diego] Boat Show - Sat Dec. 14 (hmu for deets!)
[San Diego] Don’t Tell SD - Sat Dec. 14 (hmu for deets!)
[San Diego] Die Hard Brunch - Sun Dec. 15 @ 1:00p.m.
[San Diego] Mad House - Sun Dec. 15 @ 7:30p.m.
[LA] Drinking Habits @ The Crow - Jan. 24
Hellooo Sternal Journalists,
Tomorrow, December 11th, will be six years to the day since the first Sternal Journal was published. A few weeks from now will be five years to the day since the Sternal Journal broke its first of promise to its readers (“I will never send these more than twice a month”) by moving to a publishing schedule of every single week, with a success rate of 98.8%. Many more promises were broken.
I would like to turn all of the disparate, crumbly thoughts I have about that into something nice to read, but I got my wisdom teeth out this week and have been juggling Tylenol and Ibuprofen with episodes of Slow Horses, Season 3 and mostly being useless (At one point, I thought, “Wow, this is like when I had COVID. It’s so restful. I wish I could be like this when I’m not on medical house arrest” Obviously, I can and that’s something I should work on. All this to say, I know I wasn’t actually being useless and I should be better about resting).
Quick story, though, because I don’t want to leave you totally empty-handed as you venture into the week.
I went to war with Booktok
And immediately surrendered
So I’m trying to ~post~ more. It’s annoying and probably sounds insane to anyone with a remotely healthy relationship to social media because, I actually post quite a lot as it is.
But I’ve talked to a number of people who are good at these calculations, and they’ve said that, if I want to get more opportunities in stand up, I need to be trying to get more stage time; and if I want to get more stage time, I need to reliably draw an audience; and if I want to start reliably drawing an audience, it wouldn’t hurt to throw some chum to the social media masses and see what sticks.
I could and probably will write a whole other SternJourn about how this makes me feel (bad mostly, but occasionally inspired) and whether it changes the stuff I wind up writing (probably, and that’s bad), but today I’ll just say, I’ve been basically trying to put every thought that felt reasonably original on Tiktok.
One such thought that I posted this week was, and I quote:
“If you talk about reading books, but you just listen to audio books, you’re not reading a book; you’re just listening to a podcast where someone reads a book, and you’ve never actually read a book in your life.”
The sentiment at the base of this is something I still feel somewhat strongly about. I like real books. I don’t love Kindles because you can’t flip around. I don’t love audio books because I think they’re even harder to flip around in.
I feel like, as these technologies have become available while we’ve simultaneously become chained to our phones, more and more people I talk to not only eschew real books, but see them as inferior to audio books/kindle.
I also think the reading and listening experiences are totally different things!
Anyway, I tossed this out into the world and tagged it #booktok. I should have known better. Booktok, if you don’t know, is not just the corner of TikTok for people who like to read.
It is specifically populated by people who love romantasy, or as I like to call it horndog-dragon-lit. The two things to know about people who love romantasy/HDL is (a) they really like books where people are regularly ~doin’ it~ while riding dragons and restoring an arcane realm or something, and (b) they are not to be trifled with.
I was immediately inundated with comments that were variously rolling their eyes, telling me I was wrong, correctly pointing out that I was totally overlooking accessibility issues, and letting me know I don’t need to put every thought I have on the internet (talk to my manager about that last one, please!). I responded to all of them saying I was sorry and I was wrong because I’m a freak and I felt bad.
But one in particular stood out to me. A woman said:
Okay, fair enough! Big Ol’ Whoops on my part. So I said:
And then SHE said:
And obviously every internet back-and-forth can’t go this way when someone pisses someone else off, but I just though it was nice that I was being a light troll (btw a light troll is toootally a character you would find bangin’ in some romantasy), somebody called me out, I apologized, and we were all good.
I also know that if I had responded to the person who commented, “So you don’t think blind people know how to read?” with “YUP! Blind people are illiterate. That’s my opinion,” this trashy little video would have a billion more views. But since I’m very unwilling to stoop to that level, I hope we can have fun here in the very exclusive Sternal Journal for another six years!
Recommendations
Romantasy. Genre. Okay, listen, I haven’t read any Romantasy, but I hear it’s a hoot. One of my friends rocked through, no exaggeration, like 17 of them while he was on paternity leave. I wish I had a specific rec here, but I’m just trying to make clear that I respect it and plan to read some, I promise!!!!
Die Hard 2. Movie. I’m doing a Die Hard-themed show this weekend, so I’ve been cranking through the ones I hadn’t seen. Two people referred to this as “the bad one” when I said I was watching it. But I really liked it! I am perhaps biased because it takes place at one of my home airports, Dulles. But I’m scared of flying and it still was a fun watch for me. I especially liked the dynamic between the wife and the reporter. I wish they were in more movies.
Gymnopédie 1. Song. I saw Jon Batiste say on Colbert that if he had to listen to only one song for the rest of his life, it would be this one. It’s one of those classical pieces where you're like, “Oh shit, I’ve heard that everywhere” (everywhere=Royal Tenenbaums, Community [Critical Film Studies])
Angel City Chorale. Group. My wonderful partner just joined this group of 160 talented singers in LA. I went to their winter performance this weekend and it was a blast! They will be doing a Grease singalong and a show in Redondo in the spring! It felt like something my grandparents would have taken me to when I was little in the best way possible, and it’s a very wholesome and artsy time to pass an evening! It’s just crazy to see that many people singing together at the same time. Also, they recorded the theme song for Civilization 6 and were on a Slipknot song??? That’s awesome, I just learned that.
Oo-ee, it’s late. Hope you have a wonderful week full of artsiness and/or reconciliation
Much love!
Julian!
Happy Stackiversary!