Est. Read Time: 3 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.
New to the SternJourn? Check out the best of 2022, 2021, or 2020.
Shows:
September 20th: Picture Day at The Crow (Santa Monica! (Gas Lite adjacent))
September 29th: Sam Salem headlines the Yoo-Hoo Room and I am there too!
October 7th: Scoopty Boopty’s (tickets to come!)
Every night other than the above, I am available to be booked on more shows or to do your podcast or sit on some industry panel. Any industry will do.
Hello Sternal Journalists,
A quick one this week! Today, a friend told me that a buddy of his was doing an open mic for the first time and did I have any advice? I love giving advice, especially for things where there really isn’t much advice you can give.
So I blabbed some stuff out over text, and it was well-received. Upon rereading what I thought, (a) this is robust enough to be my SternJourn for the night and (b) even though it’s about stand-up, you can easily bend these tips to be about trying anything for the first time.
So without further ado, here are Julian’s 10 Tips for Trying Stand Up Comedy for the First Time (Of Which Only 1 And 10 Are Really Vital {And All of Which Can Be Easily Massaged to Fit More Universal Situations}):
Or in short: Try new things, don’t sweat it if you’re bad (you will be), don’t get too big of a head if you’re good (you’ll still fail sometimes), and be as nervous as you want, just don’t run the light (or whatever running the light is in the new thing you’re trying1).
Anyway, I will leave you with a completely unrelated TikTok I posted this week:
I like this joke and it has a short shelf life, but I really share it to boast that of the only 46 people who liked it, one of them was eight time Grammy Award-winning Finneas O’Connell
I love this because everyone I’ve told has asked how I with my meager following could have possible ended up on Finneas’ FYP, and I think the Occam’s Razor answer is that this joke, being about music, included a “#music” in the description. And I just love the idea of an eight time Grammy Award-winning musician being like, “Gotta keep my ear to the streets!” and just searching “music” on TikTok.
Obviously a much better way to find music and other things is from Sternal Journal…
Recommendations!
Dientes. Song. If I’m being honest, this song kind of sucks (or overstays it’s welcome), but it’s a damn DJ Khaled produced Reggaeton remix of Usher’s Yeah!, so you have to pay your respects regardless of quality. I think the first minute is fun.
Hasan Minhaj’s “Emotional Truths.” Article. This mind-bending New Yorker article reveals that Minhaj (whose work I really like, especially for it’s unapologetic honesty) has not always been honest about the things he says on stage. To be clear, comedians are allowed to make shit up. But some of the stuff he made up? You probably shouldn’t make up.
Only Murders Season 3. Television Show. This is not necessarily a quality assessment, but I was watching the second episode of this new (although now not totally new) season yesterday while sipping an iced coffee and I felt full contentedness. I was not assessing the quality of the show, I was just vibing out watching some TV which is an experience I don’t have so often and therefore, I must give my love to the show. I think it has to do with the fact that I binged the first season while in Covid isolation, so I really, really just associate it with sitting and doing nothing. That is nice.
Revisionist History, Hard Fork, Search Engine, and Articles of Interest. Podcast Equinox. I have heard tell of the “sports equinox,” a day when all four major professional American sports leagues have games. I know nothing about that, but feel that we are in a bit of a Podcast Equinox right now as Malcolm Gladwell and Avery Trufelman are putting out their respective occasional podcasts at the same time that P.J. Vogt has restarted his and the Hard Fork guys have continued chugging along (although that’s a fairly recent pod as well).
The Crossword Show. Show. On Tuesday December 19th, Zach Sherwin returns to Dynasty Typewriter in LA with his newest Crossword Show. Zach has told me over email and over phone that this is his favorite show yet, and that’s crazy because they’re all so good. If you’ve never been, it’s a live crossword show solved by a guest panel and also incorporates puzzles, jokes, mental stunts, and a lil bit of rap. It’s incredible. See it. (LA, but the show tours a bunch!)
Alrighty that’s all for the week! Go try something new and don’t run the light!
Love,
Julian
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos.
Realize I should probably explain that “running the light” means going longer than your allotted time, which in stand-up is signaled by a light indicating you have one minute.