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SHOWS:
Comedy Confessional. Friday, July 7, The Crow (Santa Monica). Tickets!
Platinum Package. Friday, July 14 @ Pauhaus. Tix to come!
!!!Julian Stern Keeps Trying. Thursday, July 27 @ 9PM, The Yard Theatre. Tickets live!!!
Julian Stern Keeps Trying @ Edinburgh Fringe! August 4-13!
Garden Comedy! September 8th. Time and tickets to come!
Sternal Journalists!
My body thinks it’s 11:45PM in Athens, Greece (where I was for the last week); I’m currently at JFK (on a wi-fi called _JFK FREE WIFI which I really hope is not a phishing situation) where it is 4:45PM, and I’m heading back to LA where it is presently 1:45PM. When I land, it will be about 24 hours after I woke up “this morning.”
But of course, I owe you a SternJourn. This is the latest a Sternal Journal has come through in the modern era, but you know I’m not gonna end my 3+ year streak now. So a Stern we shall Journal and you’ll have a few days before I get back on schedule.
There will likely be more quantity and more clarity written about my trip to Greece in the future (I think I just scared the couple next to me at this airport bar while I was trying to explain the QR ordering system to them—they did not ask, Sternal Journalists!). But for now, I’ll give you three random thoughts!
Random Thought #1: This is probably obvious for many people, but it is very jarring to have a thing that is supposedly part of your identity (I am a quarter Greek), and then go to the place where that identity comes from and realize, “Oh, I am barely that identity at all.” I went from being one of the most Greek people I know to being the least Greek person in an entire country.
There was also at least some insecurity around the fact that so many of the men I saw around were engaged in such casually manly behaviors. There seems to be a constant supply chain of things and people being moved around the city in ways that are unexpected but reliable. Example: I was in the middle of explaining this feeling to someone and we turned a corner and found ourselves looking at 4 or 5 men rigging a pulley to lift a full DaveNBusters-grade pinball machine to the seventh floor of an apartment building which itself was on a road that was on at least a forty-degree-angle.
Random Thought #2: I was insistent on trying all the Greek liquors I could. Ouzo is the big one, but I fell in love with a brandy-ish thing called Metaxa. I drank all of them, but genuinely loved the private reserve. That being said, I still hadn’t had a lot of ouzo and the second to last night, we found ourselves near Bretto’s, which was a bar famous for Ouzo. But the gruff-gentle bartender told us when we were thinking about ouzo, “No, it is not the right time for ouzo.” And I LOVED that.
Because it feels actually really mean to work at a bar that is famous above all else for one thing, and then when people who are clearly not from the city ask for that one thing, to deny it from them and tell them cryptically that it is not right.
But it’s not mean! We’re just so used to hospitality meaning that the customer is always right. But for this guy, he knew that if he let the customer be right, he would be letting said customer have ouzo at a totally not Ouzo time! THAT is hospitality, and I can’t completely articulate it right now, but there’s something about that which does seem pretty fuckin’ Greek.
Random Thought #3: Not a thought so much as a picture:
That is me 18 years ago and then this past week, at the Temple of Poseidon, which I can now admit is a little cooler than just “the Parthenon but on the beach and we’ve seen the Parthenon and the beach so why did we have to drive two hours to see this?”
Neither of these were great days though! I had a wonderful time this past week with my partner and sister and relatives, but traveling can be a mental health trigger for me, and I say that just to try to “BeReal” and not post pretty/cool jet-setting pics. I always like having jetset, but I generally do not look forward to it. So—normalize having complicated feelings about travel!
Okay, I gotta go get on my flights, so the recs will be very informal, but I just watched John Wick 4 and Living (with Bill Nighy) on my Athens to JFK flight, and they are both really good, really different, and really having to do with the the weight of living a good life. Ummm, if you’re in Greece, go to Bretto ‘s and drink Metaxa Private Reserve!
Much love!
Julian
as the saying goes, wherever you go, you're still only 1/4 greek.