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SHOWS:
Platinum Package. Friday, July 14 @ Pauhaus.
!!!Julian Stern Keeps Trying. Thursday, July 27 @ 9PM, The Yard Theatre. Tickets live!!!
Julian Stern Keeps Trying @ Edinburgh Fringe! August 4-13!
Sam Salem @ Flappers. September 28th. My friend the hilarious and famous Sam Salem is doing a one night only big honkin’ set at Burbank’s finest club, and I’m one of the supporting acts. Shall be a party.
Garden Comedy! September 8th. Tickets to come!
Hello Sternal Journalists,
I cannot find my laptop charger and am afraid I left it on one of the planes I spent 17 hours in on Thursday, but we’ll figure that out tomorrow. Point is, I’m doing this SternJourn on my phone which is tedious but will likely make for a more concise and enjoyable product for you, the reader.
Quick housekeeping: as you can see, I am starting to have more shows coming up and I will also do my best to keep the calendar updated in my Instagram bio and Linktree so that if you have an inkling of attending a show it will be easy as hell for you to find all the necessary details.
In terms of the shows I currently have, if you’re in LA on July 27th, that Yard Theatre preview of my Fringe show is going to be a blast and it is a real all-hands-on-deck-I’d-love-to-pack-it-out situation! If you’re thinking of coming to LA, that could be a great time! And if you’re like “I’ll get my tickets eventually…” why wait?? Get ‘em now! I really wanna do a “LOW TICKET WARNING” post but I hate lying, so the sooner people who were gonna buy tickets anyway buy their tickets, the sooner I can do that!
Housekeeping over!
Today, a CHALLENGE! A lot of you loved “Find the cat” from a couple months back, so here’s something in a somewhat similar vein.
How many celebrity names can you get off this Greek poster in one minute?
Yes, I am still talking about Greece. Specifically the Greek alphabet. I am ashamed to say that I mainly found the Greek alphabet annoying.
This is a completely unfair take. It is a great alphabet and it is by some metrics the first alphabet, as all alphabet-ish things before it were “abjads” (great work—just learned it), letter systems which only include consonants.
But it also has a bunch of totally new letter, and some of the letters we use meaning totally different things (most egregiously—their Rs look like Ps, so Sternal Journal would be STEPNAL JOUPNAL, except a lot of the other letters would be different too.
So anyway, I should have learned the language better before returning the land of my ancestors, but I didn’t and this led to a lot of headache-y squinting at signs or menus to try to deduce what it was I even wanted to google translate.
The only time it wasn’t annoying was when I was walking by the indie movie theater near where I was staying, as it had a big poster of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City out front. The movie has like 20 people in it, at least half of whom are very famous.
So the poster acted as a sort of Rosetta Stone. When I walked by, I would try to make out a new name and then reverse engineer an understanding of the letters. It was fun and educational, two of my favorite things.
So you now you, dear reader, get to have the same experience! Below will be a picture of the poster. Before you scroll, put one minute on the clock! Once you’re ready, see how many names you can pick out before the time is up.
Ready? A minute on the clock? Aaand GO!
How’d you do
-If you got 0-1 name, you are Poor at Peloponnesianity.
-If you got 2-4, you’re an Awesome Athenian.
-And if you got 5+, you’re HELLA(S) GREEK.
Regardless of how many you got, I bet there’s a “how the hell does that spell *that*?” and if you’re curious, I’m happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.
Fun!?
Fun!
Okay, my eyes hurt from typing on the phone all this time so I gotta go but first!
Recommendations!
The Shortest History of Greece. Book. Exactly what it says on the tin. A tiny book that summarizes 3,000 years of Greek history. There’s a whole series of these books so if there’s a place you want a primer on, it’s probably out there!
M3GAN. Movie. Watched this on the plane. It was as good as everyone said. i personally do not think it’s scary if anyone was holding off because of that. Way goofier, though there is death and gore.
A Cook’s Tour. Book. I picked up Anthony Bourdain’s follow-up to Kitchen Confidential somewhat cautiously because I’d heard it wasn’t as good, but I’m loving every second of it and think it just picks right up where he left off.
“Wait, should I not be drinking airplane coffee?” Podcast episode. If you’ve ever wondered that, this episode of Search Engine (Reply All PJ’s new podcast 😬) gives a great answer. Having trouble hyperlinking, so here:
Alright, that’s all for this week! Sending love and vowels!
Julian