#cjhunt

[octothorpz]

An ad for “Urban Outfiter’s” new We Are All Natives collection - “Indian wear for the rest of us.” Filmed by sketch comedy group Stupid Time Machine, this is a parody of everybody’s favorite controversial retailer. This Thanksgiving, let us all embrace the coy charm and original hipster style of the indigenous people our country displaced and killed by the millions.

Great work, CJ Hunt and Stupid Time Machine!!!

[theearlydraft-blog]

Here's to the Early Drafts

I'm a comedian.  By that, I mean I write comedy - sketches, web series, standup - that I put it up in front of people in hopes that they will like it and tell their friends "hey, you should check out CJ Hunt." At some point, I hope to get so good and have so many people like my work that I can get paid for it. I think about the things I want: a TV writing job, a spot on SNL, my own show. And these things feel so far away. I wonder if the life of a comedian is one spent constantly on your way. Constantly reaching. Chasing. Coveting the things you don't yet have. Lamenting the things you left behind in your haste. Obsessing about the next level. Whatever that is.  

I'm starting The Early Draft as a study of comedians on their way. Perhaps it's an effort to speed myself along or the opposite: to slow myself down and enjoy the ride.  Whatever the case, I'm interested in the thousands of dummies who have purposely chosen a career spent in-progress. I want to know about the chipping away. The little steps comedians take every day to get better at their craft. I want to know about the giant leaps, the falls, and the happy accidents. I want to know about the many messy drafts of oneself that a comedian goes through before finding his or her "thing."  I want to know how comedians are made.  

So that's The Early Draft: interviews with comedians in-the-making. Some of these will be stars, some of them will be names you haven't heard of... yet.  This started as a weekly column on NOLAvie.com, and will grow into a blog, podcast, and who knows what.  

Here's to everyone on their way. Here's to the rough edges. The jokes that don't work yet. Here's to the early drafts.     

[octothorpz]

Sitting in a quiet corner of a coffee shop, in front of the fireplace, during a thunderstorm.

This is incredible. I’m about to be SO productive.

[octothorpz]

[octothorpz]

You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. If it seems to you that I move in a world of certitudes, you, par contre, must benefit from the great privilege of youth, which is that you move in a world of mysteries. But both must be ruled by faith.

Anaïs Nin, on why emotional excess is essential to writing and creativity

[octothorpz]

it's like a dream version of this talk

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My grandmother used to say, “We don’t make friends, we recognize them.” It was an evening of recognition.

Jacky O'Shaughnessy #friends

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Party Boy  by Stupid Time Machine