A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #152
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For September 30-October 6, 2020, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. It's Nobel Prize season and we're once again embarrassed to announce that we're in the middle of multiple feuds with multiple Scandanavian governments and institutions. To quickly summarize our side of the story: 1) there should be Nobel Prizes for Newsletters, Short Humor, and Short Humor Newsletters; 2) people shouldn't get so mad about getting hundreds of very funny letters asking for said Prizes; and 3) King Carl XVI Gustaf should really write us back, please!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Data 4 Sale by Evan Waite and River Clegg (The New Yorker) Friends of the Newsletter Evan and River are consistently able to find fun and unique angles on broad trends. The juxtaposition of small cobbler business specifics and details about the tech industry's penchant for hoovering up data makes for a lot of great jokes.
My Side of the Story: I Am Super Freak by Halli Goldman (Robot Butt) Halli has a lot of fun here with this premise, using the classic short humor device of giving a voice to a previously voiceless character.
I Hope You Don't Get Anxious When a Run-On Sentence Is Internally Fragmented (Due to Parentheses or Lengthy Digressions) Before It Is Grammatically Resolved by Woody Fu (Points In Case) Speaking of literary devices: When format and premise join together to cleverly reinforce the main joke of a piece, as is the case here, it's what scholars call a "Megazord."
"Popeye" Submission Packet by Joe Rumrill (Twitter) Lots of amazing jokes in this piece, but we really want to highlight the fun format of a submission packet Joe's using here. Some of the best pieces come from finding a fresh framing, or format, or voice--challenging yourself to find a unique way to situate a premise can lead to great results. And Joe: "An inside scoop we've acquired/and found out you're hired/to write '30s "Popeye" scripts! **toot toot!**"
'Oh My Dear Me!' 8 Places I Definitely Was When My Rich Husband Was Murdered by Sara Costello (Flexx) This piece is another example of well-done short-humor formatting: Halli nests a character monologue into the form of a listicle. It gives the piece a fun pace, slowly doling out great specifics and fun reveals.
An Old Favorite
This week's Old Favorite is a Brian Agler Selection (TM)--a piece whose accompanying note was written by Brian--from Newsletter #33.
So You've Forgotten Someone's Name at a Party by Glenn Boozan (The New Yorker) Glenn is a rock star; always has been, always will. Well, ok, we don't know if she always has been. Presumably, she was, at a time, an infant. But, we'll never know. We don't exactly have a "fact-checking department" here at the Newsletter of Humorous Writings.
Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Denise, the very funny sketch team Luke has been directing, has another show coming up this Friday at 9PM Eastern on Twitch. The final sketch of the evening will be performed LIVE on stream, and the whole show in general is gonna be a bunch o' laughs.
Emily Flake has launched a very cool writing residency for womxn humor writers called St. Nell's Humor Writing Residency for Ladies. The goal is to create a series of residencies and a community, as well as workshops, reading series, a newsletter, and more! It's a fantastic undertaking that you should definitely donate to.
A lot of folks are playing tabletop role-playing games over Zoom these days, and we have two funny, original TTRPGs to recommend by Mark Paglia. One is a solo game about running your own bookstore, and the other is a P.G. Wodehouse-inspired game called "Toffs in Tweeds." You can find both games here!
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!