A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For December 2-8, 2021, 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.  We can all agree that olive tapenade flavored potato chips would be really good. So why doesn't any company make them? We're all tired of dipping our potato chips into tapenade, let's just cut out the middleman already!

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What We Enjoyed This Week

What Is Your State's Official Beverage? by Allie Rubin (Points in Case)
The tone of this piece is just marvelous. We love the use of "we" and (not to give too much away) the repetition of the phrase "tall, cool glass of milk". It's also a wonderful example of the benefits of committing HARD to a very specific very weird thing.

The Most Misquoted Movie Lines of All Time by Sean McGowan (The New Yorker)
And speaking of committing hard to a specific weird thing: This piece! Sticking with variations on the one Star Wars quote is ultimately more satisfying than a broader survey of a bunch of made-up quotes would be. Plus it's loaded with fun callbacks and running jokes that pull everything together in a really nice way.

ZERO: The Health Insurance That Covers Nothing by Kate Anderson (Slackjaw)
We had to double-check to make sure that this was not just a description of the health insurance we actually already have.

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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 #3.

A Memo to the New Employee About Parking by Seth Reiss (McSweeney's Internet Tendency)

Seth is a wildly talented humor writer, and this piece is a perfect example of why. It takes a simple premise and heightens to a truly insane level--but stays grounded because the character, and rules of this world, are totally clear. What's more, we've all read a memo that feels like this, even if this particular memo gets really bonkers, really quickly.
 

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. 

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Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Luke's just got two or three spots left in his Short Humor Editing Workshop! It's on Saturday 12/19/20 from 1-3PM EST via zoom, and it's all about editing and polishing your short humor drafts to get them ready to submit, and how to get and give helpful feedback when working with others on humor writing.

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.

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