September 14, 2021

A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #201

A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For September 8-14, 2021, a roundup of the week's finest prose 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. Everybody always gets so excited about the Met Gala, but for our money, the best New York City Museum Gala is the American Museum of Natural History Gala. Every year the theme is dinosaurs and rocket ships, but it's also okay to dress up as a geode if you want to. All the attendees take a picture in their costumes under the blue whale and the whole thing wraps up by 8:30 PM so everyone can go home and get to bed on time.

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What We Enjoyed This Week

As the Author of This Sex Column, I Assure You, I Have Had Sex Before by Emily Delaney (McSweeney's) It can often be difficult to have your humor piece revolve around a narrator denying something that is actually true, but Emily pulls it off with ease, tying everything together with very funny turns of phrase ("had a classic round of sex") and an unwavering commitment to the French onion soup detail.

Character Descriptions From My First Screenplay, An Epic Masterpiece That Will Redefine Cinema by Heidi Lux (Slackjaw) "Screenplay character descriptions" is a really wonderful, original format, and the whole piece lives up to the creativity of that format with great specifics and a nice variety of beats.  

Clif Builders Chocolate Peanut Butter Flavor Minis by Kelly Zentgraf (McSweeney's) A good rule of thumb in humor writing is that more specific = more funny. McSweeney's "Reviews of New Food" column, in which people describe their personal, particular relationships with, and opinions about, strange foods, is consistently some of the most specific writing on the site. This review is no exception: The prose is delightful, the perspective is unique, and it's a classic example of how to get laughs from thinking (ludicrously) deeply about something that most people don't give a second thought to. ("Clif Bars are ubiquitous and unremarkable; that makes them steadfast and simple companions, the easiest option in a world beset by complexity, and an existential balm.")
 

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An Old Favorite

This week's Old Favorite pick and writeup come from Lee Sachs, a writer and monologuist who is also the curator of the Museum of Marketing Madness. Thanks for writing in, Lee!

I'll Ping You by Gary M. Almeter (McSweeney's) Lee writes, "Everybody should have a favorite McSweeney’s writer, even if that writer has had more pieces published than you’ve had rejections (his 35 to my 17). Gary M. Almeter can take an idea, run with it, lasso and hog tie it, dip it in peach mango salsa and still have room to squeeze in a reference to a child’s story about a duck named “Ping.” The reference to “The Story of Ping” is discrete because Gary packs so much into this. But I know he MUST be referring to the duck from the story or why else would name-drop a duck named Ping. Study this work carefully students!"
 

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

Registration has opened for the October AND November editions of Luke's workshop, "Let's Write a Short Humor Piece." These are the last two sessions of this workshop he'll be offering this year, so if you don't want to wait til January, snag one of these spots! 
 

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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

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