A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For November 24-30, 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. Sorry if you were hoping for one of our trademark HRHQ bits: We're gonna use this space to plug our new show, Space Council, one extra time. We hope you'll come check it out on Dec 8th and/or Dec 18th at 7 PM! See more details at the end of the newsletter, and/or by clicking this link. Thank you for your kind attention!

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What We Enjoyed This Week

10 Fake Phone Call Responses You Can Use to Leave Early like an Action Hero by Mary Flannery (Points in Case) This is a truly comprehensive compendium of all the different ways the classic "hero taking a phone call that changes everything and establishes them as a confident, mysterious, badass" action movie scene can play out--and each scenario is well-observed and pithily rendered.

Post-Dinner Interview with a Twelve-Year-Old Who Sat at the Grown-Ups’ Table for the First Time on Thanksgiving by Nathaniel Brown (McSweeney's) Taking the vocabulary and stock phrases of sports interviews and applying them to Thanksgiving works like a charm. This piece packs in so many great specifics, of both the sports AND Thanksgiving variety, but still leaves room for character details to shine through the tropes without distracting from the main joke. 

How To Ask Your Father-In-Law To Pass The Potatoes During Thanksgiving Dinner Without Revealing That At That Very Moment, Your Crew Is Breaking Into His Safe Room To Steal His Original Christ In The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee By Rembrandt Van Rijn by Christopher Shelley (Slackjaw) This piece is so committed to the hyperspecific pattern it sets up, and has such a single-minded focus on the repetition of certain phrases, even though you KNOW what's going to happen in each paragraph, you can't help but find it funny when it does. It's also a great example of a long title that works by getting really specific, very strange, and by making the length of the title itself part of the joke.
 

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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 #81.

New High School Senior Portrait Packages by Taylor Kay Phillips (Points in Case) Brian, here. I don't remember a lot about my high school senior portrait--but I do remember that I was 'wearing' a tuxedo in it, which is to say, I was wearing the top of a tuxedo (a jacket, shirt, and tie combo) that had been stitched together, and draped over my head. Apparently, that was more efficient.

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

There's less than one week until the first performance of James and Luke's new show, Space Council, an interactive sci-fi comedy where the audience plays as advisors to the King of Mars, and must tackle a planetary crisis! The show is being performed twice, on December 8th and 18th at 7 pm, and it's different every time, so you should come to both!

Check out this all-star cast:

Dylan Adler as the King of Mars
Nicole Adsit as the Speaker of the Space Council
and Corin Wells as Every Other Character You Meet Along the Way
 
More info and details are HERE!

The show is at Super Secret Arts, a new venue in Gowanus, Brooklyn. There aren't any a la carte tickets, but with a one-month membership (just $25), you can get into BOTH Space Council shows as well as every other show at Super Secret Arts until the end of the year!

If you have any questions about it, let us know! The venue also has a helpful frequently asked questions page.
   

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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.

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