A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For February 16-22, 2022, 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. If you're looking to amp up the drama and tension of your newsletter experience, we recommend that, as you read, you play the sound of an elevated train drawing inexorably closer, and that you slowly increase the volume and intensity the nearer you get to the end of the email. It worked in The Godfather and we think the same principle should apply to newsletters as well.

---

What We Enjoyed This Week

My Real Life as a Writer vs. the Award-Winning Biopic About My Life as a Writer by Allie Rubin (McSweeney's) Switching between "real life" and "biopic" is a great structure that allows for some really fun setups and punchlines. It's particularly impressive that the "real life" sections are funny in their own right while still doing the work of teeing up the "biopic" sections. There are also lots of great recurring details woven throughout that pull the piece together and help it build to a satisfying final beat.

Unfortunately, We Can’t Hire You After Seeing That 2010 Photo of You Drinking a Beer When You Were Sixteen by Rachel Keller (McSweeney's) A wonderful new addition to the "your worst fears turn out to be real" canon. (See also: "An Imagined Conversation Between the Construction Workers Upstairs From Me" and "Everything I Am Afraid Might Happen If I Ask New Acquaintances to Get Coffee".) The narrator's formal but chiding and slightly disappointed tone is nice and specific and leads to a lot of fun lines--but it never pulls too much focus.

Transcript for a Clip Show of a Sitcom That Doesn’t Exist by Joshua Bohnsack (Barrelhouse) Here at HRHQ we're BIG fans of jokes about TV shows that don't exist. The transcript format allows this piece to briskly move through a whole fake sitcom episode without getting too long, and leaves more room to play with the prose than screenplay format might. The form also works to generate laughs by giving readers space to fill in the visuals (particularly effective in the guest stars section).

---

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 #30.

Things to Do in Philadelphia that Don't Involve Beating My Ass with a Big Hammer by Jon Plester (Points in Case) They say not to judge a book by its cover--but this is a great title. Just top notch. And the piece lives up to the hype! Pat's! Gino's! Pat's! Gino's. Philadelphia...what a city.

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

Friend of the Newsletter Mike Sacks had a new book come out this week called Passing on the Right! Like his previous books, it's a parody, and this one is a fake memoir by Skippy “Batty” Battison, "the worst person in comedy...a total mediocrity of a comedy writer and comedian who becomes a conservative after he blames the rest of the world for his failures." There's more info and a link to snag a copy here on Mike's website -- check it out! 

---

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!