A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #244
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For July 6-12, 2022.
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. If you haven't checked out our YouTube channel recently, head on over to watch our just-uploaded video, "Top 10 Nephew Betrayals." We know #1 will be controversial, so write in to let us know what you think, and sound off in the comments about times you've been pranked, duped, or otherwise betrayed by a nephew.
What We Enjoyed This Week
We Gave up Lattes for a Month and, With Our Savings, We Bought One Big-Ass Latte by Alex Aho (Hard Times) The idea of the "big-ass latte" is delightfully wacky and very funny, but if that were the only punchline, it might wear thin. Alex does a great job of keeping things fresh by mixing up the descriptions of the latte and by exploring BAL-related questions: How does the big-ass latte get made? How might it be transported? What's it like to drink the big-ass latte?
What I’ve been up to the last four months by Alexandra Petri (The Washington Post) A wonderful mix of heartfelt and hilarious--not an easy balance to strike, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Alexandra Petri. The pacing is appropriately relentless, driving the reader to the jokes and nicely reflecting the subject matter.
How Marriage Makes Everything Fancy by Eli Grober (The New Yorker) The repetition built into the structure of this piece works great, creating satisfying rhythms of setups and punchlines that are mirrored across the paragraphs. The jokes hit even harder because Eli manages to find ways to surprise us even though we know how the pattern is going to play out.
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 #69 (nice).
If You Liked Tough Mudder You'll Love The Latest Obstacle Course For Adults...Navigating Your Depression by Riane Konc (McSweeney's) Reading this article is, easily, the closest any of us will ever come to doing one of these obstacle courses.
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
SPACE COUNCIL, our interactive sci-fi comedy where the audience votes to determine what happens in the show, is making its glorious return August 18th at 8pm EST/5pm PST on Zoom. If you like role playing games, choose-your-own-adventure books, sci-fi tropes, and/or laughing, you're sure to enjoy SPACE COUNCIL. Reserve your (pay-what-you-can) tickets today!
Luke's got two workshops coming up in August! Let's Write a Short Humor Piece and Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces. Sign up now and you'll have short humor drafts ready to submit by the start of September. (Pieces from the June workshops are already getting published!)
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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
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!