A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #246
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For July 20-26, 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. Former President Obama shared his Summer Booklist for 2022, and once again we've reached out to his people to see if, 1) he has any plans to make a summer reading list of digital newsletters, and 2) he would want to include us. We haven't heard back yet but we have had a few sign-ups from secret-service.gov email addresses, so fingers crossed!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Big Baby Brody Calls It A Career by Sam Allemang (McSweeney's) As a writer, it can be useful to think of character monologues as stage pieces: where is the speaker located? Who are they talking to? The strength of the pro wrestler archetype that Sam leans into does a lot of the heavy lifting to set this piece up, but he also nicely frames this as Big Baby Brody's update for all the Babymaniacs out there, which gives the reader a great sense of that stage-picture-like place and tone.
A Timeline Of My Thoughts In The One Hour After I Leave A Party by Emily Kling (Slackjaw) Formatting this as a timeline gives the piece momentum and direction, which gives Emily plenty of opportunity for fun runners and callbacks.
Mariah Carey’s Cookies are Not A Sweet, Sweet Fantasy by Lauren Harkawik (The Takeout) This piece is part mystery, part food review, part exposé, and very, very enjoyable. Lauren also includes some great pitches for cookie names that frankly, Mariah Carey's cookie people should pay for the rights to.
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 #90.
Wow, Weather by Riane Konc (The New Yorker) Friend of the Show, Riane Konc, has about a million great pieces to choose from--and no doubt, we will get to them all. But, we chose this one because, as we write this newsletter, it's raining outside. Ok, end of blurb!
No, seriously, we picked this piece because Riane does such a fantastic job establishing and maintaining voice. That's hard enough in and of itself, but Riane gives herself the extra challenge of having the speaker be a high-status idiot--that this person has truly no idea what they're talking about, but has to appear like they do. So, Riane has a tightwire to walk: She has to include specifics, but not too many. She has to hit tropes, while viewing them through a lens of someone who clearly doesn't understand them. She has to convey emotion, but give no foundation as to why that emotion exists. It's difficult, and it works to great effect.
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
As you've probably seen, our intergalactic choose-your-own-adventure comedy show Space Council is back on August 18th at 8 PM EST, streaming over Zoom! If you're curious about what the responsibilities and tools of the Space Council are, check out this Guide To Serving on Space Council, which lays out everything a prospective Councilor needs to know! If you think you're up to the task, click over here to reserve your ticket!
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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!