A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For July 12-18, 2023

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. One of the ways we try to celebrate writers in this newsletter is by letting you know how you can find out more about them and where you can read more of their work. In the past we've often done this by linking to writers' Twitter accounts, but given the rapidly-deteriorating condition of that particular app, we've decided that we're going to start including links to writers' personal sites instead. If you're a writer who doesn't have a personal site, we'll make our best judgment about where to link to, whether it's one of your social media profiles or your author page on a publication's website, etc. And this is also a great opportunity to share a bit of friendly career advice: It's a good idea to have an online portfolio of your work that you control. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just something that's easy for you to keep updated and to share with anyone who might be interested!

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What We Enjoyed This Week

It’s the Job of My Dreams, But I’d Have to Write a Cover Letter, So Nevermind by Adam Dietz (McSweeney's) A really fun exploration of how absurdly hard and unpleasant it can feel to write a cover letter. "We’re not talking about a little extra work, we’re talking about a cover letter. They might as well be asking me to wrestle Stone Cold Steve Austin or catch fish in a babbling brook with my bare hands."

The Moments When I Realized My Dates Were a Bunch of Spiders in a Trench Coat by Daniel Licht (Points in Case) Look, it's basically always funny when a bunch of things in a trench coat pretend to be a human. What's particularly great about this piece is how the situation builds as the character adjusts their approach after each new spider date. Even though we know the character is always going to wind up at a restaurant with a bunch of spiders in a trench coat, Daniel manages to keep surprising us with the specifics of how they try and fail to avoid that outcome.

My Lumbago Isn’t Acting Up: On Disney World by Molly Young (The Paris Review) This very funny essay does something that fictional short humor pieces do all the time: It identifies something weird and then explores that weird thing by asking smart questions about it. Molly packs this article full of well-observed details, and manages to poke fun at the absurdities of Disney World without being mean-spirited or making jokes at the expense of the people who enjoy the park.
 

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An Old Favorite

This week's Old Favorite pick and writeup come from Yvie Jones. Thanks for writing in, Yvie!

It’s Quinoa’s World. We Just Live in It. by Juli Weiner (The New York Times) Yvie writes, "I'm always ready to LOL and roll my eyes at the hot/haute food trend du jour. But this NYT Opinion piece has occupied valuable real estate in my brain for a solid decade because it's so deftly written and quietly hilarious about, of all things, a once obscure Peruvian grain. The deftly written piece reflects that weird year where, once it was deemed a superfood, many American food writers collectively decided one of the world's heartiest grains almost needed a lady in waiting and a personal masseuse before it would deign to canoodle with lowly onions and carrots on your dinner plate. Chef's kiss indeed."
 

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

Luke's got a single-session short humor workshop coming up on August 19th at 12PM Eastern! In it, you'll learn about different forms and different types of narration you can use in your short humor writing by doing some fun, funny, low-pressure writing exercises. It's always a blast seeing what great stuff people come up with in this class.
 

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Other Humorous Writing News

And in strike news: The big news this week was SAG-AFTRA striking, and The LA Times has a pretty good column about the actors joining the WGA, and where the situation is currently. Josh Gondelman also wrote about the state of the strikes for The Nation which includes the great line, "Maybe Iger could ask someone from the Imagineering wing of the Disney campus to dream up a fairer paradigm for compensation than his own capacity for creativity permits." Alex Press profiled one of the more prominent strikers on the picket, Adam Conover, for Jacobin. A good reminder, courtesy of Amy Thurlow, to always put the contract numbers being tossed around in context. Entertainment unionizing is spreading! We've been following Treegate, and the latest news is that it seems like Universal may have broken city ordinances when they chopped the ficuses that had been shading picketers. And we were interested to learn this week that A24 isn't in the AMPTP, and that they and a few other indie productions have agreed to SAG's terms and been given an interim agreement, which seems like a win-win. 

If you're looking to support striking workers from WGA and SAG, as well as Unite Here 11 hotel workers, Teamsters, and IATSE, here's a great list of mutual aid funds that could use your donations!

And as always, there's lots of info and ways to show solidarity on the WGA's Strike Hub!

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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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