A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #312
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For October 25-31, 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. We don't get many trick-or-treaters at Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ), so this past Tuesday we did our yearly ritual of passing some ancient candies back and forth between each other. Please, come by our place next year if you want some chocolates that have melted and reformed a couple times, or a bag of "Vote John Kerry" jellybeans!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Pumpkin Carving with Kids Bingo by Nikki Campo (The Belladonna) There are some great specifics here about parenting, Rodin, neighbors, and, of course, pumpkin carving, but what really impresses us about this piece is how Nikki manages to work in a bunch of callbacks. Not only does the bingo card format limit the word count available for callbacks, but since you can't control the order the audience is going to read the beats, the callbacks have to work however they're read -- not a simple task for a writer!
Teen Bands of Y2K TV, ranked by how well they’d do on TikTok by Celia Mattison (The Stopgap) This is a fun juxtaposition of teen cultures, and Celia does a great job of seriously evaluating how these fictional bands might fare online today. And there's even mention of one of TV's wackiest cameos, Skid Row's Sebastian Bach on Gilmore Girls. (Relevant to the spooky week: check out Celia's piece ranking Draculas.)
Thanksgiving Rider by Simon Rich (The New Yorker) This piece does a lot of things really well: it's an excellent parody of a legal document, a very specific exploration of the perils of going home for Thanksgiving, and is chock full of funny acronyms. Lots to love. And boy, doesn't it seem like the Thanksgiving humor pieces come earlier and earlier every year?
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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 #63.
Joke’s On You, Starbucks… The Screenplay I’m Writing In Your Store Is Far Worse Than Any Porn I Could Watch by Dan Capera (Weekly Humorist) Look, we've all been there. We've all written humor in a Starbucks. We've all been at a Starbucks while someone watches porn. What Dan Capera understands is that these are natural laws, and they are unbending.
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
Luke's got just TWO spots left in his short humor workshop starting on November 11th! Write three pieces in four weeks, get notes and feedback, and meet other funny folks. Luke's also doing an hour-long intro to short humor workshop for the UCB Training center on November 16th--no cap on attendance for that one!
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!