A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #328
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For February 14-20, 2024
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. This past Sunday would have been the 35th birthday of our friend, co-founder, and favorite writer, Brian Agler. Every year for his birthday, his wife Claire organizes a fundraiser called Brian's Birthday Gift and this year the gift is donations for RIP Medical Debt. In Claire's words:
"When Brian was sick, his chemotherapy pills at one point cost OVER A THOUSAND DOLLARS... per pill. We were so fortunate that his insurance covered the vast majority of his care - which allowed us to focus on spending time together. Everyone deserves the same. [RIP Medical Debt] buys debt at a steep discount, in bundles of millions of dollars at a time...People across the country then receive letters that their debt has been wiped out - and that's it."
You can find out more about RIP Medical Debt on their website.
More than $10k has already been donated in Brian's memory, and if you could pitch in too, it would mean the world to us. The link to donate is here, and make sure to dedicate your donation to Brian's Birthday Gift!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Excerpts from the Show Bible for The Fribbles, A 1980s Children’s Cartoon by Dan McCoy (McSweeney's) This piece is first and foremost a joke bonanza, filled with delightful and strange details. But we also loved this format choice -- a show bible is a bit niche, but it's something that gives the premise a unique and specific expression. It also makes for some fun implied humor, like the fact that this showrunner has likely had to repeatedly yell at their staff for turning in scripts that are too sexual.
Excerpts from a Posting for My Ideal Job by Danielle Kraese (The New Yorker) Great week for "Excerpts from" pieces! Danielle's writing here is nice and punchy, and this one is also impressive for how it walks that difficult line between broad and narrow jokes -- this listing could be for any number of different jobs, but we get a precise sense of what it would be like to do it.
Study Finds Whatever Your Landlord Is Doing Is Probably Illegal by Freddie Shanel (Reductress) We've gushed about how much we love Freddie's work in the past, particularly their skill with silly premises. We particularly enjoy how Freddie finds humor by avoiding specificity here, defaulting instead to the general, but very funny, repeated punchline of "it's illegal!"
-- AD --
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(Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!)
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 #133.
We Need to Sync Up About that Meeting you Just Requested by Leslie Ylinen (The Belladonna) Wow, when you see it all there on one page, it kind of makes you realize that the way we work today is absurd. I mean, people used to make things in this country. Now, what, we Slack all day? We...meme? This one is going to sting for a bit.
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 three spots left in his intro to short humor workshop starting on March 2nd! He also just announced two new advanced workshops starting on March 9th and March 14th, respectively.
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.
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