A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #330
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For February 28-March 5, 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. A question to ponder inspired by recent viewings of Terminator 2 and Black Rain: Steel mills in action movies really just let anybody walk right in, huh?
What We Enjoyed This Week
When a Recipe Says It’s “Quick and Easy” by JiJi Lee and Patrick Clair (McSweeney's) A great example of the benefits of mining your subject for the funniest possible details. There's all kinds of terminology and vocabulary associated with recipes, but "sprig of chervil" and "fluted ramekins," for example, are particularly funny phrases that add a lot to this piece.
“What School Form Did I Just Sign?”: A Game Show for Parents by Ali Solomon (McSweeney's) "Unusual game show" is a really fun form to use in comedy, but it can be difficult to pull off in prose. Ali quickly sets up three specific, clearly differentiated characters, ensuring that the reader never loses track of the action.
In ‘Joys of Jell-O,’ There’s Nothing You Can’t Do With Colored Gelatin by Aimee Levitt (Eater) Come for the terrific lede and the truly wild recipes ("Ring Around the Tuna"), stay to learn about the surprisingly fascinating history of Jell-O.
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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 #56.
Op-Ed: Kim And Kanye Are Headed For Divorce, And I'm Headed To The Bathroom To Pass This Kidney Stone by Alex Gonzalez (Flexx) In addition to baseball humor, I'm also a sucker for pieces that force a parallel between two wildly disparate ideas, and yet somehow make it feel totally natural to talk about them in the same breath.
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
Some Fun Lines, NYC's top humor open mic, is hosting a reading showcase at Caveat on March 24th! James is on the bill, as well as a killer line-up of Josh Gondelman, Rima Parikh, Freddie Shanel, Charu Sinha, & Jen Spyra, and hosts Johnathan Appel, Chandler Dean, & Maeve Dunigan. Tickets are still available at a lower price! Get on it!
Luke's got just FIVE spots left (including scholarship spots) in his upcoming Thursday night short humor workshop starting March 14th! He's also doing a one-off workshop on translation and short humor writing that is completely FREE for people who have ordered copies of Masters of the Nefarious, the comic he translated, out on March 12th!
Other Humorous Writing News
Believe it or not, short humor isn't the only type of comedy! There are at least one or two other kinds that we're aware of, and if you're interested in them, you'll want to keep an eye on Leah Abram's new, sure-to-be-excellent Jezebel column, "Hot Mic", about live comedy shows in New York City.
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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