A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #331
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For March 6-12, 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. We're excited to announce that we're doing another Hangout of Humorous Readings! It will be at Peculier Pub (145 Bleecker St.) on Wednesday, April 3rd at 6PM Eastern. All humor writers and humor writing fans are welcome--hope to see you there!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Where Stars Keep Their Oscars by Jen Spyra (The New Yorker) We're always happy to see a new piece from Friend of the Newsletter (FotN) Jen Spyra, who is always working on neat projects--including writing for the new show, The Regime, along with another FotN, Seth Reiss.
Mad Libs for a Best-Selling Romantasy Epic by Emma Soren (Points in Case) A Mad Libs piece can fall flat if it asks the reader to do too much work figuring out the funniest way to fill in the blanks. This piece succeeds for many reasons, one of the main ones being that the prompts are so wonderfully specific and funny in and of themselves ("normal man’s name except all vowels replaced with Ys").
How to Accept an Award Without Making Your Voters Regret It by Chandler Dean (McSweeney's) A perfect blend of genuinely good advice and genuinely good jokes. If you haven't been keeping up with Chandler's column on speechwriting, go back and check out the previous entries ASAP.
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An Old Favorite
What I Have Always Imagined Being on the Set of Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” Video Shoot Was Like by Gary M. Almeter (McSweeney's) Gary hilariously subverts our expectation of '80s metal debauchery with his hair-product-packed vision of a surprisingly wholesome music video shoot.
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
Masters of the Nefarious, the cult classic comedy comic that Luke translated, is out now! It's "wonderfully funny" according to one review. You can also check out an excerpt on McSweeney's to get a sample of what's in store.
Next week on March 24th at Caveat is Some Fun Lines' reading showcase! The bill is nutso great, including James Folta (hey!), Josh Gondelman, Rima Parikh, Freddie Shanel, Charu Sinha, & Jen Spyra, and hosts Johnathan Appel, Chandler Dean, & Maeve Dunigan. Grab a ticket now!
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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