A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #332
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For March 13-19, 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. Big news! Friend of the Newsletter Evan Waite has a new book coming out on April 16th called Life Wants You Dead! To celebrate, we're hosting a very special, very free, very online edition of An Evening of Humorous Readings on April 10th, featuring Evan giving us a sneak peek at the book, as well as readings by Jiji Lee, Sarah Pappalardo, and Seth Reiss! We'll have more info about the book and the show in future newsletters, but be sure to RSVP here!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Phrases for Hiring Committees to Use Instead of “We’re a Family” by Ryan Jackson (McSweeney's) This is a crisp and simple piece, paying close attention to the implications behind the phrase "we're a family." Ryan finds impressively specific ways to recreate the tone of that phrase: gesturing at inclusivity, but landing in an off-putting and patronizing manner, and saying much more than intended.
We're the Bank That Acquired Your Bank and You Have to Trust Us by Maury Levine (Points in Case) Excellent heightening here, as Maury takes the reader from acquisition to acquisition. This is a nice example of how you can explore as you heighten: There's lots of variety between the bank's different owners, but never adding variety in a way that steps backward in absurdity.
Notable Sandwiches #89: Hot Dog by Talia Lavin (The Sword And The Sandwich) As long-time readers will know, we're always interested when the conversation turns to hot dogs--for example, here's Brian talking about a former NYC mayor's hot-dog-pun-filled speech. This piece, from Talia Lavin's excellent newsletter, is an attempt to get to the bottom of the age-old question, "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" Talia asked "thirty professors of semiotics, linguistics, ontology, psycholinguistics, information science and other pertinent disciplines" and their answers do not disappoint, ranging from the funny to the profound.
YOUR AD HERE!
Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!
And feel free to send us an email if you have questions.
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 #136.
Other Trader Joe's Spice Mixes by Sara Lebow (The Belladonna) We've never played volleyball here at HRHQ (bad knees!) but we are familiar with the concept of set-ups and spikes. That's what you have here. Sara sets every section up with ease and then spikes the joke(s). It's a great example of a great style of piece.
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 JUST announced his lineup of April humor writing workshops! He's got advanced classes starting on April 2nd and April 6th, and an intro class starting on April 30th! Writing from past workshops has gone on to be published by The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and more!
This Sunday at 5 PM is the Some Fun Lines One Year Anniversary Show at Caveat! The line-up and hosts are incredible, don't miss it!
And join us on April 3rd for a Hangout of Humorous Writing! We'll be at Peculier Pub (145 Bleecker St. NYC) starting at 6 PM -- stop by and say hey!
Other Humorous Writing News
A quick update: Back in issue #329, we ran the Reductress piece "How I Keep My Skin Dewy and Moisturized by Riding a Log Flume Twice a Day", and we have since been alerted that this piece was based on a headline pitch by Britt Migs! Thanks for writing in with the info!
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!