A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #344
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For June 5-11, 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’ve tried normal sitting desks and standing desks, but what’s really worked for us are Taking A Knee desks, manufactured by America’s High School Football coaches. We’ve never felt more inspired to give 100% at work!
And we have a new Premium edition of the Newsletter headed to subscribers’ inboxes this weekend: have you signed up?
What We Enjoyed This Week
That’s the Grind, Baby, There Ain’t Nothing Like It by Layne Dixon (McSweeney’s) The form sets the tone and reinforces the voice here, taking bro jokes to even broier heights. The dad throughline really works, and Layne also nicely heightens the jargon and business lingo so that it starts to bend and fold in on itself in increasingly delirious ways.
We Are the Spiders of This House by Lisa Borders (McSweeney’s) Speaking of fun formal choices: The repeated opening phrase, frequent paragraph breaks, and aggressive all-caps really pull this one together. Lisa’s strong and clear formatting lets her reset the piece easily, no matter how far off on a tangent the spiders get.
A Brief History of Time Travel by Sean McGowan (McSweeney’s) These are some real good jokes! This premise is very loose and heightens aggressively, which might incline the piece towards randomness, but Sean’s exploration and world-building are always coherent. And again, the jokes are just great: “Time travel agencies began selling packaged experiences to popular historical destinations, like ‘The Fall of Pompeii’ and ‘Watch Joey Chestnut Eat Sixty-Eight Hot Dogs in 2009.’”
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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 #75.
My Daily Routine: Jasper Newman, 8 Months Old by Teddy Wayne and Greg Wayne (New York Times) Recently, there have been a lot of takes on the "daily routine" format, but this one feels different because of how sharply it satirizes the "fully-optimized life" guy by showing that, literally, a baby could do it. Also, Teddy wrote this with his brother. That's neat!
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
Just a reminder that MASTERS OF THE NEFARIOUS, the cult classic comedy comic that Luke translated, is on shelves now. Check out an excerpt, read a (glowing, starred) review, and if you’ve already bought it, thanks so much—and don’t forget to leave a review of your own!
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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