A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #349
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For July 11-16, 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 have to ask you guys to be serious for a second and answer an honest question: Do we seem like the kind of newsletter editors who are good at boogie-boarding? We hope it’s clear by now that we are not only very good, but also upstanding and gracious members of the wider bo-boarding community. There are so many ocean-sports posers in the newsletter world, and we want to make sure we’re not getting lumped in!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Live Like Prehistoric Man by Purchasing My Elaborate Supplement Routine by Andrew Patrick Clark (McSweeney’s) A clever observation at the heart of this premise, but what makes this one really succeed is the complexity of the character voice. With lines like “It’s a shame that those tasked with healing us wind up hurting us,” and “After coexisting with nature for millennia, we somehow lost our way,” Andrew gives his narrator emotions and opinions, which makes the whole piece so much more interesting and believable.
This Groundbreaking Comedy Album Has Held Up Perfectly, If You Remember This Candy Commercial from the ’70s by Anthony Scibelli (McSweeney’s) Speaking of believable, this piece has tremendous specifics that manage to be so goofy and so plausible. This piece is also a great balancing act — there’s a lot of moving parts to this premise, but Anthony handles them all impressively well.
Should I Eat This Food That Was Left In The Break Room At Work? A Flowchart by Adam Dietz (Slackjaw) Short but writerly, Adam has a lot of fun with the lower word count here. The design of this one is excellent too — it’s just chaotic enough, while remaining completely legible.
-- AD --
Hosted by Lana Schwartz (The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney's), Letters & Soda brings together standup comedy, humor pieces, fiction, and essay readings in a way they never have been before (or at least not in recent memory).
The next show is Wednesday, July 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Greats of Craft in Long Island City and features:
Brandon Follick
Chandler Dean
Charu Sinha
Carrie Wittmer
Alise Morales
Jess Salomon
Chloé CaldwellTickets (only $7.18) are available here!
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An Old Favorite
Report: 80 Percent of Vegan Leather Jackets End Up in Landfills, On Cool Seagulls by Lauren Lavín (The Hard Times) This is one of those pieces that burns itself into your brain because it has such a fun, silly premise. Lauren also fills it with great lines like “It’s harder for them to fly, but when they do, they look extremely rebellious.” I also love the Photoshopped image here! Sure it’s a little rough and imperfect, but it’s infinitely better than an AI image, which always looks too smooth and blended. I’m begging you, editors, don’t resort to the button-click crap, I much prefer the beautifully goofy amateurishness of this smoking gull.
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
James has been working on a big piece for Lit Hub that came out today: a ranking of the greatest ALA Read posters called “100 of the Greatest Posters of Celebrities Urging You to Read.” See if any of the posters from your childhood library made the cut!
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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