A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #363
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For October 16-22, 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 wound up with a nice little theme in our selections this week: Snacks and treats. So feel free to wrap this newsletter up, pop it in the fridge, and save it for when you get those post-lunch pre-dinner short humor cravings.
What We Enjoyed This Week
Confession: I Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar by Hunter Gardner (Points in Case) A terrific juxtaposition of hard-boiled noir tone and little kid vocabulary and specifics. Hunter skillfully captures the rueful, guilt-ridden emotional register noir characters so often have, which provides a hilarious contrast to the low-stakes “crime” the piece revolves around: “What I know now is that committing a no-no like this, it sticks to you, no matter how much milk you try to wash it down with.”
Honest Search Results for “Zucchini Bread Recipe” by Rachel Reyes (McSweeney’s) A very fun roundup of all the different ways you can get thwarted when you’re just trying to find a simple recipe online — with a much-appreciated mention of how AI has made this situation even worse. This piece also made us hungry for zucchini bread.
The Best Candy to Hand Out to Trick-or-Treaters, According to Kids by Amy McCarthy and Lesley Suter (Eater) If you’re planning on giving out candy this Halloween, you’ll want to take note of the extremely charming insights offered up by the kids interviewed for this article. “The rarest candy is Sugar Babies — I’ve never had one in my whole entire life.” “Those candies that are hard… I don’t like them and I spit them in the trash.” “To be the coolest house on the block, you would need spiderwebs, ghosts, LED lights and maybe some Power Ranger or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle balloons”
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An Old Favorite
The Most Embarrassing Ways I’ve Lost Eight Billion Dollars by Charlie Dektar (The New Yorker) As you can tell from the introductory quotes, this piece was originally inspired by current events. It still works almost two years later. Why? None of the jokes depend on specific references to the news story the piece is riffing on. The humor largely comes from the juxtaposition of huge amounts of money with very banal, commonplace situations—there are also lots of excellent, more purely wacky jokes as well. If you took those intro quotes out, you might not even realize this was originally a topical piece. A good example of how even if you’re writing something with a topical hook, you can still craft it in such a way that it’ll have a long shelf life.
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 Editors and Friends of the Newsletter
Masters of the Nefarious, the comedic cult classic graphic novel that Luke translated, was named one of the Best New Comics of 2024 for Adults by the New York Public Library. “It will have you laughing out loud at every audaciously unpredictable page, so be warned if you're taking this book on your morning commute.” Pick up a copy today or ask your local library to order one!
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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