A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #364
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For October 22-29, 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. Happy Halloween! Just a reminder that if you dress up as us for Halloween, you don’t have to play coy and call your costume “Beloved Humor Newsletter Writers“ or “Funny Weekly Dispatchers“ — we’re not litigious, just send us a picture!
What We Enjoyed This Week
A Medieval Peasant Reacts To Kid’s Halloween Jokes by Lillie Franks (Slackjaw) We’ve said it before, but Lillie has such a sterling command of specifics, and it lets her commit fully to this premise. There is very little winking to the audience or anachronisms, just honest reactions from the character heightened with great language and specificity.
If I Investigated Real Crimes Like I Watch Mystery Movies by Tom Ellison (Slackjaw) The short, connected scenes format is always a great choice for exploration: you can reset quickly and with minimal fuss. Tom drops us into a nice variety of crime situations, giving him plenty of set-ups and ways to heighten.
You Kids Think You’re Punk? Then Name Two SR-71 Albums by Nate Fernald (McSweeney’s) The idea of selling out or having more punk cred than someone else has always been more than a little silly, but Nate nails how the early aughts era of mall-rat pop punk is looking especially weird from the distance of 20 years.
Spooky Sounds For The Socially Anxious by Sarah Hutto, Phil Knittel, Nick Prueher, Scott Rothman, Mike Sacks This does a lot of things well all at once: It’s a parody, audio sketch, transcript, and humor piece rolled into one fun package. It’s worth clicking through to the audio — the sound design and performances are great!
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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 #33.
So You've Forgotten Someone's Name at a Party by Glenn Boozan (The New Yorker) Glenn is a rock star; always has been, always will. Well, ok, we don't know if she always has been. Presumably, she was, at a time, an infant. But, we'll never know. We don't exactly have a "fact-checking department" here at the Newsletter of Humorous Writings.
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’s got ONE spot left in his last INTRO to short humor class of 2024! And he’s got just ONE spot left in his last ADVANCED short humor workshop of 2024! Snag a spot now if you don’t want to wait til 2025 to take a class!
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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