For December 3-9, 2025

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. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the Hangout of Humorous Readings last night! It was a blast getting to see and catch up with so many of you and we hope you had a good time as well. And if you weren’t able to make it, hope to see you at the next one in 2026!

What We Enjoyed This Week

Casting Notice for the Unaired CW Pilot Young Hamlet by Scarlet Meyer (McSweeney’s) The casting notice form is a really fun vehicle for some great jokes about the conventions and clichés of teen dramas. And though this piece is about all the ways CW-style shows can go wrong, we couldn’t help but feel that this hypothetical take on Hamlet would also kinda rock. Scarlet, start working on that pilot (or send it to us if you’ve already written one)!

How I Built 22 Streams of Passive Income by Blackmailing the Starting Lineup of the Philadelphia Eagles by Ally Mason (Points in Case) There are so many great wacky specifics in this piece, starting with the choice to have the targets of the blackmail be the starting lineup of the Philadelphia Eagles. We’re particularly fond of: “Offensive tackle Jordan Mailata thought no one would ever find out about his secret cover band, Kn*Sync, a surreal collision of NSYNC's chart-topping hits with avant-garde electronica act ‘The Knife.’ Now I not only get hush money, but also a cut of the door, merch, and all CD sales.”

The Mastermind Box Cover: What the Hell Were They Thinking? by Robert Rooney (McSweeney’s) We love how specific this piece’s premise is and also the choice to explore the weirdness of this box cover art through an imagined pitch meeting. It reminded us in the best way of Abby Fenbert’s Toast classic, The Pitch Meeting for Wishbone.

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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 #81.

The Atlantic’s James Parker Reviews ‘Paw Patrol’ by W.F. Carolyn (Robot Butt) A few years back, you used to see a lot of humor pieces that followed this construction, "Famous Writer X Does Thing Y." For whatever reason (Budget cuts? Supreme Court? We're not really sure.) you don't see it as much anymore. And that's too bad! It's a solid structure, and it gives writers the chance to make a piece sing, as this one does, with hyper-specific language choices. Add this winner to the growing list of 'Paw Patrol'-related humor.

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

Luke’s reading some short humor at Some Fun Lines this Sunday at Caveat at 5PM. The lineup is STACKED — you won’t wanna miss this one!

And James contributed to another Lit Hub end of year list! This one is what we called the “new old” list: books that the staff read for the first time in 2025. James added one of his favorite comic novels, but there are number of other funny books on this list to that readers of the Newsletter will dig!